New Freesat/Freetime owner
Faust
Posts: 8,985 Forum Member
✭
As reported in THIS thread, I've finally taken the plunge moved over to Freesat and purchased the HDR 1000s. I have to say I have been pleasantly surprised and delighted with this product - Sky could learn a thing or two from the Freesat EPG.
Now many of you will already know my views on HD - bought into when first released on Sky and was bitterly disappointed as I really couldn't tell much if any difference to the SD picture on my Panny Plasma PX60. So much so that I dropped the HD sub at the first opportunity and haven't bothered watching it since.
Last night I accidentally selected the BBC HD channel on the 1000s - wow! what a difference. For the first time ever I really can see a marked difference between the SD and HD feed. My Pace Sky+HD box never looked like this.
I do have a couple of questions though - pressing the rewind button whilst watching live TV only takes me back a couple of minutes. With Sky if I suddenly thought "I wish I had set this programme to record" providing I hadn't gone beyond 15 minutes then I could record the entire programme by pressing the record button. Similarly I could rewind up to 15 minutes - longer if I altered the settings. What's the story with the 1000s as I only appear to be able to go back 2 minutes?
Checking the signal - occasionally I get both feeds showing me the info (which by the way is around 90% for quality and strength) as per Sky service. However, most of the time feed two is showing nothing at all and if I'm watching a recording when I check then both feeds are blank. Is this some sort of bug?
Finally, there are two standby options - why, what is the difference with the one that uses more power as the boot up times are identical.
Oh, BTW, although not mentioned in the manual I can copy material from the 1000s to my Panny DVDR.
Now many of you will already know my views on HD - bought into when first released on Sky and was bitterly disappointed as I really couldn't tell much if any difference to the SD picture on my Panny Plasma PX60. So much so that I dropped the HD sub at the first opportunity and haven't bothered watching it since.
Last night I accidentally selected the BBC HD channel on the 1000s - wow! what a difference. For the first time ever I really can see a marked difference between the SD and HD feed. My Pace Sky+HD box never looked like this.
I do have a couple of questions though - pressing the rewind button whilst watching live TV only takes me back a couple of minutes. With Sky if I suddenly thought "I wish I had set this programme to record" providing I hadn't gone beyond 15 minutes then I could record the entire programme by pressing the record button. Similarly I could rewind up to 15 minutes - longer if I altered the settings. What's the story with the 1000s as I only appear to be able to go back 2 minutes?
Checking the signal - occasionally I get both feeds showing me the info (which by the way is around 90% for quality and strength) as per Sky service. However, most of the time feed two is showing nothing at all and if I'm watching a recording when I check then both feeds are blank. Is this some sort of bug?
Finally, there are two standby options - why, what is the difference with the one that uses more power as the boot up times are identical.
Oh, BTW, although not mentioned in the manual I can copy material from the 1000s to my Panny DVDR.
0
Comments
The left and right buttons either side of OK move the playback point within the buffer (same for recording playback). The left and right skip keys under recordings and serach by default skip forward 2 min and back 15 seconds. Ideal for ad skipping.
Tuners not being used are powered down (believed to be for power saving). If you look at the signal when you are not recording then only the 1 tuner you are using is shown. This can be tuner 1 or 2 depending on what has happened before. If you start a recording then move to another channel then diagnostics will show signals for both tuners.
Low power sby reduces the sby power to less than 0.5W, turning it off uses a few more watts as it displays the clock permanently.
With signal info, from what ive read elsewhere it only displays the current active tuner so if both are in use then it will show both. Though saying that mine did show both tuners active once and the 2nd tuner wasn't being used. (no recordings & no pre-15 mins before a recording)
Going back to the rewind feature or lack of. Are you saying there is no live rewind feature as per Sky+ plus? I have a hearing problem so used this all the time on Sky as the wife is always chirping when I'm trying to watch a programme. The 15 minute live buffer was my most used feature. :rolleyes:
Glad your happy with it, you should have a live buffer though. You should be able to rewind all the way back to when you first switched to the channel or the start of the current live programme.
I believe the buffer is reset when a new programme starts !
(There is a bug with recordings not rewinding unless you fast forward first, but this doesn't affect the live buffer)
Could be wrong but I think the buffer is sized for up to 3hrs of HD content.
Thanks Gonzo, will try it later. I'm puzzled though delighted as to why the HD PQ is so much better than it ever was with my Pace Sky+ HD box? Touch wood it's hard to fault this product. I have updated the software to cure the first recording of the day issue.
Until my unit gets replaced I cannot check myself, but on page 15 of the user guide booklet it says it automatically saves 2 hours of the channel your watching.
If you believe Freesat they are supposed to be investigating this.
Unfortunately I've lost any faith I had in Freesat long ago, and that's not just with the HDR1000S
Deleted, didn't read it was about Freetime! I should learn to read properly!! :eek:
It also has a Auto mode which leads to rounds being oval (bigger the TV, the worse they look).
Automan.
There is a setting to have it stretched to fill the screen and from memory, another setting which I guess will cut off the top and bottom.
Goto picture settings and change screen ratio from Auto to Anamorphic.
However if your TV has 1:1 pixel mapping over HDMI then some 4:3 content on some channels will always show as 4:3.
You may find those black bars annoying (although I'm not sure why they're that objectionable) but tell yourself at least you are seeing the picture unsquashed, with nothing missing, and as the director intended.
Of course, it's a personal choice though and I see others here have already posted helpful advice if you are set on chopping off the top of Holmes' deerstalker :-)
I know what you are saying but these aren't the usual letterbox bars, they really are quite obtrusive.
and the other settings - how do they suit?
I have noticed the Anamorphic setting. Do you leave it on that setting as default or just for 4.3 material.
Please someone tell me that I have dreamt this.
Freesat said they were looking into it but no news yet.
Crikey, although my Sky+ box didn't have the backwards EPG for OD relying instead on iPlayer apps the usage was NIL. I never once saw my Homeplug LED's as much as flicker with Sky when I wasn't using OD content.
Can you imagine users with a 2 gig cap (according to stats I have seen that is quite a lot of folk). They will get hit for costs simply due to Freetime updating the EPG. I think Freesat should be looking at this as a matter of some urgency or at the very least put a "health warning" on the packaging.