If there’s one thing that I want for Christmas that you can buy for under £400, then this HDD / DVD Pioneer recorder would be it.

Just think, I could pause live TV, record TV whenever I wanted at the push of a button (no more nasty tapes!) and then transfer to DVD whenever I wanted at the push of another button.

Never mind the totally relevant fact that I hardly ever do any VCR recordings any more, mostly because of my lack of time. I can see at least 10 tapes I need to get round to watching at some point.

Plus of course, it would render my current DVD setup useless. The DVD setup that I upgraded six months ago – and I still can’t get rid of my hulk of a Dolby Pro-Logic (analogue? Soooo 90s!) system.

Also, for £100 and some extra cables trailing around the room, I could do the same thing using my PC. Or just tape to VCR and get a mate to do the conversion.

If I wanted it, I’d have to buy it myself. And with the threat (yet again) of redundancy hanging over my head (this would be my third in ten years), blowing £400 on something like this might be a bad idea.

But man, the idea of recording TV at the push of a button. Any music video I like the look of – I can just archive it, justlikethat. Plus I can leave it permanently recording, and then if there’s something I want to keep, I can go back to edit it … *drool*

Techno toys. That’s what I need to make up for the stress, stillness of life, my inability to decide on a holiday, my inability to get excited about my impending birthday / Christmas / barmitzvah etc.