A word of warning before jumping in an buying this DVD recorder. If you're an HD purist you'd obviously be better off with a HDD/Blu-ray recorder, but if you wait they'll be closer to the $1000 mark in 12 months time. We've covered the issues surrounding the Panasonic DMR-XW300 and the DMR-BW500 high-def cousin here.

Panasonic's DMR-XW300 finally puts HDTV tuners and a DVD burner in the one recorder. The XW300 records two SD or HD broadcasts to the hard drive simultaneously (or one to the hard drive and one to DVD).

While all this is happening you can watch a DVD or a file from the hard drive. Of the five recording qualities on offer, only "DR" mode does justice to HD broadcasts and the 250GB hard drive is good for 36 hours of DR recordings.

You can't record directly to DVD in DR mode and DR recordings on the hard drive are downscaled when transferred to DVD. This occurs in real time, during which you can't watch anything else.

The downscaling is barely noticeable on HD recordings under 45 minutes, but it makes a two hour HD movie squashed onto a DVD look little better than an SD recording. As a PVR it lets you pause live TV, but there's no automatic buffer for rewinding live TV.

It can extract a seven day EPG from the broadcast signal and automatically record you favourite shows each week, although it doesn't check the guide TiVo-style for schedule changes.

The XW300 is also an upscaling DVD player with HDMI, component, SCART, s-video and composite outputs along with analogue and digital audio. There's also mini-DVI, SCART, s-video and composite inputs for recording from external sources.

It can copy MP3, JPEG, MPEG2 and high-def AVCHD files (but not recorded television) to and from the hard drive and an SD card, USB stick, disc or camcorder - although there are limitations.

It can also rip audio CDs to the hard drive and there's even an Ethernet port for downloading track information from Gracenote, but that's the extent of the online features.

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.

Panasonic's high-def DVD recorder - better late than never?