DS Forums

 
 

Should I change from Humax to Topfield?


Reply
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Old 06-01-2011, 18:38
parthena
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: SW London, Crystal Palace Tx
Posts: 2,769
(though the phrase about polishing a turd comes to mind with a Nissan!).
How cruel My SO wubs his little Micra wot took him 2 years of driving lessons to legitimately drive

. . . . but at least Humax are providing some element of on-going technical support (even if it is still slightly flawed). With Topfield - they provide ZERO support. My own Toppy has NEVER had an OTA update (from the menu - last update: Feb 09 2007) - so that is arguably considerably more of a crime than Humax!
But, Thunder - nobody's recommending Topfield for their tech support, they're recommending a modded Toppy with support from Toppy.org.uk.

they repeatedly fail to correctly 'programme' series link (if say you set the Gadget Show to record every Monday evening at 8pm, you also get the Sunday morning repeat, and also the midweek 3am repeat - rather than just the regular Monday slot!) - on both digital terrestrial AND digital satellite - $ky-Plus users also report the same probs with Channel Five!
If we weren't too lazy to RTFM, Toppy+MyStuff can eliminate these repeat broadcasts. I just exclude them when I do my daily trawl thru the EPG.

As for the Gadget Show itself, I gave up on it when it became over-populated with presenters, silly projects, and over-priced junk.

I'm sure if a decent British quality A/V manufacturer made PVRs, you'd get a much better product out of the box, and much better support
TVonics spring to mind - recent efforts (admittedly competing on price with far-eastern stuff) have not been impressive.

Given the performance/reliability of almost all PVRs over the last 5 years (TiVo excluded because of the continued presence of heart-broken ex-owners), I can only conclude that making one for the UK market is very difficult indeed

parthena
parthena is offline   Reply With Quote
Please sign in or register to remove this advertisement.
Old 07-01-2011, 00:01
GavinK
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
Posts: 95
Sorry black_thunder, wrong link as you found ,,, try this one http://tonyspage.abock.de/#Topfield%...0modifications
GavinK is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-01-2011, 08:03
MarkPax
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 132
I think the crux of this (for both Humax and Topfield) is that they are both manufactured very cheaply, and the companies are based in the Far East - no doubt their actuall tech support is based in Korea or Taiwan, where they never actually experience our 'British' broadcast issues, and also that stuff gets lost in translation between the English-speaking chaps at Humax UK and the Korean/Taiwanese speakers back in the Far East. I'm sure if a decent British quality A/V manufacturer made PVRs, you'd get a much better product out of the box, and much better support - but you'd probably end up paying not £200ish (for a Toppy or Humax) but nearer to £2,000 for a decent product!!
I thought that too, but TVonics is British (Welsh) and uses a British-designed chipset, British hardware and British software. And they're still crap.

I think if you keep your default position as "all PVRs are crap" you will never be disappointed

And yes, Topfield haven't updated their firmware for years, but BobD updates MyStuff a couple of times a year. And he puts good, useful, new features in. He even put a feature especially for me, even though he didn't see the point of it himself. Now that's service! On the other hand, my Sagemcom and Vestel have big, fat, obvious, bugs which haven't been fixed in the last 2 software updates over perhaps 18 months....

And for me, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. I've had my Toppy for about 10 weeks now, it's recorded perhaps 500 programmes and hasn't missed anything. Its recording failure rate is <<1%. I've never had a PVR with such a low failure rate (and I've had nearly all the SD PVRs). It also plays back flawlessly unlike TVonics, Vestel. And finally its UI is fast, slick and logical, albeit complicated and difficult to learn. I didn't want to get a Toppy and hack it with MyStuff, I ended up having to do it to get my life back.

Re your Nissan analogy - I think PVRs are more like cars were in the 1970s. As soon as you bought it it started to fall apart, you needed to spend Sundays underneath it sorting out the electrics and squirting it with rustproofing. Not an ideal situation, but a fact - if you wanted to drive to work on Monday morning, you more or less had to spend Sunday afternoon fettling. Now my Toppy has had its annual squirt with MyStuff rustproofing, I am good to go.
MarkPax is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-01-2011, 18:35
parthena
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: SW London, Crystal Palace Tx
Posts: 2,769
Great post, Mark

the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
You warmed my heart - I cringe every time I see or hear "the proof is in the pudding"
parthena is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-07-2011, 12:31
whoever,hey
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Posts: 30,072
If you are are ok with installing taps then toppy is by far the most powerful SD pvr on the market.
whoever,hey is offline   Reply With Quote
 
Reply




 
Forum Jump


All times are GMT. The time now is 14:12.