Pioneer DVD Recorder - DVR-420H-S with 80gb HDD - Silver

Gives you the ability to record a programme/movie to hard disk at the same time as watching a previously recorded programme from the hard disk or DVD drive.

Chase play is ideal for pausing live TV, no more missing a film/programme when the phone or door bell rings.
If you're not recording the programme you're watching, just
press the record button, deal with the call and come back and
press play on the remote and you can start from the point
you were disrupted, the recorder will carry on recording
and you have the flexibility of skipping breaks (if any)
until you catch up with the real-time recording.

Forget having to worry about looking for spare tapes with enough
room, you're completely tape-less for day to day recordings which you don't want to keep.

The timer is easy to use and you don't have to put the device
into standby mode like you do with VCR's.
As it multitasks, you can set the time to record a programme and
watching something else on it.

You can edit a programme/movie with easy on screen, remove breaks, add chapters and if you want to save space on your HD,
you can burn the recording to long term DVD-R/RW media in
12 minutes for x4 or less for x8 disks.

Superb recording quality in SP mode.

You can store 9 2 hour movies in Fine mode, 18 SP mode, 36 in LP mode on the HD and there is a EP mode.

Records on brands of DVD's not tested by Pioneer. There is
a long list of tested DVD-R media in the manual.

The next 2 models up, 520-HS and 720-HS, are the same machine
with the only extra of a DV input for fire-wire camcorders and
a bigger HD. 80GB is enough and unless you plan to use a
camcorder. Think about it, you managed on 240's in LP
and SP mode blows the SP mode of tapes away.

Product tech information available at pioneer:
http://www.pioneer.co.uk/uk/product_detail.jsp?product_id=8849

I can go on for hours!

It has performed flawlessly and recording quality is good. At this price it is one of the cheapest HD recorders and I would recommend it. Downside? Well, it only records in -r/-rw format. Sometimes I want the ability to make a timer recording from TV and then play it on another machine in my bedroom. With -rw this means either finalising the disk first or finding a DVD player that plays unfinalised disks recorded in DVD-RW VR mode. I went for the latter option and a Sony NS355, which works just fine, but choices are limited - basically only Sony and Pioneer players will play VR mode disks as far as I can see.
The only other niggle, which you can work round once you know about it, is that the title menu that the finalisation process adds to your DVD splits the Title names into two lines of 16 characters which can look very untidy depending on where the break comes.

Still all minor niggles and very happy overall.