Record and Play Everything with the PixelView PlayTV Media Box

Digital TV recorders are becoming increasingly popular nowadays, taking into consideration the fact that very few users have the time to watch their favorite shows exactly when they're aired. This is the reason why more and more manufacturers come up with such products, including the relatively unknown ProLink company from Taiwan, who has just announced a very innovative and interesting recorder, dubbed the PixelView PlayTV Media Box.

Practically, the device is capable of delivering a media center-like experience without actually needing a PC. Thus, users will be able to do just about whatever they might want with this thing, from watching photos to listening to music, recording TV shows or playing downloaded movies or home videos. Moreover, the manufacturers have decided to keep the device's price tag at the lowest possible level and this is the reason why they've dropped the idea of HDD altogether, thus allowing users to record solely on SD cards or USB media (either flash drives of USB HDDs).

The Media Box provides some very useful recording and viewing capabilities, as for example the multi-channel preview (9 channels on the same screen), powerful schedule recording (weekly schedule recording function to easily record serial TV programs), one button for instant recording and one button for instant playback. Moreover, the device provides several recording profiles, namely TV, iPod, PSP, GBM, PMP, Phone1 (320 x 240), Phone 2 (176 x 144), and 3GP (160 x 128) for playing back recorded programs on different devices.

The device supports MPEG1, MPEG2 & MPEG4 formats (playback) and records video in the MPEG4 XVID format, at 720 x 480 for NTSC and 720 x 576 for PAL. Moreover, it features a hardware MPEG4 Encode/Decode chip which provides professional real-time recording and high playback quality.

The PixelView PlayTV Media Box measures around 11.6 cm x 11.6 cm x 2.9 cm, at a weight of around 285 grams, but, unfortunately, no pricing or availability information can be found. However, it will most certainly not be extremely expensive, due to the fact that it doesn't have a built-in HDD, generally the most costly part of any such device.

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