Overpriced, underspec'ed
Some supermarket stores have been selling twin tuner Freeview 160GB hard disk PVRs for 99 pounds - so that's double the tuners and double the hard disk space for one third of the price....Evesham don't stand a chance with their overpriced box!
HD capability is nice, but not much use if you don't have an HD TV signal to plug into it (clues here: Sky+ HD comes with a twin tuner PVR already, HD DVD/Blu Ray media and players are crazily pricey) and with HD Freeview transmissions being years away, this box has HD output with no free/cheap HD inputs available!
What we really need is:
* Twin-tuner Freeview built-in (or 3 tuners if you want to be greedy) - single-tuner Freeview PVRs are a complete joke in all cases now and should be removed from sale, IMHO.
* A large hard drive - hard disk drive prices are continually falling and capacities are going up, yet why do hard disk PVRs seem to have pitiful drive capacities? The entry level models should have at least 250GB now!
* Ways to record from and play back to a multiple of inputs and outputs, including wired Net, wireless Net, USB, Firewire and even SD cards. If you had all that, you could even forego a DVD player or recorder needing to be built in (i.e. use your PC to archive to DVD instead).
* No DRM restrictions! Including HDMI if you really must, but don't force it to be the only way to get HD resolution to your TV!
* Solid firmware - most PVRs on the market seem to have many serious flaws in their firmware (including the one in this review) and leave the public to be beta-testers for them. Example: Liteon's hard disk recorders have a fatal "hang entire unit at start of timer recording" bug that after 2 years and 7 or 8 firmware updates *still* hadn't fixed this massively critical bug.
I'd pay 300 pounds for a box with the above specs, but will we ever see such a beast here in the UK?