Review British Freeview box maker TVonics currently eschews the dark arts of HDTV or satellite content and seems content to plough its own furrow providing well made and easy to use Freeview and Freeview+ devices. This equipment is aimed more at the man in the street or tech fanatic’s mum, than tech fanatics themselves.
Easy does it: TVonics’ DTR-HV250
The new HV250 sits at the top of the TVonics DVR range above the 250GB DTR-Z250 and 500GB DTR-Z500 devices and the family resemblance is clear with the casings of all three devices being exactly the same size and crafted from the same black sheet aluminium.
The obvious external change is the front panel, which now houses an LED display to let you know what channel you are watching and the time rather than the wholly decorative wavy metal panel of the older machines.
Take a shufti around the back and you will find that TVonics has addressed one of the criticisms levelled at its previous DVRs by fitting three HDMI ports. The one outgoing port connects the unit to your telly while the two incoming ports let you hook up other devices such as a media streamer or Blu-ray player and switch between them – handy if you want to connect more devices than your telly has HDMI ports. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Freesat recorders are currently rather few and far between with Panasonic only the second company to launch models supporting this service. In doing so, it has adapted its existing DVD recorders by adding satellite tuners. It’s a slightly different approach to hard-disk recorders like the Humax Foxsat-HDR or Sky+, which have no optical drive and are built as DVRs first and foremost.
Panasonic’s DMR-XS350 Freesat DVR
The DMR-XS350 is the entry-level Freesat model going for £699, but shop around and you can pick it up for about £570. It has a multi-format DVD writer and a 250GB hard drive. Further up the range are two models that swap the DVD for a Blu-ray writer, with a 500GB disk option. All have twin satellite tuners and bear the Freesat+ logo, so tricks like series linking are supported.
The case is a standard AV-width unit, with an uncluttered front panel; a flap at the bottom reveals analogue video, USB and DV inputs together with an SD card slot and a few buttons. Along the top there’s an eject button and a power button – curiously the power button is on the left, by the disc tray, with the eject button on the far right. Read the rest of this entry »
Review There are now many digital video recorders (DVRs) out there and there’s also a host of digital media streaming units, but if you’re trying to find a device that can do both, you’re going to struggle. Until now. Enter the Emtec Movie Cube S800, a gadget that promises to deliver a delicious combination of the two.
Emtec is probably best known for its storage media. Over the last few years, Emtec has branched out a bit, staying within the broad storage arena, but looking at ways of enhancing its products with various other features.
The Movie Cube S800 is an example of this diversification. It’s essentially an external hard drive, but it also includes a pair of TV tuners – one DVB-T and one UHF – giving Brits access to both Freeview and the basic selection of analogue channels. Although this should be fine for some folk, building in two DVB-T tuners would have been better, especially with the digital switchover underway.
