have posted this on the main forum but was advised to move it here incase there is someone that may have had one

Ok,,, just bought one of these of ebay at a princely sum of £49.99 after many many months of watching the PVR market mature itself a bit more, and as a computer techy for the last 18 years realise that they always send the first products out at stupid prices whilst knowing fine well they are bugged to hell. But played the waiting game for the best part of my life on technolegy, so why change a habbit of a lifetime,and found that these have a fairly good write up. Although the GUSTB801V has not had much of a mention although it is just a T810 vestel clone apparently . I thought would just type my experience and slight confusion with software updates here, thought it would be wise to now, as there are a few starting to crop up on ebay, . As vestel are starting to mature they are starting to put out a fairly decent prduct at the lower end of the scale, and I like the lower end of the scale, yes I know I can go out and pay silly money for a topfield, but for what I record it aint worth it, and even though humax have a regular update programme that just says one thing, they are still buggy and I aint paying that sort of money anyhoo.

Anyhoo again, the part that seems a bit strange on the software is the versions mentioned,versions 3.9 4.9 5.3 and the latest what seems to be a third party versionn 1.0, this is where its strange, as mine is version 1.2 UK and has two bugs I have noticed so far, one not so noticeable and one very noticeable, the first one has been mentioned with other versions and doesnt really bother me at all, a very very very slight skip on playback, if it happened three times in a row and you blinked at the same time you would miss it, so its not a problem. The second is when I recieved it the first thing I did was set the timer to record heros, I set one and tried to set the second one wich ran back to back, it said there is already a programme set with that name,and wouldnt let me, so decided to just do it manually and set it by time and date, there was another bub with the timer but thats sorted

Apart from this it has a bit of a hummmmmm, but does wind down when not in use, and the volume of the telly tends to drown this hummmmm out anyway, The remote control is in my opinion very well set out and very easy to use. The playback quality of picture is as good as realtime, apart from the odd milisecond skip.Time shift is good. I havent yet tried to record two programmes at once as this does not interest me, all I wanted this for is because I got sick of missing the odd programmes that I do watch, then missing the bluddy repeats. So £49,99 does the job nicely thankyou very much

There is no dual record, only allowed one record at a time, but didnt know that the t810 could pause live TV, so its a bit of a confusing one, not that bothered about dual record, but would have been a bonus,Would be better if I could clear this software issue up but cant find a thing about version 1.2uk

I download a third party software for dual record version 1.0 but now not to sure of its compatability with this, its doing as its told, so will have to have a read agian and see exactly what its for and what gains I will get from it.The EPG is limited now, it only downloads 4 days of the programming guide, wich is more than the on digi box so when the babys got more chocolate than he had before, hes a happy baby I will be getting some screen shots up later, although I have been a computer tech for the last 18 years, I am new to the pvr market, even though I have done a fair bit of read ups as its progressed, and its computer and software based,but the more you know the better. And they are a 1000 times better than the DVD recorder I had, that took 10 minutes before it realises its a recorder and then another 10 minutes to find itself

So if anyone out there has bought one of ebay then do tell,or if anyone has had one.There are a couple of bugs been noticed as I have used it, even though the picture quality live and recorded is very good, now and again there is a slight jitter to the bottom of the screen

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...s/40600021.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...s/40600023.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...s/40600024.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...s/40600025.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...s/40600026.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...s/40600027.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...s/40600028.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...s/40600029.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...s/40600030.jpg

a few screen shots

Yes, you definitely have a Vestel T810 based box, installed with single record software (which can pause live tv, but you cannot record while timeshifting). The earliest version that I have tried was v3.5 which was shipped with my T810 back in August 2006. From your photos, I notice your v1.2 is dated July 2006 and it has an option to ignore encrypted channels. This option certainly wasn't present in v3.5 and up. So, there are two possibilities... Either v1.2 is very old compared to v3.5, let alone v5.3 (which was the last ever version released), or Grundig had versions of the software built especially for them, or it could be both of course.

That said, you should have no trouble installing either v5.3 single record (which is certainly a newer build than yours) or the unofficial v1.0 twin record software (which was leaked by somebody and never released for the T810 officially), both of which are newer than your v1.2 software. But, if you do upgrade the box, you probably won't be able to return to v1.2, since I don't think those software files ever came to light on the net .

Installing the newer single record software will certainly remove the bug you've found where you were unable to set back-to-back recordings from the EPG. The v1.0 twin record software has its drawbacks, notably interactivity doesn't tend to work much at all, and also EPG population problems. However, the single record software had EPG problems too, with only 4 days tending to be listed - this is a problem that crept up on the T810, since I'm sure the EPG was perfect when I first bought it, but I eventually returned it a few months ago since the EPG did not populate well at all with the single record software either.

Regarding the humming, that is due to the HDD. But, the Vestel boxes have a habit of vibrating and/or resonating when the HDD is spinning, depending on its exact position and what it has been placed. Try moving it a bit, or touching the case, when it starts humming to see if the noice changes. If so, placing something under the feet of the PVR may help.

cheers for that, much appreciated, is version 5.3 still available and where, I did download the unofficial 1.0 but would prefer to try 5.3 first to see what comes of that, as for the hard drive hum its not so much a problem as our lass is as def as a mute and has the volume up which drowns it out, if it annoys me then I will take the box to bits and see how its mounted, may be able to absord the sound abit better than vestel did, tried with rubber pads on the bottom and then foam when I first got it but that didnt make a lot of difference. As for EPG thats not to much of a problem at the minute but would be handy if I could have 7 days populated