looking for a Digital Video Recorder

[Tradesman]

hi guys , hope this is posted in the right section.
i am looking to come out of the dark ages and replace my HD STB ,mono and stereo VHS recorders all with one DVR.
the TV itself is a 11yo Panasonic 80cm CRT set , still going strong.

firstly , is there a brand i should avoid? and what is the diff between a PVR and a DVR? does the PVR only record to an external USB drive ?
and a DVR has the hard drive built in? how many hours of recording do you get out of say a 500G or 1TB unit?

not looking to do anything fancy , just maybe watch one program while another is recording for future playback.

TIA

[eaglem]

Most brand PVR's are quite reliable, Strong..Digitel...TEAC etc. The thing to look for is that they have twin HD tuners and a good size HDD built in 500gbs or more. Your cost will be between $250.00 and $400.00 depending on the brand you choose. They all carry similar options for recording etc so no point in paying out too much for a brand name like Panasonic or Sony.

To be perfectly honest I would suggest strongly you get rid of the Panasonic CRT 80cm TV because you won't be getting the full benefit from the STB otherwise. Full HD Plasma and LCD panels are very cheap ATM and would be a far better partner to the STB where you'll have HDMI connections to give you the ultimate picture viewing.

[Tradesman]

thanks eagle , do you know how many hours a 500g machine will record for ?

as for the panasonic , yeah i would like to replace it but it still goes well and would be wasteful to bin it. its never had a service call and recently i picked up another identical one in a roadside cleanup. took it home and it worked perfectly so is now in kids room.

[eaglem]

HD recordings can use anywhere from 5 to 15gb per hour dependent on the information being broadcast.The size variance is caused by the resolution ie 1080i for the commercial networks vs ABC HD's 720p or SBS HD's 576p and whether or not there is Dolby Digital 5.1 sound tracks also EPG and time information etc.

The data rate of SD programs/recordings can also vary but usually falls somewhere between 3 to 4gbs an hour.

If you average things out you can fit about 30 hours of HD programming on a 320gb HDD or about 100 hours of SD programs.

Hope this helps.

[mtv]

Sure you don't get FULL HD on the Panasonic, but it will display SD much better than any plasma or LCD screen.

Even the HD FTA channels are mostly upscaled SD anyway and there's so much old content on the HD channels it's a waste of HD bandwidth.

Yes, full HD from a Blu-Ray etc on a big screen is fantastic, but nothing beats a good CRT (yet) for SD, especially where there is a reasonable amount of movement in the images (eg: no motion-blur/artifacts).