Digital TV recorders

Tiscali+ PVR

The long-awaited PVR for the pioneer of on-demand TV will be strong competition

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Last reviewed: May 25th

The minimalist matt black exterior of the Tiscali + box is a designer's dream

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Tiscali - formerly Homechoice - had been hitherto an exclusively broadband-based service, but it's now offering a combined Freeview and broadband PVR, with on-demand channels as well.

It's partly practical; you can't get more than one broadband TV channel over Britain's lousy broadband connections, but Freeview covers most areas.

A more comprehensive service

So Tiscali+ can offer three tuners, with reservations: you can't record more than one broadband channel at once, or watch on-demand while recording from a broadband channel.

On the bright side,Tiscali's basic TV package is considerably better than Freeview, and the minimum £20/month package includes unlimited weekend phone calls and up to 8MB broadband.

Unlike Virgin or BT Vision, you can get channels like Sky One, and there are even special on-demand channels from the likes of Discovery. It's also pretty cheap for a PVR - £50 up front or £5 a month competes very well with all the competition.

Simple design

We've seen minimalist boxes before, but this really takes the biscuit. The matt black exterior with no display is a designer's dream, but if you haven't got the TV on you'll have no idea what it's doing.

The only control is a power switch on the back and, since Tiscali+ has to be turned on 24/7, you'll only use this to reboot if the box crashes (which ours hasn't yet done).

The large green light is either on or off, so it doesn't indicate anything useful. You'll only know if there's a recording in progress by the sound of the hard disc/fan - ours is well-ventilated but still noticeable.

Plenty of connections

The highlight of the back panel should be the HDMI port, labelled here as 'Digital AV', but it's not operational and my installer hadn't been briefed to use it.

Instead, you get an RGB Scart and optical digital audio output, plus analogue stereo audio, a composite video VCR Scart, Ethernet port from your router and two USB ports. These aren't active either, and at least one would be more useful if front-mounted.

Your TV aerial plugs in via a loopthrough socket, so you can also have Freeview - or conventional analogue TV - on your TV or VCR. There are two Freeview tuners inside Tiscali+, plus a single DSL broadband TV tuner.