digihome pvr80/160 review

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Picture courtesy of Stuart.

Average Ratings

Features	7.3/10
Ease of Use	8.4/10
Value for Money	6.6/10
Reviewer Rating	7.4/10
Overall Rating	6.6/10

63% Recommended5 out of 8 Reviews

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By scarborian on 30th Jan 2007

scarborian's Ratings

Time DVR Owned	1 - 6 Months
Features	5/10
Ease of Use	9/10
Value for money	9/10
Overall value	9/10
scarborian's recommendation

Good Points

Very easy to set up and use. Decent Remote Control. Very Quiet and Excellent Sound And Picture Quality.

Bad Points

Can't re-order the channels and occasionally the picture stutters!

General Comments

Firstly, can I point out that this review, although primarily about the Digihome PVR80 can also be applied to a whole host of other PVR's under various assumed identities, but all made by the same manufacturer, Vestel. It comes badged as Techwood, Goodmans, Grundig, Sharp, Hitachi and others with the only real changes (apart form price) being cosmetic and the choice of hard drive size!
The Digihome variation can be purchased from Argos for a very reasonable price and is available in 80Gig and 160Gig hard drives. About the size of a bulky DVD player the Digihome is pleasant enough to look at and comes with a 'functional' and fairly well laid out remote control and a scart lead. It 's a 'plug and play' system and once powered up it very quickly found and stored all the available digital channels on its twin tuners. Once loaded, you can delete surplus channels, create a 'favourite' list but you can't edit or shuffle them. Picture quality is surprisingly good for such a 'bargain' price peice of kit and with twin tuners you can watch 'picture in picture' and record one channel whilst watching another. You can't set it to record two channels at once although I have seen 'software up-dates' offered on internet user groups that can be downloaded to effect this. The 7 day epg is easy to use and populates very quickly. Setting a recording is just a matter of highlighting the programme and pressing the red record button. Once recorded, watching a programme is just matter of pressing the 'library' button, highlighting your chosen programme and press play. Simple!
I've recorded about 40-50 hours of television on the Digihome and have always found it to be reliable and very quiet in its operation, BUT occasionally when watching a recorded programme, the picture will 'jump' or 'stutter' very slightly. Although this is a little annoying, it does not detract from a very easy to use and reasonably priced PVR. At the time of writing this there is an 'over the air' software up-date due which might rectify the 'stutter' problem and provide some new features. I will wait and see!
If you want a PVR that is bristling with features then the Digihome and its variants is not for you, but if you want a cheap and easy to use replacement for that ageing VCR under the telly, you could do a lot worse than consider the Digihome PVR80 or 160!

Total Respect: +2