• But what was wrong with the VCR?
• Surely there are some negatives too?
• Types of Hard Disk Video Recorder
• A Closer Look: Personal Video Recorders (PVRs)
• A Closer Look: DVD/HDD recorders
• The Future of HDD/DVD in Australia

Other features to be aware of include:

Digital tuner. Many models on the market currently include dual high definition tuners. It is still possible to buy single tuner models, however. The inclusion of a second tuner allows for some useful features, such as recording two channels simultaneously or watching one channel while recording another. We'd definitely recommend purchasing a system with two tuners.

Advanced features. There aren't a great many advanced features to be found in HDD/DVD recorders. Like PVRs, some will have an LCD screen displaying channel names, and some may also support basic video editing. One important factor, however, is the ease of which recordings can be transferred to DVD. Many units utilise intuitive library systems displaying all recordings by date or genre, whereas others can be a confusing mess. Ask a salesperson in store to give you a demonstration.

Connections. There are a host of video and audio connections floating round the market, so you need to make sure your television is compatible with those on the recorder.

• Every HDD/DVD recorder should come with Component (red, green and blue plugs) and Composite (red, white and yellow plugs). Some may also include S-Video. Component offers the best quality of the three, but generally any television bought in the last ten years should be compatible with composite at the very least.
• If the DVD player in the unit can upscale videos to High Definition, you'll also need some High Definition outputs. These come in three flavours: HDMI, DVI and Component. HDMI is the best option, as it combines both high quality video and audio in a single plug. This is the favoured connection for the future and should be found on most modern LCD and Plasma screens. DVI is essentially the same as HDMI, but without the audio. It also uses a different style of plug. DVI and HDMI are completely compatible, so if your television and PVR utilise one connection of each type, it's still possible to link them using a converter. If you're wanting to connect the unit to a home theatre system you'll also be looking for the inclusion of digital audio in the form of either optical or coaxial connections.
• Many HDD/DVD recorders can also accept FireWire/DV inputs from digital camcorders as an auxiliary recording source, so look out for this feature too.

Variable recording quality. Most DVD/HDD recorders will enable the user to vary the picture quality of videos to squeeze more recording time out of the hard drive. This is great when space is limited, but less so should you care greatly about the quality of the image. Typically only the standard and high quality settings will offer a picture equivalent to watching live television. This feature can be especially useful when recording to DVDs, which offer far less space than hard disks. Beware of claims about extremely long recording times as these will often be for lower quality settings.

Additional types of files. The addition of a disk drive means that most DVD/HDD recorders can also support music, picture and video files from a data CD or DVD. Typically this will take the form of MP3 and Windows Media Audio (WMA) for music, JPEG files for pictures and DivX for video. If this is an area of interest, be sure to investigate it fully as the way competing systems treat these files varies wildly. Some offer beautifully simple directory structures for browsing data CDs, while others involve an almost Herculean effort to operate and are buggy. This is another feature that's worth checking out in store before you buy.