We have owned our Toshiba XV48DT recorder now for approximately 9 months and we love it. In fact we would not be without it in our family. It cost £234 from Amazon and was delivered super quickly. It is easy and simple to use and the picture quality and sound are excellent in my opinion. It is a bit larger than we would have liked and looks bulkier than the one I have downstairs in the basement but this is a hard to beat model in my opinion as it has everything I need and want.

It has a 160GB hard disk drive which allows us to record for up to an impressive 284 hours. We like the idea of having a hard disk drive and in my opinion this is far better than having to look about the house for spare discs. I personally use it a lot for transferring tapes to DVD.

It is easy and simple to connect to the existing in my opinion and this can be done either via the rf cable or the cart socket. I was impressed to find it was already pre-tuned to appropriate TV stations so there was no need for me to have to fiddle about with that. The menu system is also straightforward in my opinion and I love the fact that it can receive both analogue as well as digital channels and access to Freeview - all of this is also available through my existing aerial - brilliant!

As a family and also personally speaking, we all love the fact that we can watch a DVD and record a channel both at the same time, without any problem at all. I was very impressed with this feature when I first started to use the Toshiba XV48DT recorder but now I think I have probably become accustomed to this little luxury of the 21st century. This is a fantastic feature for me personally as it means that if we hire a DVD out over a weekend and watch it as a family or as a couple, we are still able to record our favourite programme at the same time. In our case, it would probably be Downton Abbey or the like!

The Toshiba XV48DT recorder also has the amazing added advantage of having 'chase play' and 'pause live TV' - again another brilliant feature in my opinion and this comes in so handy. This recorder also has the added advantage of allowing us to connect to our camcorder to make a permanent viewing of various footage and we used this feature most recently at a friend's baby's christening. It can play MP3 files and I also love this feature.

Although we have had several video recorders over the years this has to be one of the very best ones we have owned, in my opinion. I know technology is getting better and better and one day I may look back on this and wonder what on earth I ever saw in it but at the moment, for me personally, nothing can surpass it in terms of technical ability. The remote control is also easy and simple to use and causes us no headaches and the useful instruction manual has also been very easy to follow.

The picture quality is in my opinion, spot on and the sound is sharp and the picture is bright . It is very simple to set up and just as easy to navigate your way around, so simple in fact that even my other half can manage it without her having to call me up at work to ask for help, and that can only be a good thing.

In my opinion a brilliant little recorder. Not overly expensive, but it has the features I could ever want. Spot on and highly recommended.

review also poasted on Ciao as sorehead