Welcome to the time-shift revolution. Once you have bought your first personal video recorder (PVR), you join the elite ranks of the digital time lords. Freed from the tyranny of the broadcasters’ schedules, you start viewing what you want, when you want it — and much more of it. Early adopters have found that total viewing hours rocket, because television becomes an effortless, indulgent experience.

They start viewing 20 times more programmes “off the disk” (recorded) than they did with a cassette machine, and once you too have experienced the slightly surreal privilege of being able to “pause” live broadcasts when the phone rings, then resume viewing “almost live”, you’ll never again be quite sure whether what you view is time-shifted or occurring in real time. Weird or what? The PVR is a “killer application” for television-lovers, partly because it bags favourite shows with one press of a button. It is that rarest of beasts, technology that genuinely makes life easier. On the one hand, viewers can skip the advertisements — and potentially wreck the economics of broadcasting. On another, broadcasters fear that the PVR spells death to minority-interest programmes — Panorama, The South Bank Show and, oops, there goes News at Ten again — that don’t feature prominently in the listings.

The listings are where the PVR starts to transform viewing habits. Armchair decisions are governed by programme genre instead of title. Your set’s onboard electronic programme guide (EPG) will book recordings at the press of a button, while a Sky+ box helps create an evening’s personalised “schedule” from your series-linked favourites by searching the electronic listings. (Yes, BSkyB is the satellite television company in which News Corporation, parent company of The Sunday Times, owns a 36% stake. The fact remains, however, that Sky+ has set a benchmark for PVR versatility that is widely acknowledged within the industry.)

“The EPG is hugely powerful. It is the catalyst of choice that perpetually defines how viewers spend the next 15 minutes,” says Dick Emery, head of UKTV. “Sky and cable have always offered channel choice, but the EPG is the fundamental difference between the analogue and digital experience.”

Each of the digital television providers — Freeview, NTL, Tele-west, Sky and HomeChoice — offers its own kind of EPG, and when there are up to 400 channels on offer, the guide places power in the hands of the viewer. Most search for programmes by genre — sport, news, music — which is why a good position in the EPG is critical for a channel. What’s astonishing about the 16m households that have invested in digital television is that only 1m have taken the quantum leap towards becoming time lords by buying a dedicated PVR — and almost all of those are Sky+ subscribers.

This digital market has impetus only now the government has decided that it will begin switching off the traditional analogue system of broadcasting in favour of digital in 2008. Previous dithering over the start date accounts for the paucity of high-calibre recording equipment on sale: the best of it is what you see reviewed on these pages.

The first big idea to grasp, before you start recording digital television, is the difference between time-shifting (viewing in the short term) and archiving (storing for the long term). Time-shifted programmes are best played back through the PVR; archiving generally means burning them onto disc with a DVD recorder.

Most experts believe that new video-on-demand services will end the need to record programmes at all. Sky already offers a “near-video-on-demand” (NVoD) service for pay-per-view movies; HomeChoice already offers genuine video on demand in London, as does NTL, the cable company currently merging with Telewest.

Meanwhile, you have three principal options for recording:

1 Dedicated PVR The easiest box for time-shifting, as long as it has twin tuners for full recording versatility. Freeview boxes access the same EPG, though on-screen design varies with brand. Except in terms of raw capacity, PVRs don’t date, because the software is frequently upgraded through your aerial. Earlier this year, Thomson upgraded its popular DHD4000 to reduce hum by putting its drive into sleep mode more often, and improved the legibility of the EPG.

2 Dedicated DVD recorder Burns any video source to disc. DVD recorders (also called burners) went on sale in the UK in mid-2002 for more than £1,000. Today, a good-quality burner can cost £200.

3 Combination device A growing number of DVD recorders now include a hard drive of generally 160GB, as well as a Freeview tuner and EPG. This includes a burgeoning array of media-friendly computers, among which this week’s competition prizes from Uvem excel. Media centres provide a home entertainment hub and the capacity to record episodes of Lost by the yard. Microsoft’s Media Center is Windows XP with a remote control, and some models are more suited to the living room than others in terms of styling or fan noise (some sound like a mosquito on steroids). These will come into their own once the BBC’s web-based Interactive Media Player (iMP) launches, perhaps next year.

Any device with a DVD burner can transfer video onto discs for viewing on standard DVD players. Older analogue kit, such as the humble VCR, will not be obsolete after switchover, but will work only as a dumb recorder of any video source or for playing back cassettes you haven’t transferred to DVD.

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