In my opinion (as a Toppy owner) the extra hardware features of the Toppy easily justify the £70 between it and the Inverto. The Sagem sounds pretty limited but is a much smaller investment to write off if it (and the other DTT PVRs) becomes obselete in a couple of years.

I waited around 18 months for a PVR that met my expectations (CI slots, PC connectivity, dual tuner (with full functionallity) and standard EPG) to come along. If the current crop don't meet all your requirements there are plenty more coming (Humax, Vestel OEMed, Access Devices, Sony etc) this year, if you're prepared to wait.

Apart from a highly questionable attitude towards people who appear to be genuinely out to help, you would appear to need everybody to be a guiney pig for you -- so -- do you have a car, girlfriend, boat, breakfast , dinner etc that needs checking we will all form a orderly queue I'm sure

IanP,

I guess that is the problem - I got fed up of waiting. John Norton of Inverto (posting on the Inverto thread) didn't know if they where on schedule for delivery later this month. As sales director of the company you would expect him to know if production had happened this week, wouldn't you?

I also think that the Toppy will keep getting better and better as new TAPs are written, whereas the inverto will be bug free a month or two after it gets released, but won't really improve on its current state.

Thanks to you all for your thoughts. I hope the Inverto works out for those that wait and I hope the toppy works out for me and that Mrs R doesn't go mad

Mark

The May 10th topfield update is out (2nd version with the radio bug fixed), which mean a few bits of info on the (rather excellent) comparision page have changed - I couldn't see anyone else had posted the info, so here goes...

- We can manually add bookmarks now (no scenes though).
- Skip x seconds button: The yellow button now acts as a 'skip 30 seconds' button if no bookmarks are set.
- '- Reports of occasional blank recordings (possibly when recording shared channels like BBC3)' - this bug has been fixed.
- ' Reverts to all TV channnels rather than your favourites whenever you come back from a Radio station' - this is in the minor issues section, and is now fixed.
- '* EPG slow to populate if Tuner 1 in use???' - I think this is also fixed - can another toppy user comment?
- ' Incorrect MHEG date on last day of month' - this is fixed too.
- 'Auto BST/DST change' - this is now a Y

The full list of fixes is here:
http://www.turbosat.com/acatalog/top..._software.html
or on the http://www.toppy.org.uk site.

Finally, just to say I'd now recomend the toppy wholeheartedly.

[quote=Illustrator4x4]Apart from a highly questionable attitude towards people who appear to be genuinely out to help, QUOTE]

cynical, but happy

I've uploaded another update today:

- Added more info about the Sagem
- Added pic of Panasonic remote
- Added more good/bad points about the Topfield & adjusted to reflect fixes/features in the new firmware update.
This has lead to the Topfield having more than twice the number of issues than any other unit but this is mainly due to the fact that the issues are being reported & recorded so well (mainly by the exellent toppy.org.uk site) rather than the fact that it's a bad unit, so I've added a note to that effect,
(I was considering just putting a link to the issues listed on the toppy.org.uk site but decided just to list all the issues in the table for now, I may change this in future).

As always, if anyone's got any suggestions, corrections, etc. feel free to reply here.

Good job. It's difficult to review a device that that is so user-configurable but I think that your revisions do the Toppy justice. You may also like to indicate that the Toppy display also shows status. For instance when recording the Toppy displays the lovely rECo. I would also make the subjective scores a little smaller, bu then again they are subjective...

Shame you still don't list MCE 2005 as a dual tuner PVR option, as it's by far the best (if the most expensive).

Also, with the list of bugs we have on Toppy.org.uk one thing to bear in mind is that some of the ones that are still shown as unresolved on the website are very probably fixed in the firmware update. But I've taken the approach that we won't actually mark a bug as fixed until users report they're not seeing it any more, rather than because Topfield say it's fixed. I'm pretty confident all most of the major outstanding ones are resolved, but with the update only a few days old, I'm holding off updating the list until I have more feedback from people who were affected, especially since I never experienced some of them myself.

Nigel.

This 10th May up-date. Do the new Toppys now come with this already loaded?

All the reports I have seen on http://www.toppy.org.uk/forum/ say that they recieved thier machine with the 11th may update.

Inforrmation for chart:

The sagem CAN do Chase play/Timeslip i.e. watch a program that has already started recording. I just don't think it can buffer one channel and let you rewind a programme being recorded at the same time. So if you want to watch a programme being recorded, switch to that channel. You can then rewind to the beginning, even if there is already more than 30 minutes recorded.

I have not been able to "lose a recording" by pressing pause whilst recording. It works fine for me.

There is a question mark by live tv. You can - no question.

The Auto Timer padding is fixed at 5mins before 15mins after but you can go into the timer and adjust these after scheduling if you need to.

There is optical out and a 3.5mm audio jack.

My software version number is 0.1.4 UK.

Some further information on the Sagem for the PVR comparison chart

Recording
Number of timer entries - No upper limit found yet but at least 12
Archive scheduling function - N
Can create folders - N

Other Features
Scenes/Bookmarks - N
TUTV compatible - N

Connectivity / PSU
Phono A/V out - N
S-Video out socket - N
USB - N
Serial - N
Current firmware ver. - 0.1.6 UK (earlier boxes seem to have 0.1.4 UK though there is no word about an over the air update yet)

Links
Forum links - Sagem PVR Support forum (http://16.freebb.com/?freebb=sagem) - this has been set up by DS member Russell Elly

Subjective measurements
Remote sensitivity - I've never had any problems with this so I'd give it a 2
I'd agree with all the ratings given to the other subjective measurements

80gb Sagem PVR6280 £153

http://www.tribaluk.com/detail.php?ProdID=62695033

looks good?

emsee
Extreme right hand column
"can create folders" missing

80gb Sagem PVR6280 £153

http://www.tribaluk.com/detail.php?ProdID=62695033

Ordered this on Sunday and plugged in today. Works fine!!!

Tell us more. Is it a 6240 with a bigger drive or are there other differences? Does it look the same? Does it just record from one tuner? Does it still pad recordings?

Hi - not sure yet as I haven't read all the threads on it. It set itself up in 2mins with 100+ channels. It looks the same as the 6240 pictured in argos and I'd guess its just a bigger drive. Oh - here's a picture:
http://www.tribaluk.com/detail.php?ProdID=62695033

It does the same padding and won't let you record overlapping progs so I guess it just records from the one tuner. Having said that I've just set it up to record a week of BBLB in 2 mins flat (including removing the padding) - pretty cool after VHS!! It still has that 0% complete bug that some people have pointed out. Also it's 0.1.6 UK firmware.

I was really impressed with the 2 day delivery from Tribal as I read a couple of bad reviews about them. I suppose the delivery isn't in their hands though as they dropship.

Main prob for me now is piping the output into the bedroom to watch recordings. I had a Sky box and cabled the house but this box only seems to output the freeview channels + playback to SCART. I've done the wireless stuff in the past and don't really want to go back there - any suggestions?
Last edited by jimjamjo : 07-06-2005 at 19:31

Many thanks-I've now ammended this.

Thanks for the info - I've now updated the chart

Just saw this model in my local Curry's for £149!

See if you can track down an FVRT150 instead (some Argos branches still have them). It'll be £179 but, believe me, that extra £30 is worth it for the additional capacity as the 40GB in the FVRT100 isn't really enough (as you'll find after a month or two of use)

Cliff

Yoy can get the FVRT100 for £100 + £7 delivery from ebay currently. They are refurbed products, but seem to come from a reputable refurb company & have 90 day warranty still.

I bought one - it works great.

You might like to add this to your (excellent) table: ReelBox

An expensive but very well specified Linux based box. The Satellite version is finally out and it looks like the Terrestrial version will be available soon.

Dixons too - Fusion FVRT100 is £149 now. Dixons in Newbury didn't have the Thomson DHD4000 on display at all - maybe something new coming from Thomson?