Philips HDRW720 DVD Recorder with 120 GB Hard Drive
High end features at a bargin price
I just ordered my second unit (one for the living room, one for the bedroom). Overall this is the most feature packed unit available and it is priced much less then comparable units from other companies. Mine came with a note recommending an immediate firmware upgrade which I ordered from Philips (free). <br />The TV guide is excellent. It allows TIVO like features such allowing you to record programs \\"regularly\\" (like TIVO Season pass). You can search for future programs by type (kids, sports, documentary, etc.), alphabetical, or by date/time. Unlike TIVO, there is NO MONTHLY CHARGE for the TV guide. It has the best time shift functions I've seen. The TV record buffer can be as long as 6 hours. It automatically records whatever you are watching, even as you change channel. If you start watching a program and after 10 min decide would rather watch it another night, with one click it will save the entire program from the beginning. You can go back through the time buffer and \\"record\\" programs you watch earlier. You can pause/rewind live TV. You can watch a program already on the hard drive (or a DVD) while another is recording to the hard drive. It has programmable \\"jump forward\\" and \\"jump backward\\" buttons. You can set any time (hint: most commercials are 30sec!). I have not had any crashs, hangs, glitches in the past month of heavy use. I wonder if the people who had problems had upgraded the firmware to 2.6 like I did before using it. I had the HUMAX Tivo for 2 weeks side by side and returned the TIVO. If you are buying this for someone who has a very hard time learning to work gadgets then the TIVO is easier to use, but the Philips is not much harder and winds up being much cheaper and in some ways more powerful. The owners manual is not very good. Mine is missing a section on programming the universal remote that is present in the downloadable version on Philips web site (Adobe Acrobat PDF file)