Right. I'm looking at building a system to cater for my parents ridiculous viewing habits. They have around 60 VHS tapes which they religiously record EVERYTHING onto. What makes this feat even more impressive is that they only have the 5 terrestrial channels at their disposal
My brother and I want to shift them over to freeview and obviously a built-in hard disk recorder isn't going to cut the mustard. Whatever solution we go for, it has to be extremely simple to use as the pair of them are pensioners. So, your ideas catering for the following criteria would be appreciated:1) A minimum of 240 hours of recording space, consideration for HD capacity at a later date.
2) RAID 5.
3) A simple interface with a channel guide, series link, etc.*
4) Standard format TV interface (for example, SCART, component), plus HD format interface for future requirements (HDMI presumably).
5) A Dual layer DVD recorder, with uprgradable to Blu-Ray in future.
6) Output to 2 TVs plus recording of 2 channels additionally, so 4 tuners I presume.*
Now, RAID 5 would rule out a slimline box next to the telly unless it's possible to link it all up to a separate box elsewhere?*
Your thoughts would be most appreciated
*I'm thinking GB-PVR caters for these needs, but would be very interested in anything else that you can think of
) in either std def and HD channels.
SATA optical drive should be fine 
Nice touch 