With the arrival of Hannah, time to really relax and switch off has become even more scarce despite being ever more needed. One frustration we have had for a while is the fact that we never seem to be able to catch our favourite television programs. We have a rubbish video recorder that refused to record unless the television was on [I know.... tell me about it!] so we decided to throw that away and invest in something that actually worked. Many friends recommended we get Sky+ as this allows you to record straight to a hard drive, record two programs simultaneously, pause live TV and store programs clutter free. All this sounded perfect except for the price tag. Not only do you have to pay for the hardware [or at least a substantial contribution] there is the minimum monthly fee of £17. I found that there is such a thing as a PVR [Personal Video Recorder] which does exactly the same as the Sky+ hardware but without any of the strings attached. Magic! Wonderful! Now, which box do I buy? Who do I go with? I was amazed at who didn’t make these contraptions! I decided to sign up to Which? and make an informed decision through them. I settled on the Humax [Who? I know!] PVR9150. It is a delightful, small, quiet, cheap, 160Gb [80hrs], black box that works perfectly. We love it. We now have about 10 episodes of House, 10 episodes of CSI and other films and documentaries all happily recorded awaiting those infrequent and highly unpredictable 30mins of Hannah downtime to watch them in!

Dan