Pako
So Giles? Any updated info or has plans changed since the news of twins?
Yeah, I've been meaning to add an update to this.
The Telewest man arrived and installed the box quickly and competently. He didn't seem to know too much about the product though, which is perhaps because it had only been available for about two weeks when we got ours. He answered two questions incorrectly. Oh well.
The box is a fairly anodyne-looking thing. It's made by Scientific American, and it looks fairly well made. The front panel has controls for the TV tuner and for the TV Drive features, as well as a front-mounted Power and Reset button. The Reset button is useful because of the fact that Telewest boxes are prone to freezing and odd behaviour. That said, ours has been quite stable: one reset required so far. We've found that when you place a new device on the Telewest network it's really quite unstable for the first month or so, then it seems to settle down.
There are three tuners, so it can record two shows whilst watching a third. It has a 160GB hard disk, which may be upgradeable, since the box has firmware to go find its own software updates. Like other PVRs, it continually records the channel you are watching, so you can do instant-rewinds (of the channel you are watching, from the point you started watching the channel or woke the box up, or 90 mins, whichever is the shorter), and pause, of live TV. This is exceptionally useful. The box can do this whilst recording from the other two tuners, so it's recording three shows at once. The Telewest engineer said that it could not do this, but was wrong. This functionality "goes to sleep" if the box is not used for 3hrs. A menu is shown, when this is happening, and the function restarts within about 3 seconds of being told to. It does mean that the box needs to be active for the live TV replay functions to work.
Recording shows is easier than something that's really very easy. You can use the EPG, or the "now & next" displays to record shows - just highlight the one you want, and press the Record button. That's it. Or you can press the "Record Series" button to record all instances of this show. It will warn you if you are trying to record three shows at once. The EPG and Now & Next displays are much faster on the TVDrive than they are on the tuner-only units.
The system does not cope with broadcasts that change their own timings (you can set recordings manually if you forsee this to be a requirements). It records at the appointed time, whatever is happening. This causes some difficulty with the less reliable channels (I'm talking about you, Eurosport).
You can access recordings by date, channel or series. Highlight the one you want, and hit play: it starts in about two seconds. It can record two shows whilst playing a recording. However, it cannot do "chasing playback" (the engineer said it could), which is a bit of a shame: when you start to watch a recording that is in progress, the recording stops. There is no warning that this is going to take place, but the box does show that recording is in progress when you are in the "recorded programmes" menu. If you need to stop watching a recording mid-flow, the box remembers where you are, and you can jump straight back to this point at a later date should you so wish.
The remote is simple enough, and button-feel is vastly improved from the Pace tuner-only units.
The box has two SCART outputs, supporting both Composite and RGB. It has an HDMI output for Hi-Def TV. It won't output to both simultaneously. There's also an Optical Digital Output for sound. The engineer said that this was active permanently, but I have yet to test that. There are also phono audio outs.
Overall, considering the fact that I got Telewest to waive the installation cost, and the rental is covered by an alteration to my price plan, I'm very pleased with it. The programming is child's play, and recordings are indistinguishable from the original. It's quick enough to respond to commands, and has been as stable as expected. I'm happy.
*Ponders what Giles may have said to the lady on the other side of the phone 
