Great table - thanks. Unfortunately I can't support the 1 for reliability though.

Mine arrived on Friday. Today I hit major problems - Humax reckon I've got some bad sectors on the disk. When I power on, I get asked if I want to format the hard drive. If I say no, it powers up but I have no record capability. The Record option has disappeared from the menu and the Play List button fails to display my recordings.

Humax support has been excellent, and so has Martin Dawes, who sold it to me for £208 delivered. They are despatching a new one tomorrow to arrive the day after. The old one will be collected at the same time.

Other points on the table:

(1) Timer recording does not switch TV to PVR input. Good.
(2) Cannot mark recordings for auto-delete when space low
(3) The layout of the remote is ok except that most of the buttons under the slider are needed quite frequently. The slider is very vulnerable when open. It can be removed, but then the remote is uncomfortable to hold. I'd give it a 3.
(4) It needs to be pointed fairly directly at the box - 3.
(5) Support has been great so far, by email and phone - 1.

New Technosonic PVR101 for the table
Availability: Dec 15th 2005
Average Street Price: £99
Hard Drive Size: 80Gb
Record 1 + watch another = Y
Pause live TV = Y
Chaseplay/Time slip - Y (well it says timeshift)
EPG - Y
MHEG - Y
SCARTs - 2

the rest of the information will need to wait until next week!

I wonder if it will record analogue as well (since the tuners must be in there), as I do not always get ITV and C4 reliably with DTT.

Not a hope - to record analogue you need additional MPEG encoding silicon and to pay the MPEG consortium a royalty. The only PVR that ha ever offered this so far was the Tivo (and of course all DVDRs offer it too)

Cliff

The information posted by StuartB is rather mysterious. He doesn't actually say it is a DTT PVR?

Colin

Colin,

The machine he's alluding to is this one:

http://forum.digitalspy.co.uk/board/...d.php?t=313119

From the other spec. details in that thread (such as "digital red button") it seems that it IS digital

Cliff

Thanks for that Cliff. I now see why information is limited. I have been to busy on other things to catch up with new threads on the PVR Forum.

Colin

I assumed that would be taken as read, bearing in mind the thread I posted this to!

Also to add, Record 2 - Y
Sold by: Aldi

I never assume anything from what I read on here . Well I do but that is what gets me into trouble. It just seemed too cheap for a twin tuner 80 GB PVR, but now we know it is from Aldi it's not un-believeable.

Colin

Why not a hope? The Lidl 160Gb HDD/DVDR (£150) manages to squeeze in 80Gb more and a DVD recorder, only sacrificing the DTT twin tuners, and pay the MPEG circuitry and royalty. Surely one of the DTT PVRs could have included this functionality especially given the price some of them are!

Anyway I'm thinking a Dual DVDR at £69 from ASDA plus one of these Technosonic PVRs would be a killer combination for the price; you have to pay more than twice the price to get the convenience of the all in one box Sony solution. (Until Lidl/Aldi come up with their own all-in-one)

Ah but does it?!? The reason "supermarket" DVDR recorders are ~£100 while quality Japanese are ~£150 is in part because the Japanese use better quality components (and admittedly want to make more than $1/unit profit!) but it's also because the Japanese DO pay the MPEG royalties while a lot of Taiwanese/Chinese back street manufacturers, to cut costs to the bone, do not. However what they do do is put aside a contingency for legal fees in case they are sued for non-payment of royalties on the basis that it's much cheaper to have a legal battle than actually pay.

I don't think European PVR manufacturers could get away with this cavalier attitude.

Cliff
(who works for a European PVR manufacturer)

Are you assuming the Technosonic is a European/Japanese PVR at that price? If not then surely there is an equivalent likelihood that they could avoid MPEG royalties to that of a non-Euro/Japanese DVDR, and the "no hope" quote earlier in the thread is still not valid.
Anyway where would a European supermarket stand if it was knowingly selling equipment which was avoiding royalty payments? Could it get away with this cavalier attitude?

Oh but they DO! Most of those sub-£100 machines will fall into that category.

Cliff

Current adverts for ALDI offer an 80Gb twin tuner PVR with Freeview for only £99.99. The accompanying photo has a caption "Technosonic" - is this a rebadged version of some other model? It seems good value for money.

Sorry about last post - didn't realise I wasn't on the last page of the forum

See the following thread:-

http://forum.digitalspy.co.uk/board/...d.php?t=313119

Colin

Do any of the Freeview PVRs have the equivalent of Sky+ series link?

Becuase Freeview doesn't broadcast this data, there's no direct equivalent. Most recorders can do repeat recordings (ie record BBC1 every day from 1800-1900), the closest to true series link is the Topfield, where (with a downloaded TAP??) you can be more specific and say record 'Eastenders on BBC only on weekdays and only if it's between 12noon and 11pm.

Nothing as simple as hitting Green in your Sky+ planner

And after the Topfield (with added TAP) that can be set to record "britain" and should pick up all the "Little Britain" episodes the next best PVR for this is the Humax 9200 which has a keyword search facility in the EPG - so you can search for all "Britain" entries but then must use the search results to manually set timers.

The only things that do the true auto Series Link functionality are the Sky+ boxes and Tivo.

Cliff

Thanks for the replies - I'm not going to persuade wife to dump sky+ unless the alternative has series link so she does not miss any eastenders

But the Topfield TF5800 (with the right TAP loaded) WOULD do this - you'd just say "record 'eastenders'" and it would. You don't have to cancel a Sky+ sub for very long before it pays for the TF5800 !

Cliff

emsee,

You might want to add "sometimes loses all recordings" to the "serious problems/bugs" section for the Humax 9200T.

See this thread for details.

Sorry, coming from Sky+ land, what's a TAP?

Not wanting to answer for CJL, but it's basically a bit of code transferred from your computer to add bits of fuctionallity to the Toppy.

I like the comparison table, looks very useful...I'm particularly interested in the RF modulator facility....I notice it says that the Digifusion FVRT200 has this....friend of mine bought one of these on the weekend, and while it was fine with scart, he could not tune in to the RF signal...this is a facility I personally need...anyone help me with this?