Yep; it's a little confusing to say it can't record in standby - makes people think you have to leave it on 24 hours a day.
It's more accurate to say that Toppy will not remain in standby when a scheduled recording starts - it powers up exactly as if you had turned it on to watch TV, and then powers down afterwards. So you can, of course, put it in standby and go off to work, or bed, or on holiday, and recordings will still happen.
The important difference is that, because there is no difference between normal operation and the operation during a scheduled recording, the signalling on the SCART socket is exactly the same, and so if you use an automatic switch, or a TV that switches automatically, then the Topfield will be selected when the recording starts. In the most extreme case, if you have a TV that turns itself on when it detects activity on the SCART, then that will happen too.
I'm not sure who originally coined this "record in standby" term. Of course no PVR actually records in standby, which is a low power mode where nothing much is done. But many do keep their AV outputs disabled if the reason for starting up from standby is a scheduled recording.
It would be more accurate, I think, to ask not "can it record in standby?", which everything can (bar some old VCRs, which had a timer mode you had to put them in), but "are the AV outputs active when waking for a scheduled recording?"
More wordy, but a far more accurate representation of what is actually meant.
Nigel.
That can severely restrict the number of gadgets you can connect, and how you connect them.
