Philips HDRW720 Multi Region Capable DVD Recorder / Hard Disk - Silver

- despite a whole array of programming features only has a measly 12 max recording programs

- whilst can archive HD to DVD, it cant copy from DVD to HD - weird & frustrating???

- i use it with NTL analogue tuner (no scart) so dependant on the I/R dongle (supplied with HDRW720) to change channels automatically - i could not get this to work at all & Philips were no help at all - i did persivere with various settings and now works fine

- whilst you have a choice of 1 (best) - 8 (smallest) recording quality - you cant adjust it per recording (like record a B&W movie in crap & new movie in best qual), you can only set it for all recordings - which leads to my next dig - you can only dump HD to DVD in same recording quality as your original recording

+ all above gripes could be resolved with the very next f/ware upgrade

+ it's now fully setup & i think it's wonderful machine

+ i have pixelplus TV which shows up the slightest flaw in recording, yet recordings done at setting 3 (medium qual) are brilliant reproduction - i cant tell difference from the live recording

+ has 80gig HD and can store hours of programming (about 30 i think) without tapes or disks

+ it has full satellite 'Free' EPG (no subscription) with full weeks listings, which is ridiculously easy to use - you can browse programs by day/time or by genre - if you see something to record just press a button - it even tells you if you have a recording clash (which happens frequently to the trigger-happy like me)

+ recording & playback are totally independant, so whilst it's recording all the things you want, you can still watch any previous recording on the HD, or a DVD, or even start watching the current recording from any point whilst it records the rest

+ it uses a 3 hour recording buffer (can be set to 6) unlike Sky+ which is around 30mins - so you can flick-back live TV which is very easy to navigate from pause - 1/2 speed - 1 minute - 5 minutes - whole program - to whole 3 hour buffer - you can view the buffer by time line and if you enjoyed the program you just watched, you can save it to HD at press of a button

+ archiving HD to DVD is very easy - you can edit progs while still on the HD & it dumps them at high-speed to DVD

+ it has DVD manager which stores all the information about your DVD collection (what's on what disk & which ones got space left) - you can throw away your old DVD cataloging system (newspaper cuttings tucked into DVD sleeves) and just put a number on the disk - you can browse your whole dvd collection on the HDRW720 by programm & when you see one you want to watch just press a button & it tells you which number dvd to put in & plays it - how cool is that? - i didn't even know it had this feature when i bought it so it was a nice bonus for me

this machine is a 'must have' for any self-respecting couch-potato

It works with my Freeview set top box(Nokia 221T). Playback of prerecorded DVD's is fine, if a little bright for my liking.

A few niggles, the menus are slow to react, and there seems to be two different sets of menus instead of one. The instructions are very poor, no index, bad translation, typos and not enough info where its needed, but I managed, that's why only 4/5.

I'm hoping that some of the niggles will go away if Philips offer a bios upgrade on their site.