British tech brand Bush has just launched its new Digital TV Recorder box, which can be used to record your favourite TV shows or movies and store them on the cloud. You can then stream and watch your chosen content at any time, from your mobile phone, tablet or other connected device.
The Bush Digital TV Recorder connects to your home TV and allows you to record up to 350 hours of telly, which is then stored on the ShowDrive cloud service rather than on the box itself. And while there are plenty of cloud sceptics out there, the good news is that you can access all of your shows from a mobile device via the ShowDrive app, wherever you roam. No need to transfer the video to your phone or tablet before you hit the road.
Of course, you can also simply stream your shows to your TV through the Digital TV Recorder box itself, which hooks up to your home WiFi network. And if you want to hop between devices, your shows will be restarted at the point you left off.
Viewing quality should be good too, with the TV Recorder box upscaling SD content to HD quality. And don’t worry if your web connection is a bit pants, because ShowDrive can automatically compress and optimise the data stream so you aren’t staring at a buffering screen every few seconds.
However, after buying the TV Recorder for £99 (available excusively from Argos in the UK from August 30), you’ll also need to pay a regular ShowDrive subscription charge. This will cost you £1.99 a month for up to 35 hours of cloud storage, or £5.99 a month for up to 350 hours. You can cancel this subscription or upgrade/downgrade at any time, and there’s a free one-month trial for new customers.
Of course, if you do cancel, you’ll effectively be left with a large and expensive paperweight.
So far we know that ShowDrive is coming to Apple devices like the iPhone and iPad and we’re also expecting an Android ShowDrive app to be available when the Bush Digital TV Recorder goes on sale.
