Hitachi HDR253 250GB

Having set it up to record a series of programs, you would think it would perform the job properly but the number of times we have found that when we wished to watch a program,it has not been recorded.we have also had trouble with this recorder when trying to record two programs at the same time(Only one recorded) and watching one recorded program whilst recording another.both these features are supposed to be supported.

Cannot trust it to record two programme at the same time, might record 1 minute of second programme then drops it or might not record second programme at all

Have to remove mains plug to reset it as it stops displaying the programme (black screen) when turned on if this is not done every week

Use of electronic programme guide is also very slow.

unit sluggish and whilst it produces good pictures and has capabilities, it has a major fault and requests hard drive formatt on start up and refuses to record in that state. obviously formatting wipes past recordings.

strangely the formatting gets a mention in manual!!

software update not available or so it appears as unit just sits doing nothing when asked.

annoying item which is "returning to base".

Easy to use.Tends to freeze.

Purchased this recorder from Argos two days ago. Taking back today for the following reasons:

1) When using the guide to view TV listings the unit works incredibly slowly - 8 seconds just to scan down one channel or to go to the next program, so if you wanted to check what's on for the whole day for only one channel, you would be sitting there for 10+mins! When restarting the product this lag drops down to approx 1 second, which is managable, however once the listings have been loaded up again (it does this automatically when turned off at the mains) the lag reappears. Looking through the manual, I would guess that the internal RAM of 64MG is not sufficient.

2) When recording one channel, I could not watch another, signal was very poor. I have tested my old box and the signal where I live is OK, so this is a Hitachi signal fault

3) The signal quality is poor generally, the signal in my area is not great, but my old freeview box (an old goodmans model) works perfectly well, just when watching normal TV the picture froze approx 10 times in an hour, so yet another reason for taking it back.

However, all that said this Hitachi has got some good features and was very cheap (GBP 96). It has picture in picture, a good library system and would be fantastic if it were not for the above three negative features. So close Hitachi, I'm off to get a refund and buy a Sagem - I wonder how that will perform...

This product is a nightmare.We are now on the second unit having returned the first unit to Argos with numerous faults. This second unit is even worse. freezes, jumps channel persistantly. picture freezes but sound still carries on live. volume control stops working.hard disc still noisey whilst in power save standby mode. This second unit will be returned and we will be after a full refund . Will steer clear of Hitachi products in the future.

The Hitachi HDR253 has some good features (twin tuners, 1080i upscaling, 250gb hard drive, etc), but it is extremely unreliable. I have had three of these units from Argos, and each one was returned. The unit often fails to record programmes that you have set via the timer function (and yes, they were set correctly). Occasionally the unit will "freeze" or power itself down and you have to plug it out and back in for it to reset itself. The unrelibility makes this worthless as you never know if it will actually do the job you bought it for. I would have expected better quality from a brand name like Hitachi.

i got a thompson top up tv unit from ebay two weeks ago and it was rubbish(still not working) next to this unit(hitachi hdr253) it was up and running in about 10 min , fab bit of kit not as nice looking but it works