I bought this to replace a Sony DVD recorder with built in freeview which was excellent until the day it died.
As for this I expected a quality piece of equpment from Sony. How wrong I was.
It is cheap and tacky, it is temperamental. Slow to start up. Watching recordings from the HDD can sometimes be jerky and freezes for a few seconds (this isn't all the time but often enought to be annoying).
It doesn't like you trying to insert a DVD if it is currently recording on the HDD, often refusing to open the drawer to insert a disc.
If you wish to dub an HDD recording you have to do it at normal speed. You cannot record to DVD direct from TV (or a Skybox) without having to first transfer it to the HDD. Whilst playing a DVD it is quiet as you would expect but whilst dubbing it is very noisy, the entire time it is dubbing you can here the machine whining away like a small jet engine.
A huge disappointment, I'll no longer trust Sony to provide quality equipment everytime.