I see that Maplin are offering a Free Satelite PVR, twin tuner, 350gb for £179.99.
See link -
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?moduleno=229148

Whilst this is not a "proper" Freesat box, it shows the way the market is going.

DTT receivers were hundreds of pounds when they first came on the market, but can be had for under one hundred pounds now (£75 at ASDA).

They also do an HD Sat box with USB PVR for £129.99.

Rather than accept the buggy Freesat offerings available for £279 now, I will be waiting till I can buy a "Finished" Freesat PVR for under £150. How long do you think I will have to wait?

I take it you're very young?, even so the expectancy isn't good.

Young enough to have bought my first pocket calculator in the seventies for £80, when they first came out. The same spec now would be a fiver - or much, much less if you factor in inflation.
Young enough to remember Harrods displaying the first Flat Screen TVs at £20000. The same spec now costs £500 - £600.
You can see where this going..............

I can say with some confidence that it won't happen in the next 18 months at least, not saying in 18 months it will get that cheap, but based on the numbers I have it won't be where you want it to be inside 2010. Unless A.N Other vendor manages it... I doubt it though.

I will be extremely surprised if they have not come down to that level within five years.

Which is a much shorter wait than that for Freeview!

They'd have to be lucky enough to get approval from Freesat first

Ian, could another vendor make a box that displayed the Freesat EPG and just not all it a 'Freesat' box?

Or would the need approval to actually display the EPG?

The mechanism for receiving the Freesat EPG is copyrighted, if someone derives another mechanism to receive the EPG then they might be able to use it, but again the information contained (event descriptions) is copyright.

Plus, it would be difficult to sell a product which receives the EPG but doesn't use the name freesat. The Fortec products do receive some sort of EPG data, but they have yet (to my knowledge) to get significant volume.

That is SD only and similar have been available around Europe at similar prices for over two years - when I purchased my Targa twin tuner 250 Gb PVR as a "new" clearance item at £99 - which Lidl were selling at £199 in November 2006.

So £20 price reduction in two half years and only 70 Gb HDD size increase - a long, long way to go for twin tuner HD PVRs at £150

No series link, no HD. This is worse value than paying the extra £100 for the Humax.

Wouldnt surprise me if it was far more buggy too.

Glad the Firmware thread didn't scare you off. I knew you were made of sterner stuff!

Am I the only person worried you'd be buying a lemon of a PVR?

I'll get my coat...

hillel,

I don't worry too much, plus I currently can't read every post anyway. To be honest I also don't read every post as I used to because I would just be repeating myself. I leave it to those on here to be informed by my previous ramblings and in tern comment. I think it works for now, if I find an interesting point or see something heading in the wrong direction I might comment.

On topic:
Buy cheap, pay twice.

Bob

I bought a "cheap" Toshiba LCD rather than an "expensive" Panasonic mainly because Which? says Toshys were far more reliable.

I paid a packet for an HDR that fails to communicate correctly with anything via HDMI!

There is cheap, as in shoddy, and cheap as in low cost.

PS A tern is a bird.

Mine fails to communicate too but we will have 2 manufacturers blaming each other for it.

Hardware wise, the HDR is very, very good. Software wise, its very bad and its taken a long time to fix.

But at least it can be fixed.

It CAN, but will they?

I don't think that displaying something that is copyright that is freely broadcast would be a problem. The programmes themselves are copyright.

Well I wouldn't trust anything Which print

They aren't renowned for their accuracy, as for Toshiba vs' Panasonic, at least Panasonic make more of their own TV's - all smaller Toshiba sets are just cheap sets bought-in and badged.


Never had any problems at all with the Humax PVR, they have all worked perfectly on every set we've tried them on.

Who knows but that will sway my opinion on the product either way.

Your experience, as so often seems to be the case, would appear to be at odds with that of a lot of posters here.