I am fed up with my Thomson DHD4000 as it keeps crashing virtually everyother day and i then have to pull the plug and wait for it to restart. When it works it's pretty good although lately i have started to notice that the picture quality is a little pixelated.

So the question is has anyone gone from owning a thomson to the topfield and if so what features do you miss and how is the topfield better?

Yes, we've done it for the same reason, no regrets. There were a couple of things, such as the EPG being downloaded offline in the Thomson, but the add-in TAPs, such as the JAG EPG that we've just installed, address all those.

Also is the topfield quiet? The fan noise on the Thomson drives me around the bend.

I have a Thomson, and now a Topfield too. I still think the Thomson is a good box, and I never had any major problems with it (the recent pixellation is caused by broadcasters reducing their bitrates to squeeze nmore channels in, and affects all boxes).

Things I think the Thomson does better:

- Jumping forward/backward through a recording is much slicker (assuming you've turned off bookmarks, which I've always found pointless), because it's more responsive and the sound comes back very quickly. On the Toppy, if you're using a TAP like QuickJump there's a delay before it reacts to your button press, and it's maybe a second, seems like ages, before the sound comes back on. If you're not using a TAP, you have to use the cumbersome progress bar - multiple presses of different buttons, and it's still not as good as simple jumping.

- Rewinding/FFW is also really bad on the Toppy, not that I ever used it much on the Thomson. Again slow to react, and the max speed is only 6x.

- Appearance of on screen menus and EPG is smarter and more consistent on the Thomson. The Toppy's built-in ones look a bit amateurish.

- Seeing what's on other channels without interrupting your viewing is easier with the Thomson, you just use the arrow buttons. On the Toppy, even with a great TAP like UK Oz Surfer, you still have to press one button to activate it, other buttons to use it, and it is more visually intrusive.

- Sometimes I get slight lip sync problems on the Toppy, which can be cured by pause/unpause (may be a TAP problem, don't know yet). Never had that on the Thomson.

Overall, the Thomson is ergonomically better than an unmodified Topfield. In other ways, a vanilla Toppy is better (e.g. repeat timers actually work and have options like weekdays only). But TAPs put it in a different league.

[edit]Oh, and the Topfield has no fan, so it is very quiet. Doesn't seem to get as warm as the Thomson, even with no fan.

OTOH, the Topfield only buffers the channel you are watching, not the last two. As an inveterate channel hopper, I *really* miss that.

When doing a search here i came across this thread so just reviving it.

I have also just gone this same route and although im finding the Topfield is more flexible in some respects, i find its picture quality to be poorer than the Thomsons, using the same cables and other bits of kit. The one issue i have with the Topfield is the ability to only fast forward at 6x, really poor compared to the 64x with the Thomson.

I still have the Thomson and might actually decide to keep it rather than the Topfield, i will need more time to decide.