Morning all,

Still playing about with my new Toppy, but one thing is annoying me, which is the rEco on the front on the box when recording. Since MyStuff is picking up a lot of middle of the night repeats for me it means I can't see the time then. My old Pace Twin dealt with it much better, using a red LED to indicate it was recording, and keeping the time up. The red LED in the Toppy's front panel only seems to indicate it's on standby (which is a given if the time's on the front panel anyway).

I've had a look at only one TAP - the TF5000 display TAP, but it doesn't seem to do what I'm looking for. Perhaps it's harder as the activity I want changed is when the Toppy's not completely on, so a TAP may not be able to load up?

Any suggestions welcomed...

Well, russ, I use a clock on the mantelpiece.

The Toppy is completely on when it starts up to do recordings, so if you configure the TF5000 display TAP right, you should be able to persuade it to display the time even when recording. Never played with it myself, though. I have things arranged so that all the boxes with pretty lights aren't in my line of sight when I'm watching TV.

Nigel.

Am I right in saying you want the time displayed all the time?

You seem to have tried DeadBeef's TF5000 Display Tap but find it unsatisfactory. Although not a regular user I have tried this in the past and it seemed to work for me.

ISTR setting the Clock duration to 30 sec, Info duration to 1 sec, and Record info off which displayed the clock while recording (although the channel number was briefly displayed every 30 seconds).

If this isn't what you are after I'm afraid I don't know of an alternative tap. If Display Tap is close to what you want perhaps a request to DeadBeef for an enhancement would be worth a try?

What I'm hoping for is the channel number when it's on, and the channel number when recording, but no reco in any state. I didn't realise until Nigel's post that the Toppy isn't in a 'pseudo-standby' state when it's recording, as other PVRs are, so it's not going to ditinguish between a watching/recording simultaneously and unatended recording situation (I assume).

I haven't installed the DisplayTAP, from reading up on it I didn't think it would do the trick. I'll try it tonight and see if it does. Might have to just enable the clock all the time, which wouldn't be a big hardship.

I suppose changing the Red LEDs behaviour without trying to write my own TAP would be out of the question (a summer project perhaps)?

I think the Display TAP has an option for displaying different information if the box has woken up for a recording. If it doesn't do exactly what you need, why not email the author and ask if it's possible? Deadbeef is usually quite responsive to feature requests.

I use the display tap mentioned here and I think that you will find it solves your problem, but maybe not exactly as you are thinking now... it has quite a few options, so play around with a few configurations tonight and see which is closest to your needs.

I use the display TAP on my Toppy and I think it will do what you are wanting. You can get it to display the channel name while it is recording. By defualt this is the name from the EPG for example "BBC thrEE" will scroll accross the front display! I find this annoying because it distracts me and I end up watching the display scrolling rather than the TV screen! So what I did is to edit the config file that comes with the display TAP (Full instructions provided) so that is will for example simply display "Ch7" for BBC Three. If you give each channel number a small name in the config file (4 characters or less) it will not scroll and therfore when recording you can have the channel number still displayed on the LED. I actually have mine alternate between the two so that I can see what I'm watching and what's being recorded. I think it would certainly be worth having a play, it's a great TAP that can do some very cool things!

you should be able to get that TAP to do what you want