Foxtel iQ quick review

Tonight I went to the Brisbane launch of the new Foxtel iQ PDR (Personal Digital Recorder). I must admit I was pretty surprised at the turnout the Myer store was packed out. From what I saw it's a pretty impressive little unit although not unlike most other PVRs or HDD recorders on the market.

Overall these were the things that were impressive :

• There looks as though there has been a lot of thought into the interface to make it easy to use for those people that have trouble programming their VCRs (not that I'm saying that they'll be able to program it but it does look easy to use)
• The system has dual tuners allowing you :
  watch one channel and record another or
  record two channels and watch something that's already been recorded.
• Seamless integration with the Electronic Program Guide allowing for simple recording
• Integration allowing for series linking which will automatically record ever occurance of that series.
• 160Gb HDD which will delete the oldest recorded program when then HDD fills up.

However it's not that different to the features of my Topfield, so it's not as amazing and as innovative as the presentation would have you believe. That said many of the people attending the preview were concerned about where the tape went and how they changed it so it was probably fair to say they weren't up to speed on the latest HDD recorders.

All in all it's a pretty good unit and for the price ($395 + $100 installation), even with the on going fee, it has all the features of a $1000 PVR plus a few extras, not least of all the ability to convienently record your Foxtel Digital.