Can't decide which way to jump - Having the twin tuner of the Toppy or DVD capability of the Pioneer.

I presume the Pioneer is just a 530(ish) box with a digital receiver bolted on, so the recordings are not the original digital transmission. Also even though it has 2 tuners I assume you can only record from one at a time.

Hi


Yes it would re-encode the Freeview signal. What difference it would make to an already over compressed Freeview signal I am not sure, probably not a lot. It may be fairly clever and transcode so you would not lose any quality at all when recording at higher bit rates than the original, which would anyway to the hard-drive.

Remember as well for anything you wanted to keep by copying to a DVD you could with the Pioneer and the quality would still be better than using a SCART connection from the Toppy to a standalone DVD Player, as at least the Pioneer keeps everything in the digital domain.

Yes two tuners but you can only record from one at a time.

Regards

Phil

Hi Phil does this Pioneer have two digital tuners then; info seems a bit scarce.

Richard

Hi

No. It does have two tuners but one is an analogue and one a digital tuner for Freeview. So while it does have two separate tuners, you can only record from one at a time.

More info can now be found at:
http://www.pioneer.co.uk/uk/product_...nomy_id=42-125

Regards

Phil

Thanks Phil

Regards Richard

The brochures section has some extra info buried in the 2006 preview:

http://www.pioneer.co.uk/eur/downloa...hod=attachment

For some reason it can't do pause live TV when in digital mode and the camcorder input has gone. Hmmm.

Hi

Pause live TV simply records whatever is displayed on your TV at the time of pressing using SmartLink feature. If your TV has a digital tuner than you will be able to record Freeview from the TV.

Otherwise you just press record then pause on the DVD Recorder to pause the tuner feed (digital or analogue) from the Pioneer.

DV Inputs have gone, perhaps they found hardly anyone uses them and S-Video can give just as good results.

Regards

Phil

Being as the 540HX-S is about £370, I'd have thought you could run to a Toppy AND a cheapo DVD recorder.

OTOH, if you desperately want to archive to DVD, connect a Toppy up to a PC or laptop with USB cable and transfer the recording to the PC. Edit and burn on PC.

I wonder how many features Pioneer have dropped this time to keep the remote so scant. Whilst there will be extra buttons underneath the slidy bit that's going to be a lot of hassle to do button presses while watching a programme, so do you think we will see more things like the x30s loss of chapter marking compared to the x20s?

What you say seems so bizarre, I am not sure I am understanding you correctly.

Are you saying that when you have the thing tuned into a DVB channel, live pause doesn't work?

That's one of the main reasons I was thinking of buying one and if that doesn't work, its a complete show-stopper.

Or rather, its lack of show-stopping abilities would be a show-stopper, LOL.

Chip

Hi


Pause live TV works by communicating with the TV to find out what channel it is on, and then switching to the same channel. This is done using QLink, SmartLink or whatever the manufacturer calls it. As far as I am aware there is not a method for communicating digital channel numbers.

You can still pause live TV on the digital channels, just make sure the recorder is on the same digital channel as you are watching and press Record then Pause.

Regards

Phil