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Anyone have experience of either?

I'm trying to decide between a DVD recorder with hard drive

or

Sky+ and a DVD recorder (w/o drive)


Any ideas?

I got a DVD recorder with hard drive and of course, the ability to record and play DVDs. Its one of the most useful things I ever bought. Just remember that the manufacturers go to great lengths to prevent you from copying commercial movies. However I have been using it to archieve a heap of old VHS tapes onto DVD. I like to record a movie off free to air TV, edit the ads out, then watch it later all the way through.

Just do a bit of research into which DVD format is likely to be the most popular. I have a Pansonic which uses DVD-R discs for permanent recordings, and DVD-RAM discs as reusable discs. I rarely use the RAM discs as I find the hard drive allows me heaps of recording time.

I have a Pioneer DVR-720H with 160gb HD. Its really great for backing up old VHS tapes to DVD, and is great for editing on the hard drive.
if your really into recording (I still like to call it taping), then maybe sky+ is the one for you, but I beleive the pioneer freeview box will soon have EPG making it easier to record as sky plus.
in conclusion, the DVD Recorder is more flexible.

Is it easy to record onto dvd from sky+, or do they have some sort of spoilsport way of stopping you doing it?