The Beyonwiz is also compatible with Australia's IceTV seven day electronic program guide, which is important because Australia's networks refuse to embed this information in the broadcast signal. All the networks provide is details of what's on now and what's on next, and even this is usually wrong. Since the Beyonwiz is internet-enabled, it can automatically download the EPG from IceTV. Beyonwiz provides a free three month IceTV subscription which is simple to activate - you just go to the IceTV site and create an account, then tell it where you live and what kind of device you own. Now on your Beyonwiz all you have to do is enter your IceTV login and password and it does that rest. None of the stuffing around with transferring the EPG on a USB stick, such as with Topfield's PVRs. Even the internet-enabled Topfield TF6000PVRt (read review) is difficult to configure for IceTV compared to the Beyonwiz.

It's still possible to add a margin manually. When you select a show in the guide to record it opens the timer list, so you can edit the details and manually tweak the recording time.

IceTV also offers a free remote scheduling service PIMP (Personal Interactive Media Planner) which lets you program your PVR via the internet. It's only compatible with computer-based PVRs at the moment (Windows XP Media Center Edition and Elgato EyeTV on the Apple Mac), but IceTV is expanding it to work with internet-enabled AV devices such as the Beyonwiz. One of the benefits of using PIMP is that it can be configured to automatically add a margin for error to each recording. PIMP can also be set to regularly record your favourite shows - checking the program guide to see when the shows are on so you don't miss them when the networks shuffle their programming schedules.

Except for the internet-reliant features, everything we've covered so far matches competing devices such as Topfield's high definition TF7000HDPVRt (read review), but the Beyonwiz offers so much more.

For starters the Beyonwiz is also a progressive scan DVD player which can upscale movies to 1080i via component (Y/Pb/Pr) and HDMI outputs. It also features composite and s-video outputs. Also at the rear are 5.1 channel analogue, coax digital and optical digital audio outputs, plus there's onboard Dolby Digital and DTS decoding. The player is set to Region 4 by default, but you can override this to make it region free (although it refused to stick on our test machine). Another handy feature is that it converts NTSC DVDs to PAL and vice versa - letting you watch Region 1, NTSC DVDs from the US on any television.

A look at the rear of the player also reveals a single RF input, which feeds both TV tuners, and an RF output. Unfortunately there are no inputs for connecting gear such as a Pay TV box.

The DVD player does have a slight high pitch whine to it, but you'd only notice it when you mute the television. It noise gets a little worse when playing DivX files from CD and those with sensitive ears might want to think about keeping the player in a cabinet if they'll be doing this a lot.

The Beyonwiz is also a media player similar to the Apple TV... CONTINUED