TV recorders

[kwicky]

With the switchover to digital will most of the present recorders become defunct? With analog you can watch 1 terestrial channel like BBC1 and record ITV simultaneously but digital will not allow this will it?. Have we been sold a pup?

[vehelpfulguy]

You say "recorders" but I am not sure what you mean by recorders: video recorders, DVD recorders or hard disk recorders ?

With analogue and video the only reason we could watch one channel while recordng another was that the video recorder had a small analogue TV receiver in it.

So you were actually watching the receiver in the TV while the receiver in the video was recoding another program.

So if you buy say a DVD recorder or hard disk recorder with a digital receiver built in (which most have nowadays) then you can record one channel on the DVD recorder or hard disk recorder while watching another on the TV.

I have a Sky+ box with a hard disk and can record one channel while watching another, I can even record 2 channels at the same time.

[vehelpfulguy]

One other point.

Anyone with a VIDEO or DVD recorder which includes an ANALOGUE receiver will indeed find that they cannot use the receiver in that device after the analogue switch off.

You could plug a Freeview device into the scart of the Video or DVD recorder and record to video or DVD from that, while watching another channel on your TV that may have a Freeview receiver in it.

I believe you can also get Freeview boxes with 2 receivers so you can record one channel and watch another.

[pug100]

Hi Kwicky,
To answer your first question, no not if you buy a digital tv receiver.
As VHG points out the current setup of being able to watch one thing and record another is because both the VHS and TV each have a separate tuner.
If you want to watch and record digital tv you will need two digital receivers, one for the tv and one for the recorder.
A lot of PVRs and some sat boxes have twin tuners allowing you to record and watch two different digital channels at the same time.
To answer your last question, analogue terrestrial gives us five tv channels whilst digital offers around 40 tv channels and a number of radio channels all without a subscription. Do you think that's a bad deal or not?

[Tim Baxter]

All contemporary recorders (of whatever type) will record freeview as long as the FV box is scarted to the recorder.

Some FV boxes have an RF output (connects to TV or recorder aerial socket) which will enable recording on primitive (non-scart) equipment.

Don't forget (as I often do) that when you want a timed recording from the FV box you have to leave it switched on and on the desired channel.

Video+ will not work.

As other have said some FV boxes have a separate tuner so's a different channel can be watched whilst recording.

Some TV's will allow you to watch analogue TV whilst recording digital, it depends on the scart pins. If you find that when recording digital your TV only shows that channel then unplug your scart and your analogue channels should return.

Cheers

[kwicky]

Thanks for all your replies.