Newbie Advice Please

[Peculiar_Clown]

Hi guys,
I'm new to this digital age oops: I guess that gives my age range away already) I'm looking to achieve the following objectives.

Record to HDD from Sky
Record HDD from Freeview
Transfer Video to HDD/DVD​

Pause Live TV
Record one Channel while watching another. (not Sky I realise I'd need Sky+ for that, it's next on the list, with multi room.

Would the addition of a DVD recorder with 1 digital tuner allow me to achieve this with the kit I already have, or would I need one with twin digital tuners:

Current Kit:
Std Sky box
VCR
DVD Player
LCD TV with Digital Tuner

Also with the proposed configuration, what output to the TV (HD enabled) would be best? HDMI, Scart, SVideo, Coaxial?

Thanks in advance.

Trev

Proposed configuration:

 

[ramjet]

having just purchased my second sony 970b from empire in the £200 boxing day sale , let me see what I can tell you about what you are asking

firstly , dvd recorders have only 1 tuner , not twin tuners like in a humax9200t pvr. the sony has 1 digital tuner and 1 analogue tuner , only one can be used at once

the 970b has a line 1 on the back where your sky box would plug in with a scart , and has line 3 out for scart to tv , and also has component + s-video + composite + hdmi to go to a suitable tv , so it covers all these outputs

the sony also has a line 2 s-video and composite on the front for plugging in additional devices so I suppose you could plug in the vcr in the front using composite

the vcr can usually be used on an analogue rf channel so that is another method of using the vcr , connected between the digital and analogue coax sockets and watching it the old analogue way

these dvd recorders are not designed for multiple inputs so another method is the use of a scart switcher

so the dvd recorder can record from sky using the line 1 scart input

it can record freeview from its built in digital tuner

it can record all analogue using its inbuilt analogue tuner

it has a pause live tv , but only from when you press the record button , so it doesnt record say the last hour like a pvr does

when you are recording one channel you would have to use the tv to watch another , and if you were recording sky then you cannot watch another sky channel so you could only watch analogue or freeview on your tv , or get skyplus for multiple sky viewing options

so no you wont get a dvd recorder with twin tuners , only a pvr like the humax

you may be limited in channels to watch when recording sky

you may have problems connecting in the vcr

best outputs are in this order I believe

HDMI
COMPONENT
RGB SCART
S-VIDEO
COMPOSITE

hope that helps

 

[Peculiar_Clown]

Thanks for the reply.