Hi Pop - I thought you wanted an HDD? I bought a Panasonic Panasonic DMR-EZ49VEBK for a 'technologically challenged' friend to replace her non-DVB DVD/VHS machine
specifically because it
didn't have an HDD as I knew she would never use it and preferred something as close to her previous machine as possible.
It is an excellent piece of kit and dead easy to use.
A similar machine which
does have an HDD is the Panasonic DMR-EX99VEBK DVD/VHS Recorder which has a 250GB HDD. About £150 more from Amazon.
As for HD and BluRay, yes they do give very impressive pictures. But you'd need a TV screen larger than about 32" to appreciate the difference, or so I'm told.
I'm still happy with my long-serving Panasonic system:
As I use Sky as my primary digital platform, there's no real rush to change to Freeview just yet - although I do have a cheap and excellent secondary Toshiba TV in the kitchen which is Analogue / Digital - so I can watch Freeview on digital or VHS / DVD / Sky piped through on analogue RF (but in mono). At least my old Panasonic DVR has an RF modulator, unlike Panasonic's current systems and getting it tweaked to multi-region was no problem. The Toshiba doubles as a 19" widescreen monitor for my back-up laptop too!