Digital Stream goes with the HD flow – Def one to watch
Forget staying up all hours to catch the latest live telly action in full HD splendour. The Digital Stream Freeview+ HD box has landed in our laps just in time to capture a summer of world-class sport. Now, we know the South African World Cup has been conveniently scheduled to coincide with more traditional UK waking hours, but if you’re one of those people who likes to digest the action after the scores come in, or prefer to skip through the inevitable ads and punditry backchat, you get all the action on tap and on your own terms. Hell, you can even replay it all in the middle of the night if you feel the urge to stand your ground and indulge in some early-hours viewing or you feel short-changed by having to find space in your evening soap schedule.
The catchy-titled Digital Stream DHR8203U is the second in a family of three HD hard drives from this relative unknown in the PVR market. Far from being the awkward middle child, it’s got space for a meaty 350GB (160 hours standard, 80 hours HD) content served up with an appetising eight-day on-screen TV guide.
If, like me, your family members are poles apart in their telly preferences, you’ll be cheered by the fact you can each create a personalised schedule to carefully bank your own programming favourites. With access to free HD content from providers including BBC HD, ITV1HD, 4HD and S4C Wales, up to 50 standard definition TV channels and 24 digital radio stations, you can even cast your square eyes towards PayTV if you need more choice.
You’ve got the usual, yet essential mix of one-touch recording, series link, live pause and rewind. And while simultaneous twin-channel recording might not be a groundbreaking concept, the fact you can then choose to watch an additional channel from a selected list or recorded programme at the same time may put paid to the inevitable arguments if you’re a family of three.
Traditionalists may be cheered by the twin scart output that lets you connect it up to your VCR, while three USB 2.0 connections cater for those at the other end of the spectrum looking to crowbar all manner of home networking, MP3 and other multimedia capabilities onto the standard chassis.
An intelligent telly companion that fits into any family available now at www.cwdigital.co.uk from £279.
1 Comment
Just an update having read and reviewed all the latset freeview hd recoders this one the digital stream seems the best and today have brought out a 500g version for slightly more cost, It is very close to the phillips model and not much too choose between them if anything the digital stram is much slimmer in size hope this helps anyone wanting a new freeview hd recorder.