If you are in the market for a freesat recorder you could do a lot worse than this beauty from Panasonic. Unlike its high end range with their twin hi-def recorders and double Freesat tuners this model is one for those on a more modest budget. The XS350 is a paired back model which gets rid of Blu Ray recording and lets you have a smaller hard drive, but also offers hundreds off the price of its more expensive brethren. The XS350 is capable of both normal and high def recording and also features two Freesat Tuners as well as coming equipped with a 250Gb hard drive. Consequently there is never any deterioration in the fantastic quality of the picture or the digital broadcast that includes 5.1 sound.
The XS350 allows you to record about 38 hours of high definition recordings or nearly 110 hours of standard definition, although you can increase this still further if you add in the impressive compression facility. Because there is no Blu Ray recording your ability to archive programs has been significantly reduced, but the XS350 does support every single DVD format out there and this includes DVD RAM which offers a great deal of flexibility when it comes to editing and storage. You can also get away with dual layer DVD+R recording and DVD-R recording.
The twin Freesat tuners give you an incredible flexibility which has been missing from some of Panasonic’s other player recorders and this flexibility means you can watch one channel whilst recording on another or even record on two channels whilst playing back something you have recorded earlier. Because there is no Blu-Ray recording the set up has not been given any flags to stop you making numerous copies, which is good.
Lastly, the Electronic Program Guide is excellent, and can be filtered by genre or channel, as well as offering single channel, uncluttered views.
A wonderful budget Freesat recorder and well worth getting.