i know one thing, my hitachi is certainly better than the Goodmans I had for 4 days. It is a bit slow tro respond, so I have to careful when i press buttons on the remote, We will see how it goes

Take a look at this thread
http://www.digitalspy.com/forums/sho....php?t=1365683
I got some helpful advice there, namely:- the Vestels definitely slow down with longer uptime. Particularly the EPG which is dog slow after 2-3 days uptime and starts to miss keypresses big time, but also some other functions as well.
I recommend a daily reboot to get things moving fast again. I find no particular problems with missed keypresses when doing this.

Actions which are always slow however are
- when you press "OK" in the EPG to get the menu for series timers, it can sometimes take a second or two to get the menu up. This can trick you into pressing OK again, which drops you out of the EPG onto the channel you were EPG'ing. Have patience!
- starting playback of a recording from the library, this can take 5 seconds or so
- deleting a recording from the library (this will get even slower when you upgrade to V3.4, it can take up to about 10 seconds)
- setting a series timer, this can take 15 seconds, but I've not seen a box which does it faster, lots of thinking involved

Cheers for the info.
The other thing I noticed is the search is so slow and the remote response is slow when it is in search mode.
My old TUTV used to be real slow at deleting stuff, after the last update it speeded up.

I will get used to this box.

i did try yesterday to by pass the loop though by adding a splitter, but the signal is not strong enough and it affects my T.V, so I can't put the box in low power mode. I never realised our digital signal was so bad here.

Searching on the Vestel's has always been excruciatingly slow it seems.

Slow deleting seems to a feature of all the boxes (including the new HD ones) that use Linux filesystems.

Series linking can take a few seconds as the recorder needs to search through the EPG for any following episodes.

At least it's got a search mode (my Sagem hasn't). I thought it was a gimmick but find it surprisingly useful. Slow, but useful. Also the way you can find one episode, series link it from the search list and watch all the episodes in the list go red is a secret delight to me

The slow delete in V3.4 is a feature, it writes a list of programmes you've watched and deleted, stops the box recording it again eg later in the week (if I understood correctly). So kind of useful, again if slow.

The EPG search function is also the cause of various glitches and problems (stretching back to the T816 days) which is why I hardly ever use it. The most infamous issue being the video/sound on live tv freezing completely or "phantom channel changes", which can be resolved temporarily by changing channel or permanently by switching to standby (low power mode not required). If you happened to be recording at this time too, you'll end up with huge chunks missing and/or a recording which has mysteriously changed channel midway through. This problem still happened on the T835, although it has maybe been fixed by now. The moral of this story is to ensure you switch off/on after you have finished searching to avoid problems.

Although I can't back this theory up, but I'm convinced the general procedure of searching EPG is what causes the box and EPG to slow down as uptime increases. Not necessarily just manual searches, but obviously the box is frequently searching the EPG in the background 24/7 to update timers. To me this indicates a fundamental problem with the search routines.

Oh yes it has. Timer list, yellow button (yes odd place to put it. The HD boxes put it on the EPG where it belongs). Search for genre or title. Will return titles containing your search string.

Jeez, that about sums up Sagem's UI. Put the search box on a screen you should never ever need to look at. Diabolical. I think the whole UI is some kind of subtle French joke on us rosbifs. Like having a dedicated EPG button.... which does something different on the Recordings List screen. etc etc. Pah.

Thanks for the tip anyhow.

I liked the search option on my Humax, i was surprised when it was not on the Thomson. the one on the Thomsom TUTV box was horrid, you had to move quick otherwise the box would just start searching before you got all the word in you want to search.

The Hitachi Search is ok, even if it is a bit slow.



it is not that slow, it is faster than the TUTV box used to be before they updated it.


That is not too bad.

I know one thing , I realised a couple of days back how weak the signal is here, I tried to by pass the loop with a splitter and it knocked my t.v out. so I had to go back to using the loop though.

I think I will have to take the RF lead from the DVD recorder, I won't be able to use the internal tuner in the next few months anyway.

i looked at a Sagem or sagemcom as they are called now, but I remember the Sagem freeview box a mate of mine had, and the problems he had with that and that was just a bog standard box.

If I had the money i would have gone for something better, but I got more things to do with my money, like build a new computer, get bathroom decorated, sort out the carpet on the stairs.


So it is going to be even slower when it updates? oh dear.