Grundig 500GB Freesat+ HD DVR

Grundig gets full marks for ease of use and its documentation, as it provides a Quick Start guide that covers the initial set-up, along with a more detailed user manual and even a separate little leaflet that explains how to record ITV HD. This function is cunningly hidden away inside the ‘red button’ menu options, rather than being a separate channel like BBC HD.

Programme guide

When you plug the box in and turn it on for the first time it guides you through the set-up process one step at a time, prompting you for information such as your postcode and asking if you want to create a PIN for the parental control options. It took just a few seconds to automatically scan for available channels and we were watching BBC HD less than five minutes after taking it out of the box.

The internal fan is a little noisier than we’d have liked – it doesn’t drown out the TV, but you can certainly notice its steady hum if you leave it running after you’ve turned the TV off. That said, the fan does cut out when you put the unit on standby. Power consumption when watching or recording programmes is 20W, but drops down to just 1W in standby mode.

The recorder can play HD content at either 720p or 1080i, and the image quality on BBC HD was as sharp and detailed as you’d expect. There’s no upscaling for standard-definition content, though, which is a little disappointing. However, the upscaling we’ve seen on rivals such as the Humax Foxsat wasn’t a roaring success, so its omission here doesn’t strike us as a deal-breaker.

The electronic programme guide is nice and straightforward. You can either press the ‘Guide’ button on the remote control to view the standard Freesat programme guide, or the ‘List’ button to quickly flick through a list of channels that appears on one side of the screen. We also liked the ability to see a preview of your recorded programmes in the Library screen, and to ‘protect’ recordings against accidental deletion.

Channel List

The remote control is fairly unremarkable, but its ‘Lib’ button is useful taking you straight into your library of recorded programmes. There are also handy buttons for quickly adjusting the aspect ratio and audio settings, without having to enter the main settings menu.