Not completely useless. My old faithful Toppy is still tasked with recording and playing back radio programmes even if its SD picture over SCART is behind the curve now and no need to have the TV on to navigate my way around blind and play back through one of my four sound system choices.

Well the <free time> HDR will have all the promised players soon, it's already got BBCiPlayer, ITVPlayer & 4OD and Demand 5 should be available anytime between now and the end of this month.
Its got YouTube and there is also a very strong chance of Netflix being added at some stage too. Not too sure about LoveFilm, but I'm not too fussed about it.
There have been hints of other services too, but no further details at this time.

This thread is just going round in circles.

You've been told what options you have regarding tv's with integrated twin tuners and usb recording, and currently that's your only choice RIGHT NOW.

The only other option is the Humax freetime PVR, which may or may not get Netflix and other apps in future.

There's really not much else to say.

Don't read the thread if it offends you so much.

The summary seems to be that PVRs are still "promising" to run the essential apps,and yet PVRs are far more mature than Smart TVs.

I draw my own conclusions from this perpetual "jam tomorrow but never today" story that I have hearing ever since I bought the original Humax Foxsat.

Would I give my money to Humax or Echostar again based on promises (or even just rumours) of support for Netflix? No.

Some of the very top-end Panasonics now boast twin-tuner Freeview-HD and freesat-HD tuners with recording ability...

Exactly how good / usable these are is unclear to me as I haven't got one nor is the manual at all clear on the capabilities (or limitations).

http://www.panasonic.co.uk/html/en_G...929/index.html

I already told the OP about the Panny dual tuner tv's in post 6 of this thread, before it descended into farce about what smart tv's 'might' do in future over PVR's, blah, blah!

I just noticed this strange comment.

I read a lot about the Humax box (HDR, not freetime) before buying one for myself, and a lot about the Echostar box before recommending one to a relative. Never did I hear anyone say that you could get Netflix on either of them! They both had BBC iPlayer initially, and ITVplayer later.


Freesat wrote the Gen1 spec which only included MHEG interactivity, Freesat suggested catch-up services would appear, but 4oD and demand5 never created MHEG versions of their services. So you can't blame Humax or Echostar or anyone else who made Freesat Gen1 boxes for not having 4oD or demand5 on their boxes.

Let me give you a hint for a happier future: only buy something when you know that it does what you want it to do. If you are going to buy products based on random rumours that someone posts somewhere on the internet, you are going to keep wasting money and being disappointed.

Cheers,
David.

In some ways it's bit of a 'con' - ALL Freesat TV's are 'twin tuner' (a Freeview one and a Freesat one).

However, these sets have added a little more functionality, allowing display of both tuners at once, or recording from one or both.

It sounds 'about' like using a PVR with an old analogue TV, in that you have two tuners, but can't watch a third on your TV.

All in all an interesting development though.

I think not in this case... they would become triple tuner TVs in your definition as they almost have a PAL analogue tuner, too. My GT60 has three tuners in it PAL-I, DVB-T2 and DVB-S2 and Panasonic don't claim 'twin tuner' for it.

As I said the Panasonic spec and description is very limited in detail but AVForums' reviews of the TX-P55VT65B states

Since I started the thread, I will post what I wish. If you don't want to read it - DON'T.

Although this might be too late but Samsung TVs with a higher model number then 6500 all have dual tuners. They are only on 40" TVs at the moment. Yet to test/use it myself but it should be decent as it's samsung.