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Once you decide it’s time to embrace the brave new world of digital
television, you’ll want to find yourself the perfect Digital Video Recorder. So
Adam Turner has decided top help you in this quest with a review of a number of
the best selling and most popular PVR models.
Australia’s traditional analogue TV broadcasts are living on borrowed
time, with the entire country set to go digital-only by the end of 2013. As well
as offering a sharper picture and more channels, digital television also
presents amazing new ways to watch your favourite
shows.
Forget VCRs and the videotape shuffle,
DVRs record television shows directly to DVD or a built-in hard drive. This lets
you perform all kinds of impressive tricks such as recording two or more shows
at once, pausing and rewinding live television, skipping the ads and even
watching the beginning of a movie while you’re still recording the end. Forget
the TV guide, now you can watch your favourite shows when it suits you rather
than when it suits the networks.
So what makes
a good DVR? Considering how much the networks screw around with their schedules,
the best DVR is the one that gives you the best chance of recording all your
favourite shows from start to end. Two high-definition digital tuners are a must
— preferably MPEG- 4-compatible for when the networks eventually switch from the
MPEG-2 video format to the more bandwidth-efficient MPEG-4 format. Now that each
network broadcasts several digital channels combined in the one signal, some
twin tuner DVRs let you record more than two channels at a time as long as
they’re not spread across more than two networks.
Forget DVD-only recorders … to enjoy advanced features you’ll want a
recorder with a built-in hard drive. You should also consider an HDMI video
output essential. Even if your current television doesn’t support HDMI, your
next television almost certainly will. HDMI combines digital audio and video in
the one cable and offers the best possible video
quality.
The smartest DVRs have the ability to
check the TV schedule for changes each week, rather than blindly recording the
same timeslot. Such recorders are known as Personal Video Recorders. Due to the
hotchpotch nature of the Electronic Program Guide embedded in Australian
free-to-air television broadcasts, the best PVRs have access to a third-party
EPG. TiVo downloads its own EPG via the Internet, while some other PVRs let you
download the IceTV <icetv.com.au> online Electronic Program Guide.
TiVo and IceTV even let you schedule recordings via a browser or smartphone
which is handy when you’re not at home.
Season Passes
PVRs let you create a
‘Season Pass’ — for example, you can tell your PVR to record Lost each week and
it will find it in the guide. Often you can also create keyword searches,
automatically recording programs according to title, genre or
actor.
Of course, creating a Season Pass
doesn’t help when shows often run late. That’s why you need the ability to add
pre- and post-padding — so a recording can begin a little early and run over to
ensure you catch the end. A good PVR lets you specify global padding, which is
automatically applied to every recording, and then lets you customise the
padding on individual recordings or Season Passes as
required.
Once you’ve scheduled a long list of
recordings, your PVR needs to handle overlapping recordings intelligently. When
all the TV tuners are busy, the best PVRs will clip the end of one program (or
the start of the next) rather than fail to record. They also let you prioritise
Season Passes should they clash.
With a long
list of scheduled recordings, storage capacity becomes critical. Most PVRs let
you copy recordings to a computer or USB stick, as well as use an external hard
drive to add extra recording capacity. Even the biggest hard drive will
eventually over flow, so look for the ability to specify how long the PVR should
retain recordings before automatically deleting them.
The Viewing Experience
Now you’ve
got the best chance of recording your favourite shows, let’s think about the
viewing experience. Pausing and rewinding live TV is called time-shifting and it
can be a little disorientating, so an onscreen progress bar makes it easier to
keep track of what’s happening. You want a PVR that automatically buffers what
you’re watching, rather than waiting for you to press pause, so you can rewind
live TV. Some PVRs will even include what’s in the buffer if you press record —
as if you’d rewound to the start of a footy match, pressed record and then
jumped back to the present.
If you’ve paused
the footy for a pit stop and then sat down to resume watching, it’s easy to
forget that you’re five minutes behind the live broadcast. When you reach an ad
break, it’s hard to resist the urge to channel surf. If you do change channel,
what’s in the buffer is deleted so when you switch back to the game you’ll have
missed five minutes and jumped to the present. Unfortunately, very few PVRs warn
you if you try to change channel while time shifting. As such it’s probably best
to record important shows even if you intend to watch them live, so you can
rewind even if you channel flick.
Jumping
Forward
Most PVRs offer chasing playback, so
if you come home halfway through a game that you’re recording you can go back to
watch the start while it continues to record the end. This is where ad-skipping
comes in handy — letting you jump forward in 15- or 30-second increments rather
than just fast forwarding. Be warned, if you buy a PVR with a Freeview sticker,
the ad-skipping will be disabled along with options to copy recordings off the
device.
With the PVR essentials taken care of,
it’s time to think about advanced features. If you can’t run Ethernet cables to
your lounge room, look for an optional wireless adapter for connecting to your
home network and the Internet so you can download the EPG. Some PVRs will also
let you copy recordings to a computer via your home network, as well as play
music, movie and image les stored on a USB device, your computer or a network
drive. You might even get access to online video services and an online movie
rental service.
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