LG RHT497H

Introduction

Freeview DVD recorders with hard drives are nothing new. I've had one for 3 years now, and it's pretty much changed our viewing habits at home. We don't watch very much TV as it is broadcast, and catch up with things at a later time. We also use "chasing playback/pause live TV" to watch something 15 minutes or so after it started. Obviously, iPlayer and other similar systems have appeared in the meantime, but the 7 day availabilty of most stuff means that they have limited usefulness for us.

The LG RHT497H is another of these very useful recording devices, with a 160Gb hard drive, DivX support, and 1080p upscaling via its HDMI output. It also has a USB connection. Other models are available with larger hard drives. 160Gb has been enough for me for the last few years, but if you want to store more programmes or store at the highest quality then you might opt for a larger drive.

Set Up

As with most devices nowadays, it's a doddle. Plug it in, connect it up (dead simple with HDMI, and easy enough if you are using any other interfaces) and start it up. It hunts down all of the Freeview channels for you (as well as those good old fashioned analogue things) and then stores them ready for use.

In Use

As I mentioened earlier, I've had a device like this for years, so I know my way around it. and the LG RHT497H is certainly easy enough to operate. Playback of DVDs is simple enough, and playing recorded content from the hard drive is fine. The quality of DVD playback is as you would expect from this level of device, competent, acceptable and perfectly fine for most people. If you absolutely must have the highest quality playback then you'll probably have spent more money on a dedicated device.

However, if you've had another recording device from another company, you might find it hard to adjust to the LG way of doing things. I certainly did. The electronic programme guide (EPG) isn't as nice as that on Sony recorders, and it's not as easy to jump between days when programming things to record later in the week. Similarly, the series timer function isn't quite as easy to use as the Sony version.

The quality of the recordings is good, although most content isn't really watchable at the lowest quality recording mode. You'll probably settle for something in the middle (like SP or LP), depending on how much you'll end up storing on the hard drive. If you wanted to record Uncle Dave's appearance on Deal or no Deal for posterity then you'd go for the highest quality option (XP) so that you can enjoy it over and over again at a quality level similar to that of the first broadcast.

And with the simple editing features (again quite standard on these devices), you can easily edit out portions of the recording (e.g. advert breaks or a dull joke by Noel) before transferring it to some form of DVD. Dubbing is a pretty simple process and it's easy enough to archive something to watch later.

Conclusion

A nice little device, I think I'm just too used to the way my Sony one does things.

You can pick these up for under £200, and at that price you can probably overlook its shortcomings. If you want this to be your main Freeview unit, it only has a single tuner so you can't watch one thing whilst recording another. However, if you already have another digital TV source, this doesn't matter. You can pause live TV. It upscales pretty nicely (never a replacement for a higher definition source though!)

The DVD drive felt rather flimsy to me and had the wobble of a cheap PC CD ROM drive, but this didn't affect playback. I didn't much like the remote control either (again it doesn't compare well with my Sony one).

If you're on the lookout for such a device, or you need a new Freeview box with the ability to record, then this is definitely priced competitively enough for you to take a look at it. You won't find me moving away from my Sony though.