Best Freeview PVRs

Round-up reviews let you compare four related products and find out which one is best for you

Last updated: 25 Aug 2009

A personal video recorder is a truly essential piece of kit. What with all the fuss around iPlayer and 4oD, it's often easy to forget that the best source of digital entertainment is a box underneath your TV. It's a simple solution -- often no more than a few clicks are required to record your favourite show and keep it for as long as you desire.

With Freeview+, it's almost impossible to miss a show. If it moves or gets cancelled, the PVR can easily compensate, without any intervention from you. The series link feature means you can record every single episode of Top Gear, Dragons' Den or Coronation Street at the press of a single button.

Although PVRs are now unlikely to surprise us with a raft of new features, they are improving. Hard-drive space, for example, is increasing massively -- some machines now have 500GB hard drives built in. It isn't going to be long before we see 1TB machines, but, if you can't wait and you're handy with a screwdriver, you can replace your PVR's hard drive with a larger-capacity model for just a few tens of pounds.

The PVRs we've selected here vary significantly. The Digital Vision GiGo is the most interesting. While it's as ugly as sin, there are people who will find its ability to record directly to memory sticks totally invaluable. It's cheap and allows you to add storage as you need it. It also provides commuters with a way to record TV for watching on the train.

The other PVRs are all skilled in their own way too. The Humax PVR-9300T is an accomplished all-rounder. The Sagem DTR 67500T is more of a rough and ready machine, but with some really impressive features thrown in, including the ability to save recordings to a memory stick. It's not as cunning as the GiGo, but it's a great start.

We should also point out that, when we reviewed the PVR-9300T, it had a terrible fan-noise problem. This has since been fixed with a firmware update, and you can safely ignore any complaints about operating noise in the review.

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	Sagem DTR 67500T	Digital Vision GiGo	Humax PVR-9300T	Panasonic DMR-EX89
Review date	20 Jul 09	13 Jul 09	25 Sep 08	20 Aug 09
Editors' rating	7.8	7.7	7.3	8.0
Price range	£180	£70	£162.99 - £202.50	£288.63 - £370.35
Review summary	The Sagem DTR 67500T works really well. We had no problem with any aspect of its operation, the electronic-programme-guide scheduling is easy and we like the picture quality. We're pleased Sagem has released a PVR with an HDMI connection, as we consider this essential to get the best possible picture quality. What we aren't so taken with is the cheap design and ugly menu system Read full review	The Digital Vision GiGo has some great things going for it, although it's not without its downsides. Fortunately, the positives far outweigh the negatives. If you want to record Freeview to a USB memory stick, this machine is very convenient and does the job perfectly. If you don't know what a USB memory stick is, we'd advise you to get a more traditional personal video recorder Read full review	The 9300T is a worthy replacement for the 9200T, offering masses of storage space and superb recording quality. Unfortunately, the operating noise is ludicrous Read full review	The Panasonic DMR-EX89 is a sturdy machine that's a pleasure to use. It's expensive, though, and only offers a single Freeview tuner. That said, if you're happy to splash out for it, we doubt you'll be disappointed Read full review
User rating			7.0
Product type	Hard drive recorder	Other	Hard drive recorder	DVD/hard drive recorder
Hard drive size	500 GB	n/a	320 GB	400 GB
Freeview tuners	2	1	2	1
Scart	1 output	1 output	n/a	1 input
RGB Scart	1 output	1 output	2 outputs	1 input
Component	Yes	No	n/a	Yes
HDMI	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
DVI	n/a	No	n/a	n/a
Playable media	n/a	n/a	n/a	MP3, WMA, JPEG, CD-R, CD-RW, DivX, DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM
Recordable media	n/a	n/a	n/a	DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD+R DL, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM
	Full specification	Full specification	Full specification	Full specification