Thomson DTI6300-25

The Thomson DTI6300-25 looks nice and is easy to use

Easy to use great picture and sound plenty of hardrive space, sky like remote which I liked.. great buy if you can get one that works

If you dont want the cost of sky, at a good price there seems to be no way to backup and save what you record if the machine brakes... therefore I do not recommend Thomson DTI6300-25.

If you want to replace your sky+ with a DTR with similar features, then this is probably the best answer.

The Thomson has most of the features of sky+ i.e. it will record two programmes and let you watch a previously recorded programme, pause live TV e.t.c.

I have found a few drawbacks but nothing too serious, the remote control is laid out in a very similar way to sky+ but is not quite as well designed. The main controls, play, pause fast forward and rewind are a little too close to each other and the body of the remote is not as easy to grip, however it is something that you get used to.

The menus are laid out differently to sky+ with planned recordings in a different menu to recordings already made. I found it refreshing not having to scroll down through all of the oldest recordings first in order to get to the most recently recorded programmes, the Thomson puts them with the most recent at the top of the list. The programme guide is for 14 days and is easy to use.

The Thomson has more fast forward and rewind speeds but the machine can get confused if you use the 32x and 64x speeds and send you back to the beginning, you then have to fast forward to where you were up to as there is no facility to start at a predetermined point. There is a resume from where you last watched but this does not work when the machine has sent you back to the start of a recording. It can be annoying and now I don ' t use 16x and 32x fast forward.

The Thomson is designed with a view to using top up TV and the machine tries to encourage you to view top up TV.

The machine does not seem to have as much recording space as advertised, as top up TV reserve some of the space for their own use, however the Thomson has more than double the recording space of the sky+.

The staff at the top up TV customer help centre have been very good (unlike sky) and have sorted out any problems quickly.

I have had my machine for about a month and I am very pleased with it, it will have paid for itself in a few months as I have now stopped my sky+ contract.

Thomson DTI6300-25 Review - If Thompson could sort out the problem of freezing this would be the very best PVR value for money you could buy. But this freezing problem is a major fault that the manufacturer is aware of but still has not been able to rectify.