Ah but most of the £70 boxes have NOT paid the royalty (but apparently they have a "lawyer fund" ready for the legal battle!). This is one of the reasons that "brand name" DVDRs (Pioneer, Panasonic, JVC, Toshiba, Sony et al) generally cost above the magic £100 price point while a lot of "supermarket cheapies" come in under the wire. Most companies making the PVRs would be duty bound to pay the royalties and this can easily translate to +£20-£30 on the end user price.

Cliff

This raises some interesting questions:

* Why is a PVR maker (such as Humax) necessarily more honest than a DVD recorder maker (such as Cyberhome)?

* What are the legalities regarding big name retailers knowingly selling, and indeed commissioning specially branded products, which are using unlicensed, stolen technology? This would be the same as selling VCRs with unlicensed Videoplus, tape recorders with unlicensed Dolby, and indeed computers with pirated software.

* Due to the lack of these devices £20-30 is certainly something that consumers would be willing to pay - they clearly are for big brand DVD recorders and that is WITH the competition from cheapies.

* Is this all rumour or have some DVDR makers actually admitted to this practice?

We (Amstrad) considered making a DVB-Tx2+HDD+DVDR machine but found that we couldn't make it economically and one of the issues was that "Chinese mass manufacturers" are actually happy to make just $1 profit per unit on DVDR machines (which then get OEM badged with all sorts of 3rd tier brand names like Cyberhome) and that they don't pay the MPEG encode royalties (which we would have to) but just put a certain amount of money aside in case a bus load of lawyers turn up one day. We canned the plan on the basis that we wanted to make a bit more than $1/unit and that we couldn't afford some of the component/royalty costs involved.

A quality brand like Humax would presumably feel bound, as we were, to pay any such royalties as they are not a fly-by-night "no-name" brand.

Cliff

Cost it for us, then, Cliff. Call it a bit of market research. I have lost count of the number of threads I have replied to asking for just such a device, and I am sure you have too.

I'd like one. Maybe you might, too.

Cost it out, and do a poll. Why not? It'll cost AMS nowt.

Presumably the only realistic way to do this currently is to abandon the bitstream recording approach and encode everything with MPEG2 on the offchance someone might want to archive it to a DVD.

So as well as the increased hardware costs, it would be interesting to consider any other side-effects (image quality and storage capacity spring to mind, but perhaps there are others).

Of course, a cheaper alternative would be to simply package a DVD recorder (with a single MPEG2 encoder) into the same box. The question then is how long would the average user be prepared to wait for a DVD to be written? Is it acceptable to have to wait for as long as the programme takes to play out in real time? If not, how much faster can the encoding chips be made to operate?

And finally, what impact on the normal operation of the PVR is acceptable while a DVD is being written?

I don't know. Let's get him to cost it. Then we can all say, "What are the hardware and software implications?" But at least we'd have a hardware cost to assess those against.

R.

I can't remember the exact numbers but I think we were looking at something like a £299 retail price when had been targetting more like £199. ("Sony" might get away with £299 but it's unlikely "Amstrad" would!)

Cliff

Hi Cliff

Well that is the price the Topfield came out at last year; bit less I think. In fact same price as the Pace Twin! when it appeared 3/4? years ago IIRC. I guess they where both niche products but would have thought an HDD/DVDR (edit +twin DTT) would at least have a bigger niche.

Personally have no interest in recording from external sources or DVD recording but if the posts from newbies on here and on AVForums are anything to go by these things in one box have a market. In fact a lot of posters seem to just assume they must already exist. Not being in the industry I am only guessing how big that market is.

Richard
Last edited by Richard46 : 24-05-2006 at 11:17

Xenon.Digital.Duo?

I'd buy one, Cliff.

But Asda don't?

See new thread started Here

Are you saying Asda make/OEM DVD recorders then? I don't think so - they buy from some other OEM brander who buy from a back-street chinese manufacturer and Asda presumably have a contract with the OEM indemnifying them against legal proceedings

Cliff

Hi, street price for Humax 9200T more like £199 now. That's what I paid in John Lewis yesterday. Same on their website.

Mmm, but the point with JL is that you find a better price and then they match it. You get their guarantee and a better price.

Hi all,

I've now added the Sony to my PVR comparison page:
www.emsee.co.uk/pvr
Please could anyone who owns one or has detailled specs please confirm or correct all the entries with a questionmark next to them (I've mostly copied the specs from the Fusion 200).

If any of the other models need updating, please let me know.

A couple of updates for the Thomson DHD4000:

Rewind live TV - Y (10 mins - 120 mins) [was 30 mins]


Current firmware ver - 2.3.9 [was 1.7.7]

SVR-S500 does not have a card slot. Not TOPUP TV Compatible

I've posted my comparison of the DigiFuison 145 and the Technosonic 101 here:

http://forum.digitalspy.co.uk/board/...&postcount=222

Hope it is of use.

Humax 9200T now has chase play and autopadding.

New software version releases 2Jun06...

Loader Version A4.09 (PC Download Only)

Aerial Loop-through signal is not lost when starting receiver
Improved Boot-up time from Standby

PGXTF 1.00. 06

1. Chase Play included (more info)
2. Auto-Padding Included (more info)
3. Resolved Naming issue on Scheduled recordings
4. Improved MHEG software (Interactive/Digital Text services)
5. Modified Memory Management for HDD information loss
6. Improved Deleting recordings function
7. Improved FIND option in EPG - Sort by Date
8. Improved Play List screen display






Incorrect statements....

* Can't delete other timer entries while a timer recording is in progress

* Can't start watching programme while it's still being recorded by choosing from recordings list (have to rewind from current position) ??? TBC

Incomplete statements...

* Some users have reported loss of all recordings

...............> need to add this has been fixed in 1.00.06

wgmorg, It would probaby help some people if you mentioned what model all this info was supposed to be for

I thought that but the very subtle "1.00.06" clue in there means it's the Humax 9200. Course, if you own one of them, you can't believe there are other PVRs in the world so don't need to mention the model name/number

He was responding to my post - it's the Humax 9200T

Everything but the most important thing 9200T ...

Great source of info, a couple of comments

The timer limit of 70 for a Topfield can now be circumvented with MyStuff TAP.

Also can you add a "Repeat Recordings on keywords" or "Series Link", possible on Topfield using several TAPs and currently a unique feature to the Topfield I think.