DRM News

Sony has come to the digital TV party, finally combining a DVD recorder, hard drive and digital tuner in one device.

Sony's RDRHXD760 HDD/DVD recorder sports a standard definition TV tuner, a dual-layer DVD burner and a 160GB hard drive holding up to 249 hours of recordings, which equates to 67 hours in Standard Play mode.

That's the half-glass-full view of this recorder but, when reviewing these kinds of devices, I find the glass-half-empty approach to be far more telling. Firstly, the RDRHXD760 has only one tuner and it's only standard definition. Two tuners would let you watch one channel while recording another, or even record two programs at once. Sony sells a twin HD tuner digital recorder, but it doesn't have a DVD burner so you can't archive your recordings. Some HDD/DVD recorders have one analogue and one digital tuner - like Philips' Cineos DVDR9000H - but frustratingly it won't let you watch one tuner while recording from the other, or record two programs at once.