It’s what the professional audio market has to offer podcasters and budding musicians -- but quality comes at a cost.

If you don't care about recording to disc, you'd be better off with a TiVo. If you're looking for an all-rounder to tide you over until Blu-ray prices fall, Panasonic's DMR-XW300 has a lot to offer.

One of the great mysteries that confronts modern man is his inability to program a VCR, so you would have thought that it was incumbent on manufacturers to make programming a DVD recorder simpler. Unfortunately nobody told the author of the Philips DVDR890 instruction manual. It omits a vital step from the general instructions for programming the device to record a show in advance - it took three attempts to get the feature to work, and only after stumbling across the missing instructions in the section for using G-codes (though I wasn't planning to use G-codes).

For those with deep pockets and big hearts, this DVD recorder comes with full PVR functionality and an 80GB hard drive.

Now that Blu-ray has won the format war and recorders are hitting the shelves, Panasonic's DMR-BW500 HDD/Blu-ray recorder with twin HD TV tuners is looking mighty nice indeed. For high-def buffs this is one with the lot.

Take a portable media player, add video and sound recording functionality plus a 3.1MP digital still camera and you've got the Richo Vivitar DVR390H.

Super portability is definitely the way of the future and Rome's Ultrasm combined MP3/voice recorder takes a step in that direction.

A quality voice recorder and an iPod Video. The dictaphone's days are surely numbered.

A good all-rounder and a fine budget recorder – if you can stomach the lack of a digital tuner

Easy CD Creator (ECD) 6 is a complete CD-R and DVD recorder that allows you to create audio CDs, video CDs (VCD and SVCD format) and data and movie DVDs.

Although similar products have been available (with much controversy) in the US for a few years, the Samsung DVD-H40A is the first Personal Video Recorder (PVR) to reach our sunny shores.

The Sony offers a comprehensive bundle, although it omits such niceties as IDE and audio cables.

Hitachi DZ-MV100A

As well as being the first company to launch EIDE DVD burners into the mainstream IT marketplace, Pioneer is the company behind DVD-R and DVD-RW recordable media formats. In the last couple of years, it has fought hard to stave off competition from Philips' rival standard, DVD+RW, and until recently buying a DVD recorder meant locking yourself into one standard over the other.

Take the Xiro internals, pop them in a groovy egg-shaped casing, lose the dodgy controls, put one-touch buttons where they are needed, add a quality pair of headphones with built in volume control and what do you have? The Apacer BP300.

The most flexible TV we've tested - from its built-in network media player to optional hard-disk recorder, this is a sleek, stylish solution.

This is a handset we have been waiting to hit our shores for some time. Sony Ericsson now brings the S700i  to Australia and with it an amazing set of features and quality to match.

The bane of every computer user isn't just losing data, it also includes having to reinstall everything again after a format.

Mobile phones have become powerful and flexible office tools, but there's still one area that's dated - the screen. Trium's Eclipse aims to remedy this, by combining the usual spread of phone features with a 120 x143 pixel 256-colour screen. But do you really need it?

The ultimate portable media player.