It's a glaring omission.

Question 1: Implemented many such interfaces have you? Or is that another one of your sweeping statements?


Question 2: Many? Are you in market research?


It might be seen by some as an omission of a nice-to-have, but glaring? I think not. Essential it certainly isn't. Serious omission? Nope, certainly not serious. Some might even argue that a proper USB host controller would be more useful, or maybe a fully-specced Ethernet port to allow home network connectivity. But wifi coming above those? I doubt it very much (especially as no existing box has such full Ethernet or wifi connectivity implemented).

And its' funny how you keep on using these emotive words to over-dramatise the situation.

Sit it beside any modern domestic electronic device (e.g. Playstation) and it really is a glaring omission. All the potential functionality lost due to TAPs not having access to the internet is also scandalous.

Why not start comparing like for like. Going by your comparisons, we might as well criticise it for not supporting Blu-Ray because it has no dvd drive that can support Blu-Ray. XBox360 can play HD content, the Toppy cannot. The Toppy is not a gamestation, the Playstation is not a PVR.


You really do not understand what you are talking about do you. You are now putting together words that have no basis in fact, but my they do sound good. And your overuse of dramatic terms such as scandalous just beggars belief. You really do have some deep-seated issues to wish to grind an axe so much and in doing so make your arguments (and maybe therefore yourself) look really foolish.

Nonsense again. You can stream video now on a 5800 to a PC using ftp4d and VLC or MPlayer.

It wouldn't be reasonable to expect the next Toppy to receive video over the internet though, would it? Or can you already with this?

No, it wouldn't be particularly reasonable due to the huge range of codecs used on the net. The EMMA2 chipset used by the 5xxx range only has an MPEG2/MP3 decoder, whereas most of the downloadable content on the net is encoded with more efficient codecs.

There's no technical reason why a 5800 couldn't playback MPEG2 content streamed onto it provided it's within the DTT specification.

Get a slingbox or networked DVD player if you want to stream video from the net, PC or NAS/home server.

Why would you expect a Freeview PVR to be able to?

It's not a media player it's a Freeview recorder.....

Yep, you'd expect (and maybe want) a PC to do that, maybe a PC running Windows Media Center, but not a Freeview PVR, whose main job is to record and playback Freeview/DTT content. Of course, it would be seen as useful by some, in the same way that it would be seen as useful if it could browse websites, make tea, knit sweaters from patterns hosted online, or chill your cans of lager (you could get rid of your internet fridge and internet knotting machine then).

So, at last! We're all agreed that there's no point in having an ethernet connection on the Toppy (because there's no way we'd want to use the full bandwidth for streaming video anyway) and that a WiFi connection would be best to download TAPs and updates, and that being wire-free would dramatically enhance the convenience and set free the functionality already in the box (currently held back by a primitive USB connection).

NO WE ARE NOT AGREED You seem to be in a world of your own if you have chosen to apply that interpretation and state categorically that anyone is in agreement.

You're obviously saying that (given that the new model does not have WiFi) you're quite happy sitting in the living room with a USB cable hanging out of your television cabinet, hooked up to a PC, running software that looks like it was written in 1986, and to pay several hundred pounds for that in 2007.

Fine. We'll agree to differ.

A number of posts have been removed from this thread as they were unconstructive and steering the thread off-topic.

Please alert any posts you would like us to review. Thank you.

Looks like you have been reading at least one of my posts. I suggested that this is where I see DVRs going in the future in a post from last week. The difference is that I was thinking 5 maybe 10 or even more years down the line dependant of higher speed broadband becoming widely available and sorting out the DRM issues re video streaming and download.

hi ian, you are taking a hell of a beating on this debate, and I see some of your posts are now removed. Why not get a good nights rest and hopefully in the morning you can explain better why you were upset about the feature

I actually think the thread reads really well now. I welcome the edits.

Sleep well, pjones.

Can I suggest that the best response to ianmoticons postings here are to ignore them. Without an audience he will quickly grow bored and head off to another (and another and another) forum...

Glen.

Most domestic electronic multimedia devices of the size and price of the Toppy come WiFi enabled. I believe that any new model should come armed with WiFi. It's a reliable format, available in millions of homes, used every day in millions of applications. I think any new model released with a cable connection would be restrictive and fussy. It's just not what we'd associate with modern living.

I think this is argumentative and not really adding to the debate.

Of course ian. Now night night. No more forums until tomorrow when you can post as much as you like again

Goodnight pjones. Thanks for your 'valuable' contributions

Most sensible post in any of your threads though.....

Please do not ignore these posts . He might end up on the Humax forum and we have enough mischief makers of our own over there.

He's being ignored, and any other bees in his bonnet, as it seems quite obvious that he is not reading and understanding any replies, neither does he really understand what he is talking about.

In my opinion the most glaring ommission of any pvr is the lack of an integral dvd recorder