OK, I have bought my topfield and I have to say that the picture quality and the system's overall stability is a lot better than the Digifusion PVR that I had, but a couple of features of the topfield are disappointing and I wonder if I have missed something:

1) If the system is in standby and turns on to record a program it seems to take priority over the tele and DVD player. The DVD signal will be lost and the channel being recorded appears on the TV.

2) Once the recording is finished the PVR doesn't go back into standby? I think this is pretty poor as the unit does run hot and must be getting through the electricity units.

Apologies in advance if these questions have been covered in previous treads, I'm sure I'm not the first person to see this.

If your TV supports it, change the settings for the Toppy's Scart connection from auto to manual (or however it's worded). If it doesn't, the only other option is to snip/cover/push-in the pin on the Scart lead connecting your Toppy to your TV that triggers this behaviour (pin 8? Can't remember off the top of my head). The disadvantage of the latter is that your TV will no longer switch to the Scart AV input for your Toppy when you switch your Toppy on manually and your TV is already on (should you make use of this behaviour).


It should go back into standby, unless you do "something else" e.g. press a button on the remote control whilst it's recording.

Great reply, thanks for this!!

If its just the DVD being stopped that is driving you up the wall & it has 2 scarts then you could feed the output of the toppy into the input on the DVD and the output of the DVD into your TV.

I have mine setup this way and even when the toppy records it wont affect the DVD because if the DVD is playing the toppy will be refused through by the DVD unit until I put the DVD back into standby.

Regards returning to standby if it starts up to record, as has been said, if you press ANY button when its recording it will stay awake until you turn it off. If you fiddle with it and want it to shut down when its finished recording tell the toppy to sleep after 10 mins (press the 2nd button down on the right of the remote & set sleep to 10mins), this will count down to 1 minute and then wait for the recording to finish before counting the last minute and switching the unit off.

Its very useful if you are watching TV but decide to call it a night while the toppy is recording.

Or an alternate way to make the Toppy go to sleep when the current recording has finished, is just to press the standby button as usual, but then don't answer the box that appears asking if you are sure and want to end the recording. If you just leave it on that screen, the Toppy will go into standby as soon as current recordings have finished. The Toppy is a wonderful box so I'm sure you haven't made a mistake. The 'feature' where the Toppy switches the TV over when waking up for a recording is my main issue with the Toppy too!

I don't know if this is good or bad advice, but take as you wish.

If you plug your SCART lead into the VCR SCART output my TV doesn't seem to switch automatically to the Toppy when it powers up.

As I say don't know if this is good or bad advice. Someone will no doubt have an opinion ... that's why forums are good

VCR scart socket on the toppy does not carry RGB signals from the toppy, CVBS only for recording onto a video. If you are fussy about picture quality then it is a big step backwards.

I tend to mainly watch via the S-Video connection as the TV/ RGB socket connects through to my HDD/DVD recorder (but only switched in when copying stuff across as a separate Freeview STB feeds the HDD/DVDR most of the time). The VCR socket I use to feed audio to my A/V amp.

These are all great replies, thank you!

This method is not recommended as it does not shut the Toppy down gracefully.

How do you mean?

If you have a recording going and press standby it pops the message up. When the recording is finished it then switches off straight away. If you have any Taps that rename or change anything to do with the file there is a chance they will not start or even worse they will get cut off while running due to the instant power down.

The safest way is the timer as this still allows a minute after the last recording for things like renaming or moving to happen before the unit switched off.

That's correct, the recommended procedure is to use the Sleep Timer. This is set by pressing the Opt button on the remote, scroll down to the Sleep Timer option, then press the Right arrow key to bring up the 10min default. This value can be changed if necessary, but if you just want the Toppy to shut down after it's finished recording, then 10min is fine. Finally, press OK to set the Sleep Timer. There is no need to press the Standby button.

The Sleep Timer will count down to 1 minute and then wait until the recording has finished, after which the final minute is counted down and the Toppy then goes into standby.

Geoff

You guys are just so clever!!

I thought the current firmware had been fixed so that the OFF button did exactly the same as you describe for the Sleep Timer.

I am not running any TAPS and never had a problem just using OFF.

As stated above by Qwakrz, just pressing the Standby (Off) button brings up a message asking if you want to stop the recording. If you ignore this, the Toppy does indeed switch itself off (i.e. into standby) as soon as the recording has finished. If you are not running any Taps, then this is probably OK, but I'm not sure I would like to leave a recording at the mercy of an on-screen message which one day might just answer 'Yes' to itself!

Geoff

Yes, in the current firmware, the Off button works just fine while recording.

In some earlier ones, however, it caused a crash instead. So, if you want something that works on every firmware, using Opt then Sleep is the way to go.

Nigel.

Sid Sockhead ... are you still feeling that the Toppy wasn't right, or has everyone put your mind at rest that you got the best

Yes they have, I think overall its a very good device, its certainly a lot better than the Digifusion I had. I would say I'm surprised by the heat it generates, I think it would be better to have a fan, even with the noise that would generate. I'm also a little disappointed with the way the time slip function works and the issues of getting the unit into standby, these seem a little bit heath robinson to me.

However, this is the important bit, the picture stability, the overall functionality and picture quality I find is very very good and for that alone I think its worth the money.

It's been 26°C ambient in my lounge for most of the last fortnight, Sid. I'd expect most CE gear to feel like it's running hot under those conditions.

Rest assured that come next winter you'll not be able to toast those tootsies on it and will need a gas fire instead. :wag:

Spoil Sport, I was looking forward to that, my tootsies have been toasted for a long time

There's a guy on the satellite section whose receiver case is live whenever he turns it on. I should PM him to see how he does it.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Your Digifusion fan wasn't as loud as my Digifusion fan then! No way would I choose to have a fan, and in fact it's the only thing I didn't like about my FVRT100, but it was enough to steer me elsewhere.

Personally I'd rather have something that runs hot in a controlled fashion and within tolerance than something that requires a fan, and all that entails, to keep it cool. As Nigel often pops up to reiterate - hardware-wise the same machine has been out and about in Australia for some time prior to the UK launch, and without issue to my knowledge. So - if it's fine there...