I've got one of these machines, and they really are brill
Mine's only got a single freeview tuner, but it doesn't seem to cause any problems, as most of my viewing, now, is what's on the hard drive. (And you can watch one thing , and record another at the same time. ) I guess the extra flexibility may have been useful on occasions, but if finding a twin tuner is difficult, you could always shove a cheap freeview box into a secondary scart on the tv. (I've not found the need for this as yet).
It also allows you to start recording something, have a bath/cook the tea/beat the wife, and watch it from the beginning when
your ready. I've not worked out how to watch something in advance of the airing, when I do, I'm going to buy a lottery ticket
(Mrs G thought I was serious..)
It's got a built in dvd player/recorder, which is great for archiving favourite series, (Wainwrights Walks, Mountain, and Hill Street Blues!), and seems to work pretty simply. The dvd's seem to work ok on other machines as well.
It's quite a simple affair to connect up an existing vhs recorder/player to the combo, and this works well for archiving old home movies.
Play.com appeared to have a few bargains at the time of my purchase, and it looks like the prices are coming down all the time.
Cheers, Ginge