Panasonic PV-HS2000 ShowStopper 30-Hour Digital Video Recorder
You and your kids will love it! Buy one.
This product is fantastic. It makes TV worth watching again.<br />Our daughter is the main reason I bought this unit. I have a 4 year girl that loves TV. We only allow her to watch it when we can watch it with her. Our schedules and the TV schedules are incompatible. The programs we feel are ok for her to watch are sprinkled throughout the day.<br />With the ShowStopper we record the shows that are appropriate for her. She sees them when we want her to. And getting her past the commercials quickly with the 30 second skip feature is important. Some commericals now are as bad as adult programs.<br />Picture quality. Is it perfect? No, but it's really good, generally. It's a bit pixelated at times. Just turn back the sharpness of your TV and it helps blur the pixelation. I want the content. Having a perfect picture isn't important to me. It is something you get used to very quickly. And having the show you want, when you want, helps you forgive any of these superficial flaws.<br />We certainly record shows for ourselves as well. The 30 hour unit capacity seems to be very adequate for us. I like the fact that you can choose how many episodes of each show to keep. We keep two episodes of the day time talk shows my wife likes. I record programs for myself that I would never bother to with a VCR and tape.<br />Your VCR now becomes your archive device. My mom asks us from time to time if we had a particular program on tape. I'm glad to loan it to her, but I might be giving her programs I still haven't watched. ShowStopper makes dumping a show to tape a breeze. It doesn't control the VCR, but if I'm laying off a copy of ER for her, before I go to bed, I just set the VCR to record for an hour and the tape is done for her in the morning. It even puts up a slate with the show synopsis show you can see which program you have before you watch it.<br />Instant access is another terrific feature of this box. You want to find a show you've recorded? Push one button and scroll thought the alphabetically sorted list and select your program. If you get interrupted while your watching it, jump out, watch the other show and when you're ready to come back, POW you're right where you left off. You're not rewinding a tape and scanning through it hoping you'll find the show you wanted. You wait 1-second to get to where you're going.<br />The channel guide is terrific. You can easily navigate to any show playing now or a week from now and set up a record event. Or you can just watch TV and pause it at will. Very handy feature for phone calls or bathroom breaks. I intentional pause a show and then come back to it so I can blast through the commercials.<br />With MyReplayTV.com I can set a show to record from the web. If I think of a program I want to record, I just jump on the web and program it. Then next time the box calls in, my program event is downloaded and added to the schedule. The web interface is very similar to the ShowStopper. So no learning curve. Brilliant!<br />Did I say I loved the box? I do, it gives your TV back to you.<br />Buy one.ught the alphabetically sorted list and select your program. If you get interrupted while your watching it, jump out, watch the other show and when you're ready to come back, POW you're right where you left off. You're not rewinding a tape and scanning through it hoping you'll find the show you wanted. You wait 1-second to get to where you're going. <br />The channel guide is terrific. You can easily navigate to any show playing now or a week from now and set up a record event. Or you can just watch TV and pause it at will. Very handy feature for phone calls or bathroom breaks. I intentional pause a show and then come back to it so I can blast through the commercials. <br />With MyReplayTV.com I can set a show to record from the web. If I think of a program I want to record, I just jump on the web and program it. Then next time the box calls in, my program event is downloaded and added to the schedule. The web interface is very similar to the ShowStopper. So no learning curve. Brilliant!<br />Did I say I loved the box? I do, it gives your TV back to you. <br />Buy one.