My quest for home entertainment Nerdvana reached a major milestone yesterday when two of the most exciting new recorders landed on my doorstep.

The only way to get all of this in one device is to buy or build a Windows XP Media Centre Edition computer, like Altech's Maestro range. MCE boxes are versatile, I want something more reliable than a PC at the heart of my lounge room.

Altech's Maestro media centre PC

There are a few device manufacturers which are approaching my ultimate device, albeit from different directions. Zensonic (soon to be renamed Ziova) builds about the best media player around in the Z500 (soon to be renamed the Clearstream CS505) with DviX DVD player plus Ethernet and wifi. I'm waiting for the delivery of a KiSS DP600, which also looks promising.

Zensonic's Z500

I reviewed four PVRs for Icon in the Sydney Morning Herald last year and I'd say Topfield builds about the best recorder in the TF5000PVRt Masterpiece with a twin SD digital tuner and hard driver recorder. Topfield's devices have an advantage over the competition in that they're some of the few devices that aren't a PC but can access the IceTV seven day electronic program guide. Downloadable from the internet for $AU3 per week, IceTV lets you browse through the TV guide up to a week in advance and select which programs you want to record. With some devices you can just tell it the name of the show, or your favourite actor, and it will search the program guide and record anything that matches. Legend also makes IceTV-compatible recorders - but in my experience they don't measure up to the Topfield boxes. I haven't looked at the new Legend LHD3 yet, but it doesn't seem to have Ethernet or wifi.

Topfield's current top of the line, the TF5000PVRt Masterpiece

Most hard drive recorders on the market can extract a seven day program electronic guide from the broadcast signal, but the bloody Australian television networks refuse to broadcast their program guide and have taken a distinct dislike to services such as IceTV. The shortcoming of the Topfield recorders is their lack of a DVD recorder for archiving recordings, but the new TF6000PVRt that's arrived on my doorstep has wifi and I'm hoping I can use it to transfer recordings to a PC for burning to disc. I'll be even happier if it will let me play recordings directly from another device, such as a network drive, via the wifi link.

Philips' DVDR9000H has a DVD player/recorder that Topfield's TF6000PVRt lacks, but the DVDR9000H can't access the IceTV guide - so it depends on what you value more. The fact both are standard definition is also disappointing. So the search for home entertainment Nerdvana continues. The Topfield TF6000PVRt is due out later this month for $AU1249 and, while I'm yet to crack the box and put it through its paces, at the moment it would seem to be as good as it gets.

So, what's the killer feature of your dream home entertainment device?{moscomment}

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Adam Turner  Digital TV  Gadgets  Video