Five HDTV recorders with hard drive in test

Modern HDTV boxes can store many programs on an integrated hard disk. Thus, the receiving device itself becomes an easy-to-use media archive in perfect recording quality.


They are called HD-PVR (Personal Video Recorder) and are the next evolutionary stage of an HDTV set-top box. Her trick is simple and ingenious. The digital data received from the satellite is not only processed and forwarded to the TV, but also stored on a hard disk at the same time.


This principle creates unimagined TV comfort because the fast access times of modern HDDs (hard-disc drive) allow multiple data streams to be written and read at the same time. While this does not seem particularly exciting, it is the cornerstone of the fact that the program you are viewing can be stopped at any time, re-run, reread, or even repeated in idiosyncrasies or slow-motion.


Some devices even take up in the background unasked and always allow the rewinding up to the time when the current station was switched. Later even advertising blocks can be skipped. Sounds complicated, but it does not have to be, because the TV reception can now be bypassed as with the familiar drive buttons of a VCR. In addition, the program-accompanying data is processed into partly luxurious EPGs (electronic program guides), which provide a perfect overview of the broadcasts of the next days.


A program can be programmed with a few button presses. Almost all of the HD PVRs tested here offer double-feeders, so that one program can be recorded and another can be viewed, for which two satellite connections are necessary. The top boxes even allow up to four parallel, loss-free recordings as long as the transmitters are on the same transmission lines. This is really the king class of all TV recordings.