I have a Pansonic DVD recorder (DMR-E55, no hard drive) about two years old. It does what you are talking about, Panasonic call it Time Slip. Their UK website does refer to it, though not in the model referred to. The less featured models refer to Time Slip, and it applies to all models in the range. I know it works on DVD-RAM, but do not know about if it works on a hard drive.