Hi

I was going to put this on the end of the Argos thread as there is lots of discussion on the vestel range, however I've put it here in it's own thread - hopefully I chose correctly.

I am seeing a few manufacture reconditioned Agora PVR250 units for sale, sub £50. Which I believe from futuara's website are the vestel T836. As there are many comments around the place saying to avoid the TUTV software for reliability reasons, does this unit have TUTV software or the more reliable C/Vestel software considering it has the CI slot fitted to enable it. The other models from other brands using the T836 have TUTV or Top Up TV in their model name which makes me think that it probably has the TUTV software.

Finally there any now available the newer vestel units which have iplayer in peoples opinions is the extra money worth paying to get the iplayer functionality. I believe the Iplayer models are £100 or more

Thanks

Bullfrog

Agora is a brand name owned by Vestel UK, by the way, in case you were unaware. Presumably you have seen these on ebay - you have to be careful because there are T835 and T836 models, and the units look very similar. The T836 model has a CI slot for a TUTV viewing card, which is located at the very right hand side of the front panel (no flap to conceal it) - the T835 models looks the same but without a CI slot (the logos may perhaps be positioned differently too). It seems to me that some sellers have these mixed up and/or are using the incorrect photos. I would personally double-check with the seller to make sure which model you are going to get - i.e. if it has a CI slot or not.

The T836 does not use TUTV software (unlike the older T845), but the viewing card slot allows the subscription based channels to be viewed. The T836 uses the same familiar Vestel remote as the T835 and previous models, and not the TUTV remote that the T845 used. Actually, the T836 software has a different look to the T835 software - see http://www.topuptv.com/asset/get/8a6...20Recorder.pdf for a T836 manual, but looks fundamentally similar to the familiar Vestel software. I've not used a T836 myself, although it has had new software updates broadcast in recent months.

The T835 and T836 are the latest SD models, and the latest HD model is the T7650 - currently only available at Argos (Bush branded 320Gb model was £149 last time I checked). IPlayer works well on the T7650, but it is not HD, and I don't use iPlayer an awful lot anyway - I prefer to record from the BBC HD channels instead . HD and a more evolved, faster software front end are the main reasons I would choose a T7650 over a T835/T836.

Hi Bullfrog, i've seen these units on e-bay and almost went for one. Don't think the Agora's i seen on e-bay had TUTV. Anyway, personally i'd avoid anything with TUTV, the software is very poor, had 2 Thomson freeview TUTV boxes years ago and they were truly awful. Try a Dion 250gb pvr "re-furb" on e-bay Tesco Outlet, very basic and SD but records/works well. Around £30

I agree regarding TUTV, largely because of the software, although the T836 is not really affected by this as Vestel appear to have abandoned TUTV's software after the T845 (which was essentially the same as on the Thomson boxes), and the T836 uses an incarnation of Vestel's familiar software.

Thank you for the replies - I must admit I'm slightly more confused now than I was before making the enquiry. I should point out just in case the following appears to be getting at the posters , it isn't it's just trying to show why I'm more confused.

Futaura I had gleaned the information relating to the agora and vestel tie up from your website, the agora PVR250 being listed as a T836 model on your site,however from your post it appears that agora also do a T835 model, which I'm not seeing on your site, perhaps I'm looking in the wrong place.

If the T836 doesn't use TUTV software why would the manual for it be on the TUTV website?

Yes it was ebay I had spotted these on, thanks for the info about where the CI slot is located, at least one supplier is showing one unit in the box with the remote it will come with and a different unit in the library picture they have included in the description of the correspondin auction/sale, so the legends and logos on the front panel have swapped around in the various pictures, the descriptions make no mention of the CI slot, although one supplier does mention their unit is TUTV compatible. So I think I'll avoid all these on the basis that it could be either model that I could find myself in possesion of.

I've looked on the ebay tesco outlet and the only dion 250Gb PVR refurbished is one without a remote - very useful

The other model is a dion 500Gb at around £47, which by the looks of it could be anything. So I think I'll look elsewhere.

Anyway thanks again for all your comments at least it's given me food for thought.

Bullfrog

You must have caught my site shortly after I'd put Agora on there, which at the time was based on the information in the ebay listings which pretty much all said they had TUTV. I've updated it since then as some photos of the packaging appeared later which clearly showed two different versions (one had the TUTV logo, and one didn't), and now most of the listings do not mention TUTV. I still don't know exactly what the model numbers are. Certainly it is confusing - it doesn't help that some of the listings on ebay are using incorrect photos.

The T836 was, IIRC, the only box available that carried any TUTV branding, and I think they publicised it somewhat - I remember the Argos catalogue had at least one page dedicated to TUTV and the Bush branded models were listed there. I mean, after the Thomson and Vestel T845 ceased production, the T836 was the most recent after that to have any kind of TUTV features. If you look at http://www.topuptv.com/help+centre/downloads you will see the manual for boxes running TUTV's own software, and you'll see it is very different to the T836's software which is clearly extremely similar to the T835 and before. I suppose they have the T836 PDF on their site because of this and that there is nowhere else to find it. It may well have been TUTV who commissioned the T836 as they must have been desperate to get some TUTV hardware available for sale because at the time there was nothing - might have been a joint effort between TUTV and Argos.

Hi Futaura

Thanks for the update, mid site update is most likely the cause. Some of the ebay auctions are showing packaging and the packaging isn't showing anything relating to TUTV so I suspect these are the T835s.

Your site shows a lot of useful information so thank you for that. I have some idea of the difficulties associated with keeping information up to date, especially when it isn't obvious or freely available, having attempted to run the website for the pace twin freeview recorder.

Out of interest do you know if the vestel software based on GPL software or is it all closed source? I seem to remember seeing something about an unofficial update for one of the units somewhere. Anyway This is an only an out of interest question if you happen to know so don't be reading too much into it.

Thanks again to everyone for your help

Bullfrog

Not sure about GPL, but it most likely does use free non-GPL libraries like zlib, for example. The T7650 software has an "About" screen which shows all the license texts of various libraries that it uses that strictly speaking should be included in the software or documentation. Certainly a large chunk of the software will be proprietary, some by Vestel/Cabot and some will be library/chipset code which STMicroelectronics (and Broadcom for the HD models) will have supplied under license. It is highly unlikely that any of that source code would be made available publically.

I guess you're thinking about the T810 model, where there was an unofficial v1.0 twin record software released, which ultimately was the forerunner to the T816 model. It was never released by OAD, but this file would have come from within Cabot, Vestel or Vestel UK, I'm sure. I remember being told about this feature being worked upon in late 2006, but I saw it on a T816 instead before the T810 software came to light. Possibly the main reason why it was never released officially was because the T810 did not have enough DRAM to cope with it properly, which is largely the main hardware difference between the T810 and T816.