455 hours in 160Gb would be sub-VHS quality, I should think; I make that about 280Mb for an hour's recording - compared with a bit over 2Gb for BBC1, or just under 1Gb for something like ITV4.

I shudder to think what smeary blotchy quality you'd get if you chose that amount of compression.

The Pioneer on SP mode gives about 68 hours according to their own spec pages so that's about the same quality that you'd be getting from the Daewoo (or most other freeview boxes). The next mode down that they mention would give you quality roughly approximating to a VCD and the other 3 modes would be more or less unwatchable.

How they can do something like this and then boast about its 1080p upscaling capabilities looks like it should be a candidate for the advertising standards authority to me!

Can anyone tell me whether any of these machines can cope with HDTV. As I understand it, this question has two parts - 1) can they receive HDTV and display it low-definition (this is what so-called HD-ready TVs do I believe, hence the outcry about HD-ready being a big con), and 2) can they receive HDTV and replay it HD (assuming you have a truly HD TV to display it on). Marc, depending on the answer it might be worth considering a column for this.

Sorry about all these questions, but I'm trying to decide which 2-tuner PVR to buy, and I have noticed that, compared to Humax and Topfield, there is a large number of Invertos on Ebay, and they are selling quite cheap. I'm wondering if there is a reason why so many people are flogging off their IDL7000s.

None of them can receive HDTV, and nor can HD Ready TVs.

'HD Ready' refers only to the ability of a display to accept high definition input via component or DVI/HDMI sockets, and to show it on on a screen with at least 720 lines, widescreen.

'HD TV' is the logo that is appiled to equipment that can 'receive and process' HD signals, ie decode them and output them to an HD Ready display (or, in the case of a TV set, to the built in display).

Some boxes may be capable of saving a stream to the hard drive, but they won't be able to do anything else with it, and so won't qualify for any sort of HD labelling - and it's virtually impossible to test which boxes can do that, since the terrestrial HD signal will disappear in a few hours from now.

It's a decent PVR that, IMHO, was let down by a Firmware update (V1.006) which introduced major problems for some and these problems were never rectified. It seems, to all intent and purposes, that the manufacturer is no longer supporting the product, in the UK, in any meaningful way.

I'd steer clear TBH

I've spent quite some time hunting around here for info when perhaps I really should have just asked the experts on this thread so here goes.

What options are available for this spec -

Twin Freeview Tuners, hard disk recording with built in DVD recorder for long term storage.

Not much to ask is it? You can get all of the bits at modest price but in combination I can only find the very expensive Sony.

I've had the Pace Twin for years and it's an indispensable tool. All it lacks really is archiving to DVD which would be the reason to upgrade.

cheers

Snowey

I think you will find the Sony HDD/DVDR has one analogue and one digital tuner;
Actually I think it may just have one combined tuner so it is actually either analogue or digital at any one time not both. May be wrong about that but sure it it does not have twin digital tuners.

Hard disk recording with DVD burning is not trivial, for technical reasons. That's why the only boxes that do this tend to be ones that have an analogue tuner, or other analogue inputs.

And no, the Sony doesn't have twin digital tuners, ceriainly if you mean the HXD 1065; it is, from the manual, a unit that has one of each, and switching between tuners means turning off then on again.

I don't understand this. A quick skim down the Dixon's site (for example) reveals plenty of single-tuner machines with DVD and HDD (SONY RDRGXD360, PHILIPS DVDR3440H, TOSHIBA RDXV47 to name but a few). If it can be done with one tuner why is it difficult with two?

The number of times I've explained this in various fora... but here we go again:

Although DVD Video and DVB-T video both use MPEG2, it's in a different format; the former uses a Programme Stream, and the latter a Transport Stream, which is designed to be robust over systems like wireless, while DVD knows it's going to get the info off the disk more easily.

To record digital TV to DVD, you have to convert the Transport Stream to a Programme Stream; this is actually not too hard, and there's no quality loss, since it's really just rearranging the existing info in a slightly different way.

BUT - and it turns out to be a big one - the DVD Video is quite strict on the range of parameters that can be used for the MPEG2 video, with regard to things like the picture size and the number of frames between complete pictures; it's more strict than the standards for DVB-T.

Some of the channels on Freeview use settings that, while working fine for broadcast, don't fall within the allowable range for DVD Video

That means that, to maintain compatibility with every DVD player, a DVD recorder will have to re-encode the images.

Even on a modern PC, that can be a pretty time consuming thing to do; it can take much more than the running time of a programme. Bear in mind that the processors in typical set top boxes and DVD recorders are much slower, too.

So, instead, these boxes use a dedicated MPEG encoder chip; even when they have a digital tuner, they effectively convert DVB-T to analogue and then re-digitise it - which the encoder chips can do in real time. It's a bodge, but it ensures that everything that's saved to the hard drive or DVD of these machines is in a format that complies with the DVD Video specs.

Next thing to understand is that MPEG is a standard that has license fees, and fees are payable on encoding chips. Those aren't huge amounts - but in the world of consumer electronics, even shaving a few cents off the cost of components is important.

If you have two tuners, there are two things you can do.

a) you can have one encoder chip, save things in their native format, and then encode later when you want to save them to DVD

or b) you can have an encoder chip for each tuner, and make sure everything is saved on the hard drive in DVD Video format.

b) is the simplest from the end user point of view, but you'll end up with a higher materials cost; and if it's a Freeview PVR, most people will be just timeshifting, and not making that many DVDs, so it's simplest to just cut out the encoders altogether, and if someone wants to make DVDs, they'll buy a separate recorder.

a) opens up a big can of works for the user interface; will people really want to wait hours to burn a DVD from something on the hard drive, when they know a PC can do the job quicker? It's going to be a real-time re-encoding job, followed by the burn time. Users would be frustrated, and, not understanding the technical aspects, would just complain that it's slow.

One day, there might be cheap silicon without many royalties that will encode video to DVD-Video faster than real time. But until then, I don't think we're that likely to see a dual tuner PVR with DVD burning.

Thanks to nwhitfield for putting in that comprehensive reply. It certainly explains why it has taken so long for the DVD recorder and the PVR to meet in the middle so to speak.

However having thought about it for a while I don't see how it effects the dual freeview tuner issue. If they can now make a DVD fitted box with one freeview tuner, two must be easy. I should point out that I don't expect to be able to make two recordings at the same time only that I want to be able to watch one freeview channel whilst recording another. I've been doing this for years with the Pace Twin.

Experience says that 60% of the time that I use the Pace it's to record one programme whilst watching another. Only very rarely have I ever wanted to record two at a time.

Maybe there's a misunderstanding here.

Snowey

Well, it would be easier if it were a single record system, certainly. But most of the high end twin tuner boxes (and some of the cheaper ones too now) are dual record; I think that many people expect that at the top end of the market, and that's where the problems I outlined start to come in.

I find that many times a week, my box is dual recording; sometimes it's because the padding either side of two recordings makes that necessary, but very often it's because there are a couple of shows in prime-time that I want to watch.

Yes many thanks for that explanation. As I understand it, because a) and b) both have problems the manufacturers have decided to do neither. Personally, I would be quite happy to simply have the facility to transfer stuff from my HDD to DVD after I've recorded it. Anyway at least I understand the problem now (more or less!). Sorry to make you repeat yourself.

I came across this recently. I gather it is the same as the Digihome. Marc, is there any reason why this is not included on the spreadsheet.

It does of course depend how different people use a PVR. I often record two things at once and am usually watching another recording at the same time.
We now almost never watch live TV at all; apart from the News.
When I had a Pace my usage was probably similar to yours but it changed completely when I got a dual record Topfield with a decent sized HDD.

Yes, but surely you don't want to record BOTH of them to DVD, or am I missing the point?

I'm including some freeview playback details at the moment so now would be a good time to send me all the details about the grundig.
EDIT the spreadsheet/website covers dual recording PVRs as you may have noticed, sometimes people think because there are two tuners all of the PVRs twin tuner PVRs can use both to record but there were some cheaper models released that wont.

The Vestel PVRs (Digihome, Grundig, Dual etc.) are in the category of being record one/watch one with the "official" software. However, there is an "un-official" software version (see thread here) which converts them to being dual record. Would you consider that un-official dual record version qualifies for inclusion in the List Marc?

And how about the Technotrend PVRs as they now have Dual Record?

Colin

Been thinking about the Digilogic.I got my father in law to buy a clone and I realy liked it. My web site gets thousands of hits and so I want to shy away from anything that could end up being misleading. I'll treat any methods of getting dual recording going as a hack for now, whether or not it still has some compromise on the full functionality of the rest of the box.

Technosonic PVR. I assume it no longer comes with a public health warning with it? Dual record PVR now eh. Good stuff. Can i ask owners out their to send me the details that aswers the table entries for now as I'd like to get things going? Without all your information help and out there it wouldnt be what it is today.

I've just had an idea which seems worth bouncing around.

Given the incompatibilities between Freeview and DVD digital imaging, might it not be a good idea to provide multiple HDDs within a PVR and just store everything in the easier Freeview format?

One HDD would be built in and serve all of the general functions whilst the other, designed as a plug in unit, could be used for archiving. A simple edit procedure to remove adverts etc could be provided as part of the archiving system. So instead of DVD archiving you would have HDD archiving. Nowadays I doubt that there would be much cost difference. The HDDs would be bulkier than DVDs but store more and be easier to use.

Has this ever been done? I know there are people out there who do have multiple hard drives for their PVRs but most people don't want to take cases apart to change them even if they are internally plug in parts.

snowey

Is there an easy way of sending you the information on the Technotrend PVRs Mark? e.g. amended version of the Exel Spreadsheet? Is this document still current? If so would it be possible to send this via the DS Private Message facility? Some of the questions would have different answers due to differences in the Technotrend way of doing things. e.g. The dual recording facility is implemented by storing the "watch tuner" Timeslip buffer facility so it has some differences and limitatons compared to what I assume is the normal method of dual recording.

Colin

Hi Colin yes you can pm me the answers for the sections on the chart. That would be great and I'll sort out the rest.

I was a it confused with the bit about the recording. With dual recrding on the technosonic, what would happen if you went into the EPG for tomorrow and selected Graham Norton on BBC1 at 10pm and Big Brother on Channel4 at 10pm? If it is a dual recording PVR presumably you will be allowed to do that? And once the recording is over, say the next day you go into your programmes library you can simply pick a programme to watch from there? So the machine can effectively record two programmes that either overlap or are on at exactly the same time?

Yes it can do all you say but there are restrictions on viewing and control whilst recording two simultaneous programmes.

Basically it has a "record" tuner and a "watch" tuner. If two overlapping or simultaneous recordings are scheduled then the first to start will use the "record" tuner and the second one will use the "watch" tuner. At this point the "watch" tuner will switch to and display the second recording channel and will remain locked to this channel as long as the second recording continues. That is, you can't switch between the channels being recorded. Also this means that even if the first recording ends it is still not possible to change channels on the "watch" tuner, even though there is only one recording taking place. Normally you would expect to be able "record one/watch" one in this situation but on the Technotrend PVRs you can't. The only work around in this situation is to cancel the recording on the "watch" tuner and restart it so it will use the "record" tuner thus freeing up the watch tuner for normal use.

Regarding the data for the Chart would I be able to send a copy of an XLS file in a PM?

Colin

Edit:-
P.S. Regarding your comment in an earlier post on a "health warning" for the Technotrend PVRs it would be appropriate at the present time (Version 2.0 of the dual tuner software) to include a comment in "Serious Issues" on the reliability of these PVRs

Interesting. Is that how they are being sold in the shops Colin do you know? Or is the feature provided by the manufacturer themselves vai OTA update s to purchased boxes?

I've pm'd you by the way.