Goodmans GFSDTR500HD

Capable picture and sound quality ; easy to use ; good EPG ; capacious hard disk ; relatively affordable

No provision to bypass internal scaling ; others slightly better ; dreadful fan noise

iPlayer capability is on the cards The 'DTR500HD's spec is competitive, too: it has both coaxial and optical digital outputs, and also includes an Ethernet port that in the future will be able to stream BBC iPlayer content.

does everything you want it too, has very good features

whenever you record a programme on this sometimes it will skip to another place rather than running smoothly but runs fine when just watching the programme normally

Does its job

Twitchy on switch on sometimes

Easy to install and use

The device seems to struggle to play back programmes recorded in HD. The image can break a little and it gets laggy so that the sound is behind the pictures. So annoyingly have to pause and hten start to play again to get it all back in sync. Suspect...

recording programes good

remote, Buttons to small. Volume buttons set in wrong position, should be coloured as well ; checking what's on next channels bad ; ( I'm comparing with the Sky remote control.)

very ease to use

none

All the important features work well - it uses twin LNBs so can record one program when viewing another ; It identifies and records all the episodes of a series ; Works fine here in France

Didn't like having only one LNB input (I originally plugged it into my Sky dish) ; Occasionally warns that the hard disk needs re-formatting when it doesn't ; Although it conects to the Internet via a LAN the hard disk doesn't appear on the network so...