mmm...I don't think 2 confirms 3 - and 2 could be used as justification for sticking with a VCR...which I'm pretty sure you're not suggesting . As to 3, I think the general consensus is that you might be surprised how much you would use this functionality if you had it, and how much more flexible your viewing becomes with true chase-play. No doubt viewing habits come into this, but I guess I make use of this functionality nearly every day (or perhaps every other day) and, although it wasn't a decision in me buying a Toppy at all, I certainly wouldn't buy a PVR in the future that couldn't do it... The sort of things I might consider in a "feature trim" to buy a PVR that was better in other respects might be something like the ability to watch a third channel on the same multiplex as one of the allocated tuners (which the Toppy and Humax both share). Ehhh...then again...I'm not so sure - I do use this quite alot too .

I don't believe for a minute that Humax weren't aware what a serious ommission this was prior to the launch of the 9200T. With this in mind, you do kind of wonder how it fell by the wayside - possibly that it was originally implemented but proved problematic? We've certainly had a few instances of this in the Toppy world .

Regarding chase play, I don't think the Humax 8000 could do it either, and if I remember right, I don't think you could watch a previous recording at all while it was recording something else. Some thought that this was becuase it was single tuner, but that didn't make sense to me since true twins could record two things while watching a previous recording. So I suppose in a way if the 9200T has the ability to record two things while watching a previous recording, it's made a big jump from the 8000 in that respect. But yes, chase play is something most people want and to create a PVR without that awareness doesn't sound plausible.

The 8000 *did* let you chase play on the program currently being recorded.

But as it was a single tuner device, wasn't this equivalent to using the buffer on the channel currently being recorded?

We have a Toppy at home and have found ourselves using "Chase Play" on a number of occasions.

For example, last night the wife didn't get in until just after nine. So rather than miss the start of Smallville I recorded it. We than sorted out various bits around the house, and with nothing else on that we wanted to watch, started to watch Smallville before it had finished recording.

This way we both saw the whole of the program, with skipping ads it finished about 15 minutes after the broadcast, and we didn't end up with another program sat on disk waiting to watched.

A very useful feature, which we use at least once a week at the moment.

Cheers
Stu.

I think I have said this before but it looks like Humax dusted off the 8000t software from the shelf and stuck it on the new 9200t hardware platform!

Well Chase play amongst other things are going in now so I suppose it doesnt really matter any more. But agree with everyone here that this was of the most strangest omission.

I dont know if the chase play is implemented on the toppy in th same way but I notice a couple of similarities with reports on toppy.org. On the 9200t, to do chase play you press the playlist button on the remote and OK on the entry in the playlist (The entries on the playlist that are currently recording are denoted by a little red 'rec' icon).

The bit I have read up on on toppy forum that is similar to the 9200t is that when you stop playback of a chase play recording and then go back to it - playback automatically resumes from where you last left it. It seems to continue to do this all the while it is still recording. However, when the recording has actualy finished, going back to the recording in the playlist for the first time after recording stopped - you are started from the beginning again. It seems that resumeplay starts from scratch.

Is this something that is the normal situation with the toppy or has this changed with a firmware update. i dont know how easy it will be but my recomendation to Humax is to keep the resume play point made during chase playing and transfer it to the finished recordings' settings. Dont know if that makes any sense.

No, I'm confused too.

Just tried with no TAPs loaded and resume play at previous point does not seem to work at all with current recording.
Maybe I am just unfamilar with vanilla Toppy and doing it wrong.
It seems to work in marc's favoured style when running MyStuff TAP. ie resume point retained after recording finishes, which is what you would want it to do usually.

If you set a bookmark, you can go back to anywhere you want; but the resume play feature relies upon information in the header of the recording, which is updated again at the end of the recording, and so presumably over-writes the previous position details.

Nigel.

Read your 15 years and politics bit, Nigel. Couldn't agree more.

Sounds like the Humax is doing the exact same thing with the header at the end of the recording. So I'm not holding my breath about that part. Although with the mystuff tap finding a way to do it there may be some chance yet. Cheers

So what is wrong with making a special bookmark for resume play? Why does the resume play marker have to be written in the header?

Well yes, that was *how* it worked and may or may not have been an incidental side effect of the design. The crucial thing is that it *did* make it possible to chase play. When the software was tweaked for the twin-tuner 9200T this became a less obvious way of achieving it.

Well, it has to be added somewhere; at present the Topfield systems use the file header to store all the metadata, including bookmarks; adding another place for it would possibly mean tweaking a hell of a lot of the rest of the system, if you're suggesting a separate database of resume points, or a file to be associated with each recording that stores the data for that one.

Nigel.

Thanks for that. You are certainly on the ball. Now, have you a piece of software to extract header info (esp. bookmarks) so I can make chapters when authoring a DVD of the recorded programme?

I'd have thought VideoReDo or ProjectX would do that, son.

They certain can, although I don't make chapters. I was just thinking that as you watched programme you could make manual 'human' bookmarks, and if this info was kept in the header, then on transfer to the PC and put through authoring software, somehow we could extract those bookmarks and use them as chapters for the DVD-R copy...

Said as a spark of a thought - nothing serious!

But don't the demuxing softwares remove the proprietary header completely as part of the conversion to mpeg process?

It does; but if you had a programme that could load chapter information from a separate file, I suppose it might be worth writing a tool that could read the header of the rec file and construct a file that detailed where the bookmarks were, for use as chapter markers.

Not impossible, I'd have thought, for someone determined enough. Of course, I'm not sure how accurate the bookmarks are - if it's disk block or picture frame they jump to.

The details of the rec header are out there, though.

Nigel.

Now that you say it, I kind of remember this point, because the original Thomson and Fusion boxes did not allow chase play. Even way back then, it was seen by many as an unforgiveable omission. The only ones out there to compare to at the time were the Pace Twin and Humax 8000T.

I've had my Toppy for about 6 weeks now and am well pleased with it. To be fair, it has been enhanced with a few TAPs such as MyStuff and eit2mei etc.

Having come straight in to a PVR from using a VCR, I have no experience of previous models. However, I must say that I find the Time Shift Buffer and the Chase Play facilities to be one of the most used features in my household. It was always frustrating with a VCR that whilst a programme was being recorded, it was obviously not possible to watch a previously recorded programme. There were just too many times when I had tapes full of stuff to watch, but couldn't do so because something else was recording, and by the time it finished it was too late at night to watch anything.

Now, with the magic of Chase Play, there is no pressure to rush through mealtimes because 'something' is starting in 10 minutes. We just let it start to record and then catch up later. Or better still, watch something else recorded a few days ago.

I'm always surprised when people write about how full their HDDs are. Mine is nearly always empty. Perhaps that's just a hangover from the old VCR days when it was a disaster to have to catch up with 8 hours of programmes on one's return from holiday!

Geoff

There was no frustration here as I had three VCRs hooked up

The lack of chase play was the only reason why I went for the Toppy rather than the Humax.

No regrets - love the Toppy - but I could equally have loved the Humax if I'd gone for that.

What were they thinking of, releasing it without basic PVR functionality

I've just been reading the Humax thread about their OTA update. Looks like the new firmware still suffers from lockups, even though it may have fixed other bugs. Still no sign of enhancements such as chase play, though.

I'm certainly glad I chose the Toppy. I feel quite sorry for them.

Geoff

Owing both a Toppy & Humax 9200 I won't say (IMO ) that chase play is basic functionality. Nice to have, absolutely, but not basic. I would rate both machines very highy indeed, for different reasons.

Toppy +'s (Taps / pic quality/ editting ability)
minus's previous reliability - a 'tad' noisy.

Humax +'s very reliable (yes I've had 1 lock up to date, in 6 months of use) + whisper quiet
-'s limitations on timer recording (only 20 )

snick you appear to be rating the reliability of the Humax above that of the Topfield. This would seem to be contrary to the evidence from posters on DS. Humax forum is full of issues even after latest software. The Topfield forum goes for days without even a post.
Its not as if there are loads of problems being reported on Toppy.org.uk either.

Richard