So quite when are we meant to find time to watch TV? and even worse how to try and hit the correct time to watch the show you want, especially if your a fan of the west wing like LP and channel 4 keep moving it round the schedules like the Skunk refugee Pepe le phew.

So Philips bring us the HDRW720 Hard disc DVDR machine which to all intents and purposes looks like a Sky+ box for all channels even non sky ones and has DVDR capabilities too, sounds good?

First off most punters like us would look at the HDRW720 as a PVR or personal video recorder, its 80gb hard drive will store some 128 hours of TV programmes dwarfing the sky plus box, it has that great rewind live TV feature by recording the channel you are watching for 6 hours without you doing anything. But the best feature is recording form EPG, the Philips HDRW720 uses Guide+ from Gemstar Europe for its EPG listings and while this means that listings are not updated second by second they are available for almost all the UK channels both terrestrial and digital satellite.

Gemstar's first UK technology was the video+ system which allowed you to programme your video with a numerical code printed in TV listings and newspapers, this latest inclusion of their technology in PVR's brings them bang up to date and helps us get some Sky+ style EPG recording for Freeview. Much to our surprise they seem to offer the most compelling feature of Sky+ the "series link" where you can select for the HDRW720 to record all episodes of your favourite soap or comedy with a single operation.

The Philips HDRW720 comes with something they call the "Sat Mouse" this is an accessory that allows the HDRW720 to control a range of satellite and Freeview boxes to switch them to the right channels for recordings.

The unit itself is a positive orgy of technology, it supports playback of DVD-Video, VCD, Super VCD, Audio CD, MP3 CD, CDR/RW, DVD-R and DVD-RW, so its easy to see that it will quickly become the centre piece of any multimedia setup. Recording to DVDR is limited to DVD+R/+RW formats this is due to the fact that these discs don't require initialisation and cat more like a VHS tape (immediately ready to record) although it will rely on you being careful to avoid -R/-RW media. Dumping of recorded shows to DVDR is very quick as the show is effectively buffered on the hard drive allowing for optimal use of the DVDR technology, so once you have the entire series you can dump it all to a DVDR disc which will hold a maximum of 8 hours of recordings.

Connectivity is also an area where the HDRW720 is very well sorted with Scart, Firewire and S-Video inputs plus more outputs than you could shake a stick at and like the rest of the Philips DVDR range there is visual indexing to aid navigation of discs.

Possibly one of the few downsides is the complexity of operating a HDRW720, its a bit of a beast to drive despite Philips best efforts of adding coloured menus that match the remote control its likely that you'll need the most techie person in the household to set it up.

So this seems to offer a real alternative to Sky+ and of course no need for a contract if you don't have sky! simply plug up a compatible Freeview box and get DTT PVR functionality, at £450 its a sizeable investment but a sound one when you consider the minimum charge for a year of sky digital plus the £10 a month sky plus charge if you don't take a premium package.

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