Poor usablility. The EPG, Electronic Programme Guide, let's it down

It looked reasonable - black and smooth. It auto-tuned and then performed well. You get 2 SCART sockets to connect up your DVD player and TV, and RF sockets and cable if your TV doesn't have a SCART socket; there's even a digital audio output.
However,
a) the mains adapter, providing low voltage power to the unit, has too short a lead. It's only 48in - barely enough to reach the ground from on top of a portable set on a shelf.
b) The standby / on indicator light is way too bright. A simple LED would suffice but it has a light which, at night, shines a blue (on) or red(standby) beacon.
c) You cannot change the order of the programmes on the favourites list - so your favourites will always be in the order the auto-programming selected them, potentially many button depressions apart. Worst of all, though, the EPG only provides, for one channel only at a time, a 'time-line' view of programmes, hour by hour over the next seven days. What you typically want is a display of five or six channels' programmes over the next couple of hours, together, so you can compare.
d) On occasions when the signal strength fails a little, annoyingly, the picture is replaced by a"Grundig built for you" white, strapline over a blue background. So you get a flash of pixellated picture followed by an extended flash of blue and white.

It was a good price, UKP24.99, on 'special' at Sainsbury's ... but the usability issues are so serious I've taken it back for a refund and bought a Bush DFTA1001 at Tesco Direct. It's very good and has none of these problems.

Lasted just over 1 year

I would steer clear of this one. It worked OK at first then started losing channels on a regular basis and then eventually decided not to turn on. Another call to the infamous 'daewoo customer helpline' resulted in the bored employee telling me that a component had failed and that was it. It lasted for 1 year and one month - just. I'll never buy Daewoo again

Advert contains wrong minimum requirements

Despite what it says in the advert (at the time of writing, I expect they'll change it) This device does NOT work with windows 2000. It requires win xp sp2 minimum.
It also won't work with USB1.1.
While I have got this up and running satisfactorily on my PC , I bought it for my laptop, which it won't run on.
I won't know if the minimum RAM given is also incorrect till I can get a USB expansion card for the laptop.
The software with it is Arcsoft Total Media which is a really cheap looking programme, and clunky to use, and not particularly user friendly, though I have successfully copied over a video to mpg using it.
The company also doesn't return emails.

Good piece of kit, does the essentials well (six months on)

I bought this item after trying one or two other models and returning them. This one seems to work well. I have now had it for six months, put it through its paces, and whilst it has had some slight wobbles I think I understand them and can live with them.

For short-term record-and-watch, it is a major step forward from the VCR or DVD-R - far simpler to use, vastly more capable, better recording quality - giving you a well organised and labelled library of 80+ hours of your favourite TV for minimal effort. And at the typical price of say 120 to 150 quid, it avoids the need for a big investment in technology which will be improved-on still further over the next few years.

If you are looking for something like the sky-plus experience on freeview then this might be for you. It has twin digital tuners which will let you:
- record - or play - one channel, whilst ...
- playing another channel, or play a previous recording.

So long as you understand this limitation its a good piece of kit - it is enough for most people, most or all of the time. But:
- if your heart is set in recording two channels at once - when there's two good programmes on at the same time, and you are out for the evening - then this box will only record one of them.
- It will do picture in picture - nicely - eg you can change channels on the small picture or on the large oe, swap chanels, etc. However, you can't do P-i-P if you're recording something at the same time, because the box can do two things at once, but not three.

Things that work well:
- recording is a doddle. go in to the 7-day programme guide / EPG, highlight the programme you want, and press the red"record" button. that's it. programme is now shown underlined in red.
- pause /rewind / fast forward / slo-mo / record of live TV
- when it does a recording it saves the programme info too and you can control it to always pad the begining / end, eg 1min at the start / 3mins at the end.
- The 160gb hard disk does indeed hold 80-90 hours of programmes, picture quality and stability is good, the timer recording works reliably and you can set it to record daily / weekly)
- its pretty helpful re deleting old recordings automatically should you so desire - eg you can set it do delete oldest first, including/excluding unwatched recordings, you can protect individual recordings against deletion and/or viewing. you can see how much disk is free and how much is reqd for the recordings in the pipeline.
- setup is easy and the remote is well laid out, the manual and the menu system are simple, the onscreen colours aren't garish!

Biggest limitation:
- like other HDDs / PVRs, the box does freeze up occasionally, which can mess up recordings in progress (existing recordings are not affected). This seems to happen when the disk is full or very nearly full. It requires a switch-off at the socket, then power up again, and give it five minutes to reboot. I suspect that it can be prevented if you get into the habit of keeping at least 10% of the disk space free.

Minor limitations:
- whilst you can delete or hide channels, you can't reorder them.
- if you want to record part of a programme - eg due to something else overlapping with it - its quite tricky. you need to set one recording, save, then go and edit its timings, then set the other recording.
- if your disk gets full and you want to archive stuff off to DVD - this would need to be done via Scart lead and would be slow [a 1hr programme would take 1hr to archive].
- There's no socket for faster file transfer, or for using the hard disk as a backup for your home PC.

Hope this is helpful in making your choice.

Alba STB9

If you like cheap products, this is for you. If however you want to be able to turn the volume up or down, then this isn't for you. To my amazement, there is NO volume control on the remote (nor anywhere at all actually). If you are hard of hearing or want to mute the adverts, buy something else!

... but be aware

The"power supply" listed under box contents is no more that a lead that provides power when connected between this receiver and another Shinco unit with a power output. This is fine if that's how you plan to use it. However, if you want to use it independently, you'll also have to buy a power supply.

Great Freeview Box

Just recieved this set-top box , it was well packed in the box, plugged it in and connected to the tv and ariel in about 5 minutes , easy to set up (just choose type of tv and then let it search for the channels and thats it) and it works great.