Hitachi HDR505

I am so dissapointed with this item, I'm finding it hard to write this review without throwing the device out of the window right now! I have had all the problems with the device that has been mentiioned before in this site and more but what has been most infuriating was the attitude of the manufacturers, Hitachi and the retailers Argos. No one seems to want to take some responsibility for this obvious 'dud' product. Hitachi, in particular have clearly washed their hands of the item and don't even have an engineer available who may at least provide some technical assistance. So to those of you thinking of buying this product, Don't!!! Give your money to Oxfam or a tramp outside McDonalds, believe me you will get far more satisfaction in the long run.

Can not seem to keep the clock on the front of the unit it shuts down after 2 hours tried the menu- configuration - auto power down but still the same can any body HELP

Biggest load of rubbish I have ever bought, freezes more than once a day. Have to unplug it to reset every day, when trying to fast forward recordings (adverts) it keeps going to the end of the recording. Want to throw it out of the window. Please don't buy one it's garbage.

Just a poor quality build machine, slow, temperamental, the supplied remote doesn't work well at all (has to be twisted and manipulated to work) Hitachi will not help, Argos will not help, they all seem to know it's a lemon.

DO NOT WASTE THE CASH

Only had my HDR505 digital TV recorder for 6 months and has started to go slow and freeze. To delete or chose a recorded programme from the library it freezes and it has started to miss set recordings.

worked well for 12 months then started not responding and freezing still works but takes a long time to do anything shall have to replace it soon thought it should last longer than 15 months

The Hitachi HDR505 digital TV recorder is excellent value for money (on offer at Argos for £110 when I bought it, with a £10 Argos voucher, so actual price £100 really). Its hard drive is 500 GB - impressive!

It's extremely user-friendly including the set-up process, although when you switch it on for the very first time it takes about 5 minutes to boot up and display the menu and you think it's not working! Once that's done it takes about 30 seconds to start from standby so I tend to leave it on all the time except at night (power usage is 18 watts in use, 1 watt on standby).

It has a great feature I wasn't expecting called "picture in picture" - you can view another channel on a small screen in the top right corner whilst you're watching your main viewing channel - not sure when I will use this but it's very clever!!

It has 2 tuners so you can watch one channel and record another at the same time, or record 2 different programmes simultaneously if your TV already has integral Freeview. You can also pause a programme and it automatically starts to record it (say if you have to answer the phone or the door etc), then when you press play it plays the recording but at the same time continues to record the programme so you can watch it till the end without missing any.

Like everything else, recording is intuitive and user-friendly; programmes can be recorded by time/date or more simply by highlighting the programme on the 7-day EPG (electronic programme guide)display and pressing the record button.

Overall then, very simple to use, good value and an attractive appearance - I like it a lot.