Just taken delivery of a Black Panther Toppy, looks great is smaller than I thought and has the latest Fimware installed - so very impressed.

So could you guys advise me which TAPS are best/essential plus any difficulties/problems I may encounter installing and using TAPS.

Check out www.toppy.org.uk there's a forum for TAPS and one of the posts gives a list of the Top 20 TAPS according to the number of people who us them.

Also, we've just been busily re-classifying TAPs in the library on that site; you can choose categories of TAPs from the list at the top of the forum, and the ones that are marked as 'Tip Top' are ones that we thinks are useful and fairly easy to get to grips with for new users.

Nigel.

Tip Top Tap

I can see what you've done there

These taps look good...
meisearch to search the EPG.
mystuff to show now and next information for other channels, and to remember where you were in a recording you have started to watch.
quickjump to use the coloured buttons for advert skipping during a recording. I see there is a limited ability for it to do this during time shifting also which sounds great.
A tap that improves the Topfield EPG look and feel

I am sure there are people who wont be using taps or those dont want to have to. Would there be any firm plans to include some of these features in the Topfield?

Over on the panny forum I found that PVR uses the freeview EPG but saves it so that the PVR can be put into standby. This would be good for the Topfield is there a tap for this and would it mean Topfield could put it in the PVR software?

The Toppy remember where you were in playbacks anyway, if you have up to date firmware on it. You don't need a TAP to do that (and have been able to use bookmarks to do the same since last May's firmware update).

There are lots and lots of ways to save and cache the EPG data, with a few novel ones appearing just in the last month.

As ever, I bet you can guess where to find all the information, and many of the TAP authors too.

Nigel.

Also, MyStuff has quickjump keys so there's no need for Quickjump if you've got MyStuff.

Topfield are working on a new EPG with faster population. It was initially planned for the last firmware update but wasn't included in the final version.

Do any of you, including the hit squad ever get to the stage where you feel it is a bit weird that you have to keep using taps to do certain things that really maybe Topfield should either offer right at the start, or put in later? Be honest. It must be obvious to Topfield that their product, as it stands actually does drive its customers to look to taps for its ongoing use.

Can I also say that I realise and expect people to be either happy with the standard Topfield offering as it is and expect a number of people that enjoy working on finding any taps they may need as part of the Topfield experience. I am trying to void justifaction posts if I am honest.

Well, quite a lot of people are happy using it without - there are an awful lot of people who have the box and have never gone near sites like this, or the Toppy one, so I don't think it necessarily does drive people to TAPs.

At least you have a choice; I've seen some people claim that it's a way of Topfield to avoid doing certain things themselves, but on the whole, they're pretty responsive - and for most things that people say should be built in, there are plenty of others who say it should be built in, but in a subtly different way.

Some things - like the EPG - are getting changed, and that's mostly because there are elements of Freeview that don't work in the same way as other terrestrial systems in places like Australia, and the 5800 is the first box they've sold for it.

Nigel.

Its great to know they are responsive in this area as well

What were they all?