I think the toppy may turn out to be not as bad as any other PVR for ease of use. But if you ask toppy owners the same question they may be able to put your mind at rest about this. Even if it was a little bit complicated at first you would probably sooner or later think it was easy as you'd have got used to the way it works.
The technology is sophisticated therefore the challenge is to make it easy to use. I don’t know if anything has yet to match, let alone beat the 2.5 year old Pace Twin in this department. I am sure loads of toppy owners will have no issues what so ever with the ease of use of the machine, although some comments shows people have different concerns on the subject.
Some quotes:
Quote:
“Can you elaborate on this please as I'm about to purchase a Toppy. I thought it would be a case of connect it all up and away we go. This seems to be getting more complicated to use, so much so that I'm swaying towards getting Sky+.”
Quote:
“Anyway, it's a bit of a learning curve for all of us. As a (soon to be ex) Sky+ user, I'd have to say that the Toppy isn't quite as intuitive and has one or two minor niggles but on the whole, I'm very pleased with it.”
Quote:
“In fact I think the only issue I really have is that I wish more PVR manufacturers would 'borrow' the Pace interface (but not the bugs) - it was so intuitive to use.”
Quote:
“If the core functionality of JAGs could be combined with a more intuitive interface then I'd happily pay for it, currently it appears to be a work in progress. Maybe when JAG has it in less of an 'enthusiasts' state he'll do just that. The ability to set title searches is the main attraction for me but if that means learning and remembering which button does what then even if I was the sole user I doubt if I'd use it, when you add those other users of our PVR that are less technically inclined they would be scared away.”
Quote:
“It has recorded everything faultlessly, except for one occasion when no sound was recorded. Only gripe is the remote is not intuitive and the manual could be much better.”
Quote:
“The Toppy isn't too complicated, but the instructions are a bit lacking and the remote keys are less intuitive. Prepare to learn it yourself and then teach your wife. My husband figured out the Fusion pretty much without me, but not the Toppy. However, I installed the TAP UK Oz surfer and showed him how to use it and he's well impressed. And he likes the bomb game supplied (is there a way to remove it?)”
Quote:
“I've tried JAGs but reverted back to Std. before the wife and kids saw it as it's not as user friendly as the regular one and I'd only get grief about it. It's functionality is pretty complicated and would take a bit of practise to master but the benefits of having fully automated recording by programme title (in part or whole) on specific channels during defined time windows sounds very appealing.”
Quote:
“She definitely will, but it takes some getting used to. It's a lot more complicated than other PVRs, I think it's fair to say. Certainly not as straight forward as the Thomson. Also, there are a number of annoyances at present that makes its use harder, though there are a couple of updates due in August that are supposed to be pretty significant.”
Quote:
“The Toppy appears to be overly complicated. I don't unzip files, so using a TAP to me would be complicated. The only decent EPG seems to be this JAG one. I don't like the idea of an EPG showing 4 channels at a time only.”
Quote:
“I thought it would be a case of connect it all up and away we go. This seems to be getting more complicated to use, so much so that I'm swaying towards getting Sky+.”
If you have the 8000t and dont like the user interphase though, then I would seriously think twice before buying the 9200t, as it will almost certainly have the same type of user interphase. The toppy certainly wins on features at this moment in time and if you wer to go down the route of connecting up the toppy to a computer and installed third party applications, called TAPs, it adds further to the capabilities.
