Panasonic's slick PVR

We've all seen hard drive/DVD recorders. Big deal. But if you've yet to take the plunge and actually buy one of these modern delights, then you could end up ahead of those early adopters, particularly if you plump for the Panasonic DMREH50. It landed at Crave this morning, strutting an 80GB hard drive and an SD card slot like the cock of the walk, crowing about its £300 price tag.

While older boxes had menu systems that made a Commodore 64 seem sophisticated, the DMREH50 has an interface that's smoother than a PSP covered in baby oil. It fires up in under a second and when you hit the record button it acts just as quickly. We can't help but think it's missed a trick by not letting you record video to an SD card though, a bit like Apple's annoying refusal to include a radio on the iPod.

If you've got an LCD or plasma TV, then you'll also be able to make use of the progressive scan video outputs, which means rock-solid picture quality. Find out if this system will trump the DMR-ES10 in our full review soon. -GC