JVC DR-MH50: discs of fury

If you haven't invested in a hard drive recorder yet, you're missing out on the best thing to happen to TV since colour. Luckily, your tardiness might have paid off, because the recording capacity of the latest models is getting plain silly.

First off, we had the Humax Freeview Recorder, with its 80GB HDD giving us enough memory to store a complete series of 24. Then came Toshiba's brilliant RD-XS34, with its monster 160GB hard drive, which would not only hold 70 hours of high quality programming, but also dub them to DVD. But with the DR-MH50, JVC really takes the biscuit -- the gargantuan 250GB hard drive sitting inside its slinky exterior is good for a preposterous 473 hours of programming (or about 115 hours at a quality you'd actually want to watch).

Our quick one-on-one reveals that the £450 JVC DR-MH50 isn't all talk and no trousers. JVC proclaims that we're living in a 'Progressive World' -- which sounds like meaningless nonsense dreamed up by pernicious marketers to us, but at least the company has followed through with progressive-scan video out of the box. It's also been kitted out with all the little extras that make shallow geeks like us go weak at the knees. It'll play WMA, MP3 and JPEG files, record schedules via the shockingly easy VideoPlus+ Deluxe system and archive your favourite TV shows to DVD-RAM, DVD-RW and DVD-R discs. JVC, with this DR-MH50, you are really spoiling us.

Can it usurp the Toshiba RD-XS34 as our favourite hard drive/DVD recorder combi? Find out with our full review soon. -GC