I have been looking at the Sky+ offer,which is £10 a month for the recorder plus £15 for the basic package,then there is dvd recordable,soon to be replaced with hard drive recorders,to be honest its doing my head in,so until all this settles down i have just bought another vhs recorder for £50 and some good quality tapes which will enable me to carry on time shifting progs.on tv,the quality of recording is realy good,and lets be honest who gives a toss about the different formats,its the film/program you're watching not the very slight differce in quality.Call me a dinasaur but i am going to hang on to a tried and tested technology until all this digital gubbins has established itself as to what is going to be the clear leader and is all packaged into the tv set,go into some peoples houses and there is half a dozen boxes and wires trailing all over the place.

I've got SKY+ which to be honest is hit and miss, for no reason at all it will fail recordings which is really annoying when your looking forward to watching a programme to find its not there.

I also have a recordable DVD player, I would say stick with VHS for the moment if your happy with it or go for a cheap recordable DVD for around £90.00 then if one format overtakes the other you have not wasted lots of money.

hi Chris
Have just been looking at the Sky Freesat offer £150 one off payment and no subscription,do you know anything about this?,have also been told that you can only record the program you are watching with these systems,seems pointless to me somehow.

I'm not sure about freesat, if its free channels you want I would go for having freeview as E4, itv2, itv3, itv4, ftn, sky three, UKTV Brightideas along with more4 are not free to air on sky whereas they are on freeview.

The only thing you would gain by having freesat are the radio channels and endless cheap shopping and quiz tv channels.

With sky plus you can record two programmes at once, rewind, pause or watch something you have recorded earlier whilst still recording.

The links below might be of use, take a read of previous posts:
Sky: http://forum.digitalspy.co.uk/board/forumdisplay.php?f=141
Sky+: http://forum.digitalspy.co.uk/board/forumdisplay.php?f=35
Freeview: http://forum.digitalspy.co.uk/board/forumdisplay.php?f=13

Its quite funny; I have sky+ and a dvd recorder but still have the vhs machine sitting under the television even though it is not lnked up to record anything only to play tapes and I am meaning to get rid of it for a while now.

Sky+ is great and I agree with Chris about it sometimes being a bit hit and miss and admitidly the sky+ planner can "forget" about series links sometimes so it is best to check that recordings have carried over to the next episode.

I have known sky+ to fail recordings for no reason if the hard disc is coming to the end of its life (like mine was) but it is very easy to upgrade with a torx screwdriver set and a quick key press to access the hidden installers menu.

My pace sky+ is reliable and has only failed two recordings (due to programmes running over creating a clash) since I upgraded the storage disc last year (standard ide hard drive - I recommend the Maxtor 250GB if anyone is thinking of upgrading theirs.) because the 40GB (about 20 hours storage) disc that came with it was filling up too quickly and was having operational problems.

With DVD recorders, the most important thing is to get a duel format (i.e. takes dvd+ discs and dvd- discs because no clear format has been set although I prefer the dvd+ discs myself but my recorder can use either) machine because if one disc format becomes obsolete you dont want to be left with a useless bit of hardware

I would if I knew what one was... :D :D :D :D :D

I was not aware i was sitting a spelling test,Avron must try harder in future,especially at spelling.

No probs, just being my normal pedantic self.... ;) :o :o

For pedantic read sarcastic,the one masquerades as the other.

All word play aside, don't dump the VHS players just yet. We already have the DVRs here, which I assume is the hard drive you're talking about that will be along from SKY+. DVD recorders are just becoming affordable, down to around $100 from $600 a few years ago. So why not dump the VHS player? You'll need it to dub your favorite VHS tapes to DVDs. VHS tape degenerates rapidly, compared to DVD. My husband has every Alfred Hitchcock movie made, save two, almost all of which are on VHS tape. Instead of spending $1000 or more to replace them all on DVD, I bought him a DVD recorder and the DVDs to dub them. But, as I said, you still need the VHS player to do so. As for the DVRs, you'll become addicted quickly. No more having to choose between going out or staying in on a night when your favorite program is on. And bypassing commercials, is wonderful. You don't even have to stay up late to catch those late night goodies that come along on occassion. Just set the DVR and watch'em later. The list of advantages goes on.

You are right Kat. It is a good idea to transfer / backup the vhs tapes to DVDR - that was the first thing I did with the tapes that I couldn't get on DVD release when I bought mine although a couple of tapes had copy protection but a quick look on google found an easy solution to disable the feature on my particular DVD recorder but I'm not sure how the law stands in the USA about this sort of thing what with the DMCA legislation and the ever decreasing rights of the consumers to use their purchased media.

Sky+ is a PVR (personal video recorder) and the best description is that it is a TIVO with a satelite television decoder bult into it. Sky is a digital satelite provder over here and is owned by Rupert Murdoch who if I remember correctly also owns Fox TV in the states.

Over here the tech is getting cheaper all of the time and a decent dvd recorder can be bought for about £150 and Sky+ is currently about £100 which is a big drop on a year or two ago.

I have just bought a dvd recorder from Argos for £78,it does the job ok and will enable me to record some of my tape collection.I have a top of the range Sony vhs and the picture quality on rec/playback is more or less the same as the dvd recorder,i always use BASF crome tapes,it takes about 30secs to set the timer,this can be done without switching the tv on as it uses the display panel on the video,the dvd on the other hand is more of a fiddle having to use the tv on screen display,sometimes things seem to take one step forward and two steps back.

Yep, your PVR is the same as our DVR, basically, a TIVO. Some have different features, but sound the same. The one thing my son told me to make sure to get on the DVD recorder is progressive scan. Also, the one I bought will do everything but roll over and play dead, and I paid about $100 for it. Don't let the unfamiliar brand names fool you. The company that origionally inventede the DVD player is from Japan and is called a name I can't even recall.

On another subject, what's this I hear about the Newport Rugby team, and their recent streak (literally) through town?

Hi Kat
This has got nothing to do with what has been discussed so far but i would like to know if you observe Groundhog Day,i know its Feb.2nd,i took an interest in this after watching the film.

Hi Chris
You seem clued up on things tv etc,i went into Salop Music Centre today and had a chat with a guy there about tv's and he reckons that cathode ray tube tvs are now being phased out,in my opinion S.M.C. is the best place for tv/dvd etc. in the county so i dont doubt he was telling me the truth,have you heard that it is going the way of VHS.

As i sit compiling this post the picture on my anologue tv is crap,due to the high pressure weather,i am now on the verge of getting a digi box,but three questions first,is digital affected by the weather,will i be able to record one channel while watching another and will i need a new aerial.

Its true that normal type tube TV's are on their way out although I'm sure they will be with us for a while yet, what you will see is that retailers will have a larger number of Plasma and LCD type televisions on display.

I think the main reason is that the picture quality is better on plasma and LCD TV's and there's also the space saving to be gained as well. Prices are now rapidly falling on these new types of sets. I would personally not go for a plasma as they only have around 11,000 viewable hours before they need replacing whereas LCD TV's are fine.

With freeview you can only watch and record one channel at a time unless you watch say BBC1 on digital and record ITV on analogue or the other way around. You could also buy two boxes to get around this.

With boxes not down to around £29.99 its worth buying one just to have a try! with SKY+ you can record one/two and watch one at the same time.

Digital is not affected by the weath so much, I've not noticed the ghosting as we don't use analouge at all.

Hi, avronb. Sorry I haven't been around this weekend. Yes, we do observe Groundhog Day, and I hope you enjoyed the movie. It has become something of a classic in the states. And there are towns such as the one in the movie that do have their own groundhog that they tear from his warm hole in the ground on Feb. 2, and when the poor creature freaks, they declare he's seen his shadow and we'll have nother 40 days of foul weather. A small town in Pennsylvania is the one that gets the most attention from the media. But strange you should ask. I recently saw a movie on a similar theme, filmed in the UK, and the main character took his girlfriend to his hometown that my spouse says looked like the tors around Shrewsbury, from what he recalls. Hope so! They were magnificent!

And, back to the subject of this forum for a moment, I have found that some DVDs from the UK will not work in some DVD players, and the same is true with DVD recorders. Something you might want to ask about when making purchases. As for tube TVs, I don't see them disappearing for a few years. The others are too expensive. We just bought a new large screen TV, but got a flat tube version because of the cost of plasma and projection types.