10.25am Monday 15 May 2006

Yippee - My Topfield 250Gb has just arrived. It's sitting next to me here at work - How can I concentrate on my work for the rest of the day?
Any hints, to a complete newbie to Topfield, for me setting it up this evening.
Thanks.

Hi Bat-man

Are you sure you can get Freeview in that cave; sorry just kidding. Welcome to the Toppy owners club. If you are planning to load TAPs I would suggest that you spend a few days getting familiar with what the vanilla Toppy does and then decide what you want to change.
Then come on here or ToppyUK and find out what TAPs can do for you. You may just like it as it is of course.

Richard

Richard
Cheeky so-and-so!
I will just use plain 'vanilla' to start with.
Any issues with initial installation?

Just had a quick look at the instruction booklet.
It says 'Select Antenna Supply 5V On or Off' - should this be set to off initially? (I will be using the loop through antenna cable)
Also - What is this MHEG thing please?

Select 5V off, unless you have a masthead amp that requires a separate power supply (fairly common in germany where the TF5000PVRt is sold but not here).

MHEG is the name of the middleware that enables you to view the so called "Red Button" services. Press the red button on BBC and you get taken to BBCi (interractive) digital text, and where you get to choose which snooker or tennis match you want to watch.

Are there caves in Retford? I've only been a few times. The whole place gives me goosebumps, not dejà vue, more dejà visité. Maybe they're right and I have lost the plot.

Thanks Rhubarbe
Richard is referring to my Bat Viewing Cave
http://www.ianbower.com/images/sony50.jpg

Last edited by Bat-man : 15-05-2006 at 12:38

That'll explain my goosebumps, then.

Nice; actually one of my systems is underground (cellar anyway).

Richard

Personally I hate interactive TV (MHEG) and one of the many great (unique?) things about the Toppy is you can turn the damned stuff off except when you want it.
We all await your getting home from fighting crime with interest.
Richard

Yes - I'll be hopping in the Batmobile at 5.00pm and off home!
http://www.ianbower.com/images/1a.jpg

Thing is - I still have stuff on my DigiFusion that I need to watch.

Oh the problems of modern day life!

Hi all,

I like Bat Man have recently acquired my Toppy (www.heathrowsystems.net very good service btw). Having done a lot of research prior to my investment. Now that I have it, I've completely lost the plot on which TAPS I would like to have installed.

My initial concerns were reception in my area as the postcode check gave a "only if you have a 100ft antenna with 50 masthead amplifiers connected" result..lol.

In the end reception was fine with an upgraded high gain antenna, could be better, but Ill work on that later, as long as SWMBO is happy in the meantime.

What an absolutely fantastic piece of kit. Had it 4 days and no lockups, bugs, nada!

My only reservations and Im sure Im not alone, is the EPG layout and the way it keeps bloody changing channels as I flik through the pages..most annoying!

I also cant seem to find an option for setting up auto padding!

Can someone please help and suggest suitable TAPS to use in order to achieve my objectives. Although I appreciate the work done by JAG, at the moment I'm not ready to donate as the toppy and my modded xbox have cleared me out.

There seems so many TAPS out there and to the noob they are a little confusing as to which ones are best.

What about setting up a poll in the forum showing which TAPS are the most popular giving newbies an instant
indication of which ones to look at first.

In the meantime I would appreciate if anyone could give me some guidance.

Thanks
Paul

Look at www.toppy.org.uk and we've a) flagged TAPs that we think are suitable for novice users, and b) have a page which shows which TAPs are the most popular, based on users who've asked to be kept updated about new versions.

Nigel.

Hi Nigel,

I've tried and tried to find the info on your site, but there's just so much information I cant seem to navigate correctly to find what I want.....anychance of a link?

Cheers
Paul

I used to use Jags but frankly found it a bit confusing and could not offer the grid type EPG I like and was used to from some years with a Pace Twin.

I think MyStuff and EPGNavigator are the top 2 EPG choices currently.
MyStuff has lots more additional features (search based timers/quickjumps when watching recordings/ a vast range of colour schemes (skins) but it does need another TAP like eit2mei to collect its data for it.
I have not used EPGNavigator it has less features but it does collect its own info and its friends swear by it.

Both will solve that channel changing problem and both look miles better.

Both are free although donations are welcome I am sure. Old versions of MyStuff do expire eventually as I believe the writer/support team cannot carry on supporting obsolete versions.
Richard
Last edited by Richard46 : 15-05-2006 at 15:15

http://www.toppy.org.uk/downloads/latest.php

Thanks Richard,

Thats interesting, I was obviously under the false impression that MyStuff required JAGS for population of the EPG. Excellent!! it does seems that mystuff is very popular and I like the idea that there's loads of options to "tinker" with.

Think Ill give that a try first then, see how I get on....


Thanks again
Paul

Paul just to correct myself. As well as using another TAP to collect EPG info. MyStuff can with the help of a couple of programmes on your computer get its info (mei) files down the USB. This is what I use; it does mean you need a permanent or at least a regular and convenient USB connection.

Richard

If you can tell me where you tried to look and couldn't find things, then I can try to make the navigation easier; it can be a bit hard for new users.

There is, however, a button labelled TAPs on the front page, and the 'Click for more...' menu on every page outside the forums has a direct link to 'Latest and Top 20'

Nigel.

Richard,

Arghh,,,,,does this mean to use mystuff and eit2mei i need an intermittant connection via usb to the net?

Ive just dl'ed mystuff and eit2mei ready to transfer to the toppy, but if I need that net connection every couple of days...well at the moment could be a major pain. My intention in the future is to connect to my xbox under the telly and achieve a permanent net connection and get EPG info from the radio times, but thats a long way off at the moment.

Can I just use these 2 TAPS to have the enhanced EPG, get the EPG info from 4tv and also my auto padding?

At the moment these are my only niggles with the toppy. When I have more time then the experimentation will begin re Toppy-Linux on the xbox-router-internet

Cheers
Paul

eit2mei doesn't need a connection; it's designed to grab the freeview data and save it in a format that MyStuff can use.

Nigel.

Sorry Paul if I mislead you I meant that instead of using a TAP like eit2mei you could download info.

As nigel says eit2mei needs no USB link. Until I got my long USB connections laid under the floorboards etc I used eit2mei for quite a while and it was usually fine. In fact it was always fine but the info transmitted over air by some channels was; well; variable although almost always adequate for most purposes.

Richard

Paul,

To answer one of your other questions, both EPG Navigator and Mystuff allow you to set autopadding. The standard (aka vanilla) Toppy does not.

I used Jag's for a while, but I don't like the look of it. I find EPG navigator easiest to read of all of them, and it gets it's own EPG data, so it became my choice.

One problem I had with Mystuff / eit2mei combo was that our Toppy hardly ever gets turned off, and I think eit2mei needs to start from standby at a certain time... so basically I wasn't getting much data... this could very well have changed now, as I'm so happy with EPG navigator that I haven't kept up with eit2mei changes. It was pointed out to me that I could install another TAP to make sure the Toppy got turned off, but I was trying to have less TAPs, not more.

Mmm very interesting Ang,

Just installed mystuff and eit2mei, did a scan to fill the epg and most details were missing. Thought to myself aw well at least by tomorrow when the overnight scan takes place things will be ok...........
Now you say I need to put the toppy on standby to achieve this.....

Not really what I want..I tend to leave the toppy on all the time. So now Ill give EPG navigator a try and see how it goes.

Thanks for the reply and guidance

Paul

Sorry Ang but unless eit2mei has changed since I stopped using it a few months ago the Toppy actually needs to be on not in standby to perform its daily search.
One of the ways of loading that data automatically is to bring the Toppy out of standby.

Edit That is obviously easier to do automatically with a non record timer if the Toppy is usually left in standby. However it can also be loaded manually by clicking on the reload option in the MyStuff menu


Richard

Paul

Actually I would recommend that you do leave the Toppy in standby when you are not watching TV. With eit2mei you just need to set 2 non record timers - one to wake it up for the daily search and an optional one of 5 minutes to force another wake up which automatically loads the data into MyStuff.

I used to get around seven days on most of the main channels with eit2mei and at least 3 days on all of them unless the channel was not transmitting data.

Anyway perhaps you are finding EPGNavigator suits you.

Richard