About PVRS

You can get two kinds of PVR.

PVR means Personal Video Recorder. It can use Hard Disk, DVDR, DVD RAM or a combination for recording. The recording is in a digital format and may not always be DVD compatible nor always MPEG2

Ones with a Digital Tuner come in three kinds:

• Satellite (Only Sky+ works with Sky pay channels)
• Cable (Has to be supplied by Cable Company generally)
• Terrestrial (i.e. UK Freeview, no service here yet)

Ones with an Analog Tuner can record Analog terrestrial TV, or analog video directly via S-Video, RGB, Composite, Component etc on RCA/Phono connections, S-Video miniDin or SCART depending on model. They then encode that to digital at poorer quality than a broadcaster or DVD production company uses in Analog to Digital conversion.

All DVDR or HDD/DVD or PVRs (includes Tivo, MS Media Centre, ProgDVB, MythTV, Sky+ skyHD) record digitally. But the input may be analog.

If the input is analog and it is on less than Highest Quality to give more recording time the quality is still better than VHS. But not better than S-VHS. However you have instant access to each program without widing the tape, pause of Live TV (by starting to record and then playing a minute or two behind recording when you unpause) etc.

The PVRs (Sky+, Dreambox, ProgDVB on PC, Reelbox etc) that have a digital input record the digital signal "as is". There are no quality settings to extend recording time. Playback is a copy of the live digital data so is IDENTICAL to live TV. Much better than Analog input PVR or S-VHS.

Some Like reelbox or PC based solutions can have four digital tuners, two for satellite and two for Terrestrial Digital, AND analog tuner too. These can create DVDs (Sky+ can't) or stream the live or playback on your computer network to a laptop or portable video player or PC. Direct Digital PVRs also are ususally better at automatic (scheduled ) recordings, esp. Sky+ which uses the Personal Planner and Sky EPG.

Even though Sky is Digital or NTL Digital Cable is Digital, if you record from the normal receiver with separate PVR, you can only input in Analog. The quality is reduced by process of Digital --> Analog — Analog ---> Digital as ALL PVRs use Digtal format internally. A PC based PVR can use MJPEG instead of MPEG2 for analog input Digital recording. For "on the fly" digital conversion and any subsequent editing this is a lot superior to PVR "on the fly" Analog to MPEG2 conversion as it is like DV format used by Digital CamCorders?. It uses MUCH more disk space. The Best digital format used for Analog in (perhaps to edit S-VHS or Hi8 analog tapes) is Huffy as it has no copression artifacts at all. It uses a horrendous amount of disk space.