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decision time
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[Deleted User]
Posts: 17 Forum Member
going to get a PVR this afternoon.hopefully:eek:
Narrowed it down to 4 , which is the better choice.
1.Topfield Turbosat 5810 @ £199
2. Humax 9300T @ 153
3.Sagemcom DTR 67500T @ £160
4.sagemcom DTR 94250 HD @ £180
fire away folks:D
Narrowed it down to 4 , which is the better choice.
1.Topfield Turbosat 5810 @ £199
2. Humax 9300T @ 153
3.Sagemcom DTR 67500T @ £160
4.sagemcom DTR 94250 HD @ £180
fire away folks:D
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im coming from sky hd , refuse to pay £60+ a month .set a budget of £200 max and want something with reasonable spec and ease of use. reading reviews there doesnt appear to be a totally reliable one at any price.
and i dont want freesat.
Are you aware:
mmm,not wonderful news for any really , much as i expected.
maybe just have to keep the in built freeview in the telly and whats left for nowt on the skybox and forget recording stuff til a better solution appears.
Comparing it to what has gone before, is like comparing chalk and cheese.
I was dithering over the older Humax boxes and some of the cheaper other brand modern boxes. All of them had ropey performance, and in the end I could not justify buying a box that was almost okay.
#4 is a Freesat HD box, which is fine if you intend hooking it up to your dish, but you need 2 feeds. The Freeview+ HD equivalent is the RTi90-xxx.
Sagemcom has unreliable series record as follows:-
- max of 30 series timers, not enough nearly enough
- deletes the series timers willy nilly, particularly if it can't find the next episode in the series
- misses about 1% of recordings for no apparent reason
- overruns on about 2% of recordings, gives the programme the name of the following programme, very confusing.
and when it comes out of standby it has no EPG so (a) you can't set up recordings and (b) the disk rattles and thrashes for 5 minutes or so
I don't have much experience with the Humax. The Topfield with MyStuff installed blows the doors off any other PVR (I have tried a few) if you are enough of a geek to get through the installation & learning curve. Topfield without MyStuff I hear is a bit meh, possibly no better than the competition.
I heard Tesco was selling Grade A used Humaxes for £80. A good deal. Sometimes Turbosat sells Grade A Topfield TF5800s on ebay for £75, a bargain IMHO.
I also hear good things about the DigitalStream HD recorders, but I have no experience.
Having had a Digitalstream HDR8205 since October I can vouch for it
Never had a problem, records everything, never locks up, menus and EPG work correctly and Dolby Digital 5.1 via the optical output which, even now, only a few HD receivers and recorders can do. And at £199 at John Lewis it's a bit of a bargain at the moment considering a decent brand standard definition PVR will still cost you around the same. MIT London are also very good at support, adding fixes and features that get requested in each update. And unlike some other manufacturers, the two updates applied since I bought the machine haven't broken anything else (3View, Philips/Pace and Fetch take note).
As for getting recordings on to a PC, it is possible (with SD recordings) by plugging in an external HDD and copying the files to it. However the drive will be formatted using the Linux XFS filesystem so you will need to boot into Linux to copy the files to the PC. HD recordings can also be copied but they cannot be viewed on anything other than the DS though as they are encrypted.
If I only wanted an SD PVR though, it would be one of the Topfield refurbished models that Turbosat sometimes have available.
How about Thomson DTI6300 refurb for £40?
http://www.radioandtelly.co.uk/topuptvboxes.html
Now that's what I call cheap
Could be, but the only make worth considering now would be Panasonic.
Sony's range used to be very good when they were made by Pioneer, but Sony's later models are made by Samsung and don't get great user reviews. Neither do the LG and Samsung models available.
However even the Panasonics (which do generally get great user feedback) have some issues to be aware of, such as a bloody great advert in the EPG that takes up the left third of the screen, and compared to a standard PVR, they are expensive. The advertising may not bother you, but it would certainly bother me especially for what is a premium product.
damn , was thinking samsung / lg...had no issues with any of their products before
Neither have I, however from reading some of the reviews of their DVD/HDD recorders I would probably go for one of the Panasonics if I was after one.
From what people say the LG/Samsung models just seem to have issues with speed of response to the remote, lack of features etc. All issues that you might find acceptable but many wont, these things can be a bit subjective I suppose.
Not a bad buy at £40 however, they are now £79.99 for the 160Gb version on TopUpTV's website.