Goodmans Freeview 250GB Digital TV Recorder (GDB1225DTR)

Bought this unit from Sainsbury's. Looked OK, however within one days things started to go wrong.

It did not record scheduled items, if you schedule more than 10 items it says 'Timer Not Available' if you try and record more, it has frozen twice requiring a full retune, it has dropped a programme whilst playing twice - all within 2 weeks of ownership.

I will try the customer service number, however its going back.

Suggest you avoid buying this unit.

I have had this unit for about a week now and there are a number of issues. The actual concept is great from going from a DVD recorder but these are my issues to date:

1. The box has frozen on me 3 times now. You cannot turn it off from the front on/off button so has to be turned off from the mains which cannot do it much good.
2. There is an annoying hum which wasn't on my last freeview receiver.
3. The receiver cuts out for split seconds and makes worrying clicking sounds.
4. It is slow navigating. You end up pressing the remote more than once thinking that it hasn't responded.

Having said that it records well but with the above problems the disadvantages out-ways any advantages.

This product does not appear to have been on sale for very long, as at the time of writing, this is the only review on the site.

I must confess I bought the product from Argos, not Amazon, and I have just returned it and got a Humax PVR instead. So my review is more of a warning to others of certain issues with this product.

I returned the product within 5 days, because it kept "freezing" on me - the picture would freeze and a message come up stating that the media was offline. The device would not respond and unplugging it from the mains was the only option. The first time it did it - a mere 24 hours after purchase - I was recording two programmes, and watching one of them at the same time (which it does say you can do) - and the programme that froze on me was deleted from the disk drive and lost. I had to watch that one on my PC using BBC iPlayer in the end - not what you want when you have paid £130 for a PVR...

On the plus side, the PVR is small, lightweight and has a larger HDD than comparable products - this is probably because it is so new, and HDDs go down in price all the time. The picture quality is excellent, both live and recorded. In fact, you won't notice the difference between a live broadcast and one watched from the hard drive.

Some PVRs have issues with the Programme Guide taking ages to populate and update. This one is very fast, and I was never left without EPG information. However, the EPG is badly laid out with no options to change the layout. You can only see the first 4 characters or so of any programme title (with short details displayed in a panel above), so scanning through the EPG to find something worth watching is quite tedious. My old Freeview digibox receiver had a better EPG than this, and it only cost £25!

With the programmes I managed to record on the timer, it always started on time and even started five minutes earlier than normal when a certain programme was rescheduled. I understand this is a feature of many PVRs and has to do with the TV company broadcasting a signal to indicate that a programme has started, so even Goodmans weren't able to screw that up.

My TV is an old 4:3 one, but quite big and reliable, hence I have not replaced it yet. On other digiboxes there is an option to change the scaling of the picture between 4:3 to 16:9 widescreen, the 16:9 putting black bars ("postbox") at the top and bottom of the picture. No option with this - if you try to choose 16:9, the picture flickers and flashes like it's having an argument with the TV set. So you have no option but to choose 4:3, which means the sides of the picture get chopped off. Yes, I could buy a widescreen set, but every other device I have had makes allowances for different ratios of TV picture.

The documentation - even the "full" manual - is quite sparse compared with similar products. Some features appear missing, for instance the ability on the remote control to skip quickly through the channels list by pressing the channel up/down buttons rather than the cursor keys. Useful feature, but not documented in the manual so would need to be discovered by accident. Certain on-screen features are not explained either.

The Ceefax/Teletext is fast to respond but has a crap, ugly font. More particularly, although subtitles come up okay on live programmes, this PVR is rubbish at recording them. It either skips them in big lumps or doesn't record them at all. So if you are hard of hearing and like subtitles on recorded films and programmes, forget it with this product. It doesn't do it at all well.

As I said, I have now returned this product to Argos, because of the "freezing picture" issue, but to be quite honest the other shortcomings of the machine were well irritating anyway.

The Humax PVR-9150T I have exchanged it for, although I haven't had it very long, seems much better in all the ways the Goodmans machine isn't. Time will tell.

Anyway, my overall opinion - give this one a miss.