PVRs, or Personal Video Recorders, have been slowly gaining in popularity over the last few years as people realise their tremendous benefits. They not only allow you to record television like a VCR, but they entirely change the way you watch T.V.

You can pause live T.V.; timeshift (watch the beginning of a program while the end is recording); skip ads; and record programs that would normally not fit a single VHS tape, such as sports events.

To date, small specialist companies, such as Topfield or Legend, have manufactured most PVRs but finally the big guns are entering the fray. Sony's RDRHX1010 is a pretty serious first release, with no less than 400 GB of storage (that's up to 693 hours of T.V. at the lowest quality setting), a dual-layer drive that can write on any type of DVD, and a wide range of outputs including a digital high-definition flat-panel T.V. connector.

Sadly, it only has an analogue T.V. tuner rather than digital, so quality is not as high as it could be, and no high-definition Blu-ray drive as of yet, but not a bad start from Sony.