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All of these pluses make for great news when making recordings in XP mode as the deck stores these sharp, stable pictures in exactly the same quality, while the solid upscaling brings them to screen in the best way possible. Colours are deep and vivid, fine detail is crisply resolved and the only noise in the picture originates from the original broadcast. Brightly-lit, studio-based daytime TV fare like Deal Or No Deal, Loose Women and Countdown look the best, but it also does a great job with trickier film-like programmes such as Holby City. Our only gripe is a harsh black line around the edge of some objects, possibly the result of over-sharpening.

In SP mode, the bitrate doesn't drop a great deal, which means picture quality doesn't either, making this a great mode to use when recording movies. There's very little break-up or block noise with fast movement. However, LP mode recordings look soft-edged and lose that irresistible crispness offered by XP and SP, but as 4-hour modes go this is actually very good, mainly because it uses 500 lines where some other recorders would drop to a lower resolution. However, EP mode has a lower resolution and a low bitrate, a combination that doesn't make for particularly good-looking pictures, though it's far from unwatchable.

The surprise package here is VHS playback. We dusted off a cassette copy of The Empire Strikes Back - Special Edition and were impressed by the deck's suppression of common VHS artefacts, such as colour bleed, jitter and grain. Colour saturation is also strong, making for very clean, bold VHS pictures, and the good news is that this also applies to VHS recordings from the Freeview tuner.

Finally, a run-through of the AI: Artificial Intelligence DVD at 1080i reveals this to be a very talented home cinema source. The movie's schizophrenic colour scheme is handled with aplomb, from the subtle tones of the dingy forest shots to the neon excess of Rouge City - plus it's helped along by high detail levels, convincing blacks and a lack of MPEG block noise. It's backed up by excellent multi-channel Dolby Digital performance from the optical digital audio output.

Verdict

The DMR-EZ47V is a superb solution for those still clinging on to their cassettes. Picture quality is superb - even in the low-bitrate modes - but above all its wonderful operating system makes it one of the most user-friendly recorders we've tested. Our only qualm is the lack of series recording, an SD card slot or USB port, but these are minor quibbles when you consider how much you're getting for your money elsewhere.

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