Yesterday (Monday 28 June 2010) was a very sad day for all the remaining users of the Thomson DHD4000 PVR, as it marked the moment when it became apparent that the useful life of this iconic box was about to end.

A few days earlier, some of us had noticed that the EPG was not being updated, and that the last day of data was 7th July. As in previous instances of failures, InView were advised of the "problem", but on Monday they replied to say that they were no longer in a position to provide the service. Since then, they seem to have decided not to respond to communications and little more has been heard, except secondhand via a DS FM (Marcdavis) on the Digifusion forum here.

It now seems that, in common with other boxes which use the 14 day EPG, the DHD4000 will cease to have much of a useful function as of 8th July, unless users are prepared to program them the hard way in conjunction with a separate programme listing magazine or web site.

I have had a DHD4000 since their earliest days, about March 2005, and it has served me very well in its totally unmodified form (just the two software upgrades) despite the problems that some users have reported, particularly with the power supply, and I will be very sad no longer to have it available.

I thought it might be an idea to start a new thread on this important subject with a more meaningful title.

The response from InView read:

"Thank you for your email. Unfortunately we are discontinuing the service as we are no longer able to have access to the delivery method that has been available until now.

I know that this is not good news for you so I can only deeply apologise for your loss of service in advance. Your box should otherwise operate normally and have the now and next option"

A real shame. It's such a great box. Mine's been in continuous use since May 2004. (Repairs and upgrades notwithstanding). I was going to fit a 2.5" drive in time for the Sandy Heath DSO next April.

Will probably use it ad hoc with now and next and review after Christmas.

If, by a chance in a million, the developers put a Freeview EPG trap door in - now is the time to speak!

With the full EPG always available, I have never noticed a "now and next". Is it actually there?

When the box was brand new, first plugged in - without any EPG, it just has now and next. From what I recall (we'll all know soon enough!) you could access it like the EPG too.

So very sad and so unnecessary to kill stuff off like this. I remember when the DHD4000 came out someone from my work spoke to the developers and they were all for producing the best box out there, taking the best features from other PVR's. Then it just died a death. We got a software update to fix some bugs, give chase play, and that was it. End of. Shame rather than spending money contracting someone to produce EPG they didn't just make it use the Freeview one.

That's it exactly. Looks and works the same as the EPG but has only the current and next programs in it. Calendar will be empty of course.

When I last swapped out the disk (upgraded one started to die so I went back to the original 40Gb one) I set some manual recordings into the future and it did not substitute the program info from the EPG when the recording was made. However, on weekly recordings it does substitute the prog info from the EPG. Be interesting to see if a weekly manual recording will sub the now / next prog info.

This is all a bit unreal, talking about the demise of something which is perfectly serviceable. I understand something could go faulty after this period and you wouldn't have a leg to stand on but these things are being made to break on this date.

It's as though the oil companies decide to stop refining petrol or the electricity companies decide to change mains voltage, and not tell anyone...

I moved onto Topfield and it works for me, but my parents would in no way be able to cope with the complexity of mystuff and the stock EPG is utterly awful. Guess they've only got a week to find a replacement too!

I tried to get one of the last Topfield 5800s today, but no joy. Am considering my options, go for it and get a 5810 at around £200 or try out one of the Sagem or Humax beasts.

I notice Inview have posted on the Digifusion topic.

I've nursed this box through software and hardware issues for over 6 years now, having bought from the first consignment Unbeatable got. It's a quasi-hobby. I'll still use it for now at least.

Turbosat have 5810s' for £80 with no HDD in. I bought one and put a SATA-IDE adaptor and a small 2.5" laptop drive in, it's been solid as a rock (in spite of what you read on toppy.org.uk about 5810's). You could even put the 5400rpm iDE DHD4000 drive in ...

Probably prefer the 5810 as it's got the nicer display on it but not much to chose between them. The 5800 remote is nicer. But you get used to anything.

I take that back following an email I had earlier and InView's posting in Digifusion.

Ah what a shame - I half wish I'd read this yesterday before I splashed out on a BR player!

Now, if they won't support us, maybe they'll let us have the source code and let us know how we can flash the box offline...

DH2

Just thinking about a possible way to keep the old DHD4000 going, for any techy enthusiasts out there. Would it be feasible to write a PC app that captures schedule data (either from the Freeview EPG using a TV card, or from the web), then, when a programme is chosen, sends the necessary remote keypresses to program the DHD4000 using a USB infra-red transmitter?

Not much good for me as the PC's upstairs and the Thomson's downstairs, but it's just a thought!

Yes, this forced obsolescence of a working product is a great shame and is a shining example of what happens when companies no longer have a financial incentive to keep a service going. Had the DHD4000 used an industry standard EPG, then of course this wouldn't have happened. I always knew they would pull the plug eventually and to be fair, this has been out of production for years, so it's not like we were abandoned at the first opportunity. How many of these machines are still working anyway, I wonder? Mine has only been reliable, because I operate it without the top cover (exposing high voltages from the PSU) and have it sat on a high shelf, away from prying fingers. Run them with their cover on and in the enclosed space under a TV and the extreme heat takes them to an early death.

The DHD has some incredibly annoying glitches (cue/review for instance) but in other ways it shines - ironically enough the soon-to-be-useless EPG of all things.

I'm curious why those Topfield 5810s are going for so cheap. I take it they're discontinued? Have Topfield stopped making DVRs?

I'm not sure why the 5810's are being knocked out cheaply (if you mean the diskless £79 ones direct from turbosat). I bought a 5800 when the DHD4000 HDD gave up the ghost for the second time and IDE 5400rpms were almost impossible to obtain. It was very good, with mystuff loaded, and has been reliable.

In some ways compared to the DHD4000 it was quicker, but in some ways slower, with idiosyncrasies like timer events would take control of the TV, and powering off during timer would cancel the recording in progress. But I got used to them because overall the thing is very powerful.

The 5810's came along and I got one to play with, added a SATA to IDE adaptor which I already had, and a 2.5" 5400rpm hard drive (again already had). It's about the same as the 5800, with a clearer picture, much better display, probably about the same speed. I was going to give it to my parents but I quite like it so I hung onto it

They both suffer from ignoring the remote control when they want to, something the DHD4000 only ever did when it was about to hang ...

Over on the toppy forums there are one, maybe two, serious critics of the 5810. It's known to have less memory and a poorer, less logical remote control, but I quite like it.

As for software, there hasn't been any for either model for a long time from the manufacturer, but mystuff and other TAPs are regularly updated and bring the box from being a plain, rather expensive PVR to one of the best. It only seems to be limited by the programmers imagination.

The 5810s are still retailing at over £200, it is the end of line 5800s which are being sold off.

I just wish I hadn't bothered recapping one of mine a month ago... Still, they've been great machines, and one of them will continue in service providing Freeview to an analogue CRT, as well as emergency recording capability. The other can go and live in the loft, home to so much obsolete technology.

I'd love to know how many machines using the Inview EPG are out there, with the owners blissfully unaware of their impending demise (although few can have failed to notice some divergence from reality during the World Cup)...

I like I how you thinking. App could maybe program a macro on a JP1 remote, or use an IrDA port to send remote signals.

I'm still wondering about some form of reverse engineering. The first thing would be to understand the format of the .EPG files that get written after the download. Can't remember if anyone's looked at this in the past.

EDIT: found this Digifusion thread: Manually updating EPG

Another thread pointed me to ebuyer where there is a Luxor twin tuner 320GB for £55 - also tin 80GB A-grade at £40 - I might go that way until twin HDs come down in price - though I'm tempted by Tescos new one at £200.

Hi Priddy,

Nice to see you are still around.

cheers

Albert

Tempted me so much I picked one up yesterday evening. I've just started my one week period of parallel running with the DHD4000...

I'm fairly impressed so far. I haven't registered with Fetch TV so I can't try out the BBC iplayer yet, and I've yet to try streaming stuff from my PC. But I did connect it to my router, and it soon offered me an update to the latest software, which went quickly and smoothly. The setup process pretty much insisted on an Internet connection (either through Wi-Fi or Ethernet), and I'm not even sure whether you could proceed to the point of tuning in stations without it. I suspect this explains why, when I collected my machine, the women at the collection point told me that she'd had one returned by a man who "didn't realise you needed to have Sky to use it").

It always takes a while to adapt to a new interface (and there is supposedly a much better one due out in a few months), but it does the job perfectly well.

Things I very much like:

I can connect to it from a web browser on a PC and view my recordings (or archive them) from there. Despite there being two USB ports (one on the back, one on the front), I suspect they may not get much use.

Things I miss over the DHD4000:

Trick play isn't as smooth. I liked the powers-of-2 approach. This goes straight to 5x, then 10x, 100x and 600x. And it seems to skip frames. Also, there is no frame advance.

As far as I can tell, there is no way of bookmarking a scene. I haven't checked if there's a way of resuming viewing a recording at the point where you left off.

Things which are strangely different:

If you have been watching a channel for a while, and then belatedly decide to record a programme half-way through, pressing the record button will only record from the point where you hit the button, up until the end. The Thomson would record the programme from the start (assuming the buffer went back that far). HOWEVER, the buffer on this thing seems to have no set limit. You can wind back indefinitely. And if you do this to the start of the programme, or the one before, or the one before that - then you can record the whole thing! So overall, this is much more useful.

A cautious recommendation, based on my experience so far.

See Amazon are still selling Invertos. I think these use the same EPG? Be a bit miffed if you'd only just bought one (I'm miffed as it is and I bought my DHD4000 in 2004!).

Turbosat have been knocking out diskless 5810's for a while for £80 - see here.

Ideal candidate for the old disk out of a DHD4000 I'd say ...

Interesting. Does the Toppy show the program synopsis in the recorded programs list? Does it have modulated output?

Back on the DHD4000 front, has anyone ever tried running it without a disk connected? ie. does it work as a STB in this case. Never tried this myself despite having it in bits periodically. Line of thought: post DSO disconnect disk so it still works as STB with modulated output.

Both 5800 and 5810 (with mystuff) show the synopsis in the list. They may do it "native" also but it's been so long ... I believe the synopsis is stored in the .rec file which is a transport stream with a Topfield header.

The 5810 does not have a modulator output (but it does have HDMI). The 5800 does have a modulator output.

I bought one a while back and fitted this IDE-SATA bridge plus 2.5" WD laptop drive (these had been earmarked for the DHD4000 but performed badly in it). Works fine on the TF5810. I had intended to give it to my parents but I liked it too much

For what it's worth this was the best dvr on the planet , or failing that the UK's best.

Prior to owning the dhd4000 i had a tevion pvr which although released some 2 years after the thomson was lacking in features the thomson had (the thomson was future proofed) , like no buffering by default.

within the 1st year i had returned the tevion to aldi and got my £89.99 back and in nov 09 i bought the 4000 on ebay £20 , initially it seemed prone to signal related mishaps like losing the picture , but after the winter passed and i moved it upstairs it has been excellent and a few months ago i fitted a new hdd (160gb) which has also been a workhorse.

However this failing to ensure that epg data can be sourced is sour milk , and as of yesterday morning i am getting no data at all ( all it says is no prog info avail) which also affects the flow from channel to channel!!!!!