MSRP: $699

Website: www.panasonic.com

A few years ago, ATI manufactured a video card called the All-In-Wonder. This card was ahead of its time as it combined DVD playback, a TV Tuner, TV-inputs and TV outputs all in one card.

One of the more amazing things that the card offered was a video editor. You could record television shows from your TV tuner and save them to your hard drive with only the amount of hard drive space available limiting the amount you could record. Of course in 1997, a 6GB hard drive using the now-ancient AVI movie format could not record anything more than a 30-minute show.

In three years, there have been many progressions of video technology. Now, instead of using a PC or VCR to record shows, there are now “Hard Disk Recorders” which have a distinct advantage over standard VCRs.

In the late 90s, there were two different types of Hard Disk Recorders to choose from—the Replay TV and the TiVo. In those original models, hard drive costs were at a premium and you were limited to 15 hours of recording time at the worst video quality.

Luckily for consumers, prices of hard drives continue to come down and now more manufacturers such as Sony and Panasonic have licensed the TiVO and ReplayTV technology to use in their own products.

Today we are taking a look at the Panasonic ShowStopper Hard Disk Recorder Model PV-HS2000.