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How fast is MyStuff?
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More Toppy questions from a potential owner.... I put them in a separate thread, not sure if right thing to do
Background:-
My Sagem's EPG is dog slow. It takes 1-2 seconds for a D-pad press to move the cursor. There are no page up/down/left/right keys. This makes it agony to move though the EPG. Then it takes 30 seconds for it to set a series timer. So it can easily take 1 minute or more to move to a programme and set it to record. Painful. But the Sagem's recording list/library is fast
My Vestel has a fast EPG, but the recordings list/library is very slow. It take 5-10 seconds for the library to appear after I press the key (I think it has to load from disk), and scrolling through it is slow. Deleting a programme takes 10-15 seconds, sometimes more.
If I get a Toppy with MyStuff will I get the best of both worlds, or the worst?
How fast does the cursor move through the EPG? As fast as you can press buttons on the remote? Or Sagem speed? If I asked the cursor to move from eg 1900 to 2200 and down 10 channels, that's perhaps 15 keypresses. Are we talking 5 seconds (Vestel) or 20+ (Sagem)? Then if I set a series timer, how long to wait for it to think?
Ditto with the recordings list/library. The process is: get the recordings list up > scroll through recordings list > press play > watch > press stop > wait for recordings list to re-appear > delete the recording. With my Vestel there are lots of long awkward pauses in this process. Is MyStuff fast & slick like my Sagem?
A final unrelated question. Is MyStuff reliable at recording? My Sagem misses or damages ~1% of recordings, my Vestel is better, perhaps 0.5%. At 50 recordings a week the Sagem is not brilliant. Any views on MyStuff?
cheers now and thanks for any help.
Background:-
My Sagem's EPG is dog slow. It takes 1-2 seconds for a D-pad press to move the cursor. There are no page up/down/left/right keys. This makes it agony to move though the EPG. Then it takes 30 seconds for it to set a series timer. So it can easily take 1 minute or more to move to a programme and set it to record. Painful. But the Sagem's recording list/library is fast
My Vestel has a fast EPG, but the recordings list/library is very slow. It take 5-10 seconds for the library to appear after I press the key (I think it has to load from disk), and scrolling through it is slow. Deleting a programme takes 10-15 seconds, sometimes more.
If I get a Toppy with MyStuff will I get the best of both worlds, or the worst?
How fast does the cursor move through the EPG? As fast as you can press buttons on the remote? Or Sagem speed? If I asked the cursor to move from eg 1900 to 2200 and down 10 channels, that's perhaps 15 keypresses. Are we talking 5 seconds (Vestel) or 20+ (Sagem)? Then if I set a series timer, how long to wait for it to think?
Ditto with the recordings list/library. The process is: get the recordings list up > scroll through recordings list > press play > watch > press stop > wait for recordings list to re-appear > delete the recording. With my Vestel there are lots of long awkward pauses in this process. Is MyStuff fast & slick like my Sagem?
A final unrelated question. Is MyStuff reliable at recording? My Sagem misses or damages ~1% of recordings, my Vestel is better, perhaps 0.5%. At 50 recordings a week the Sagem is not brilliant. Any views on MyStuff?
cheers now and thanks for any help.
0
Comments
I have MyStuff V6.1 loaded on a couple of TF5800t and its fast... well as fast as you can press the buttons on the remote!
To record a program select from the EPG - either Grid or List.....Mystuff lets you decided which or both and which will appear first on pressing the "Guide key". Then Mystuff asks if you want to just record that single program or series - up/down to your choice and press OK.... recording set! All the details are in the Mystuff manual...... http://www.toppy.org.uk/~chunkywizard/
As for reliability mine has never missed a recording that I have set. The series links that I have set I have found to be accurate also.
V6.2 was released some months back and as part of the Mystuff package you needed the SDS TAP. Some reports on the Toopy forum that there were problems, so I stayed with V6.1
However V6.3 is I believe expected shortly. . . .. no sure what that will offer.
I hope my post has been of use
When you're setting a recording in the EPG (I never set recordings any other way), when you press the record button Toppy will ask you if you want to set a single record or series (I can't remember the words) and you'll have to wait while it searches for conflicts or series links. You'll see a symbol squirling while it sorts itself out.
But as for navigating EPG, library, etc - lightning fast.
Also, no matter how many series you set to record, it never seems to stress Toppy - not like my Vestels (and I adore Vestels in many ways), which creak and groan if more than a couple of series links are set.
You have to own a Toppy and put MyStuff on it and have a play around - it seems complicated, and of course the remote buttons, many of them, are no longer intuitive, but it is SO reliable and such a smooth operator, and the picture on my 720p plasma is almost HD with decent transmissions...
I'd highly recommend one. Oh! and you've got Toppy.org.uk to support you, they are very amenable.
parthena
http://www.supaprice.co.uk/p/result.jsp?q=topfield+tf5800
Mystuff can have many more than 40. All it does, is to copy the next 40 pending events into the Toppy's 40-event memory where the Toppy will act upon them.
TF5800 on order.
I figure the only way to find out what it does is to get one. My Sagem drives me mad, my Vestel is OK-ish but stutters on playback. I am still looking for the box which records and plays back reliably.
My OH just thinks I will end up with 3 boxes none of which does what I want. (she's probably right, but for £75 and some geeky box hacking MyStuff sounds like fun)
Welcome to the exciting world of TAPs and Patches!
Just remember: Before you rush to connect your Toppy via USB to your PC you will need to have loaded the correct USB driver on your PC.
I used to own one with Mystuff 6.2 loaded and it is certainly a very powerful and reliable bit of kit.
However, in the interests of balance, it had a couple of issues that I couldn't put up with and it had to go.
Firstly, the Topfield has a very annoying habit of (frequently) ignoring a remote-command. The command is sent and received (confirmed by the light on the front panel flicking on), but nothing happens.
This can happen a couple of times before the Topfield reacts and in use, mine got worse.
This is a definite problem/bug but no-one over on the otherwise excellent Toppy Forum will even acknowledge its existence!:D
Secondly, the teletext loading time is painfully slow and on many occasions will lock the box up.
Funny enough, I have just bought a Sagem and am very pleased with it. Moving around the EPG may be slower than a Topfield, but at least every remote command is recognised and acted upon!
It just proves that us humans are fickle and all have different likes and dislikes. No PVR will ever be perfect for everyone.
Hope you like your Topfield
Funnily enough, mine has been doing that too - I assumed the batteries were due for a change but couldn't reconcile the front panel light acknowledgement
Can't comment on Teletext, don't use it.
parthena
At best, a command was acted on as normal. At worse, it would take three or four presses on the remote before anything happened. If this was an occasional issue I could have lived with it, but it happened far too often and seemed to get worse the longer the Topfield was on.
A shame really, as it ruins a very good PVR and it is not something that I would have expected on a quality product!
There may be a clue in that comment-Perhaps it is over-engineered?:)
I have the interactive turned off as default in the native Toppy then with the MHEG lite TAP activate it as and when I require. Which is really good as you don't get that annoying "press RED" or Blue menu option on 301
However I don't use the MHEG that much as I use the Toppy as a PVR and not as my prime device for watching live TV, but when I have activated the MHEG feature I can't recall it ever crashing my Toppy.
This link discusses the MHEG on a Toppy http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Topfield_5800/Stable_Toppy
MyStuff v6.3 brings improvements to speed over v6.2 and previous.
Well, a rather late reply but I agree this is by far the worst and buggy problem with the Topfield. It is rather annoying just like when scanning the EPG it does not always highlight the current program but rather the one that has just been shown.
I wonder if the HD being to full has a bearing on it's response time as I notice the more full it gets especially to the last few GB (yes, mine gets that full!) the more it plays up.
I also think, something I could easily try, that the remote batteries health could have a bearing on this annoying problem, you either send a good healthy signal to the Toppy or a poor weak one. Removing the batteries and rotating them a few times often kicks it into action.
MyStuff is a superb thing that does everything you could ever want, but the underplaying firmware and hardware lets it down, annoyingly often.
If it died tomorrow I wouldn't buy another. MyStuff is the saving grace for the hardware. Otherwise it would have found itself in the bin by now.
MyStuff is certainly a very popular tap which I use too & I have to agree the standard Toppy EPG is poor, to me in a way that it does not allow enough channels in one view & it's stupid default of single channel view, however, it does offer quite a bit of technical info once a channel is selected something that MyStuff does not do.
I think the support for firmware has been very good indeed. The only drawback, it has not dealt with the problems I mentioned. Ok there has not been update after update but that's only because it was a good stable design in the first place! I'd rather have something that starts out on the right foot rather than buy something that has numerous problems and bugs and hope that updates come out to cure these problems.... this is seen by many as good support but really it's a product that has been rushed to market without sufficient testing and/or care.
MyStuff is not everything as some taps offer different ways of using your Toppy they just are not so comprehensive.
I wonder what you would choose over your Toppy if it died?
There already..... was necessary to reload MyStuff when our area a few weeks ago was selected for DSO. Went from 6.1 to 6.4. 6.1 kept moaning about duplicated channels and after a while just refused to work!
I find the Channel Organiser TAP invaluable for retunes. It deletes all the dupes automatically and makes it easy to get rid of all the garbage channels in one go. The less channels you have tuned, the better the Topfield will work.
Have a look here: http://forum.toppy.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15218
The PC programme SnapShot is also useful for putting everything back if it fails to restart or wipes the disc, and the "emptysettings.tfd" will get you out of the one where it thinks its had a firmware update and corrupts the settings.
I definitely would if I could. Even though I don't make the most of my Toppy, mainly because I don't make time to get my head around the MyStuff manual, it's still invaluable and very reliable. And since I accidentally discovered skins my GUI is delightful
I don't suppose anyone here would tell me how to adjust the time-out for the screensaver activating? That was another accidental discovery, and now I can't pause for more than a couple of seconds without getting pingpong balls masking the info I want to study. I remember doing a rescan and seeing this huge list of options appear at the end of it, but I cannot find them now
parthena
Yes, great feature. I made my very own look rather than using others. Sadly tho' what looked good on my PC monitor did not quite relate to same on TV screen
Tis easy
The operation is:-
Press "Guide" to show the MyStuff EPG.
Press "Menu" the MyStuff EPG will dissapear & a load of MyStuff options will appear.
Use the FF/RR buttons to page through the options until you come to the Screensaver section and then select Option "S3 - Screensaver delay" using the up/down buttons. Change to your desired time out by pressing the Back/Fwd buttons.
parthena