I had to make a similar decision recently but also wanted freeview recording. And as my DVD player sits on a shelf under a BC6 it also had to look good.
I settled on a Sony HXD-R890 (160GB hard drive) with digital and analogue tuners. Styling matches pretty well and so far I can report that it works well - there is no visible difference between TV live and recording.
Don't bother with the HDMI ouput - upscaled DVD image looks pretty much the same as RGB scart output!
Unfortunately, the most recent Sony recorder on the DVD controller list is, however, the 1010 model from 2005 and that was not a digital tuner type.
I don't know if the 1010 setting will work OK with later Sony models but I'm planning to get my PUC flashed at some point to find out - unless someone else out there knows the answer?