Panasonic DMR-BWT800

The basics

The Panasonic DMR-BWT800 is the most feature rich set-top box we have ever come across. It has twin Freeview HD tuners, a 500GB hard drive capable of recording up to 300 hours of content, connections for every major cable, including HDMI, optical and coaxial audio, USB, SD card port, Ethernet and more. The box also has a Wi-Fi receiver built in, so no need to tether it directly to your router.

The good

Where to start… There aren’t many gadgets out there that blow us away, but the Panasonic DMR-BWT800 is one of them. It’s goes without saying that the features are what make this device, but it is backed up by brilliant software and a top-notch build quality.

We were surprised by the silence of the box too. With such a strong feature list, you wouldn’t blame it for getting a little hot, but throughout testing it remained cool calm and collected.

The bad

We can’t actually fault the box in any way, however there are two distinct downsides to something as technologically advanced as the DMR-BWT800. The first is price. The Panasonic DMR-BWT800 is set to retails at just under £900; now that’s a lot of money by anyone’s standards.

The second is availability. At the time of writing there are only a handful of 3D Blu-Rays available, and whilst the HD Freeview is great, the 3D Blu-Ray will be one of the main reasons for purchase. It might just be too soon to commit such a big chunk of cash to such a new product.

The bottom line

We love the Panasonic DMR-BWT800, but feel it has come out too soon and at a price that is prohibitively high, however, if you are looking for a future proof device and have throwaway cash, this is the best of the best in PVRs.