Great forum here. Just signed up after trawling for PVR80 info.

I just spoke to a very helpful engineer at Vestel who sent me the last upgrade for the t810 boxes, v5.6.
He said there was no extra features etc, just tweaks for stability and reliability.
I've just installed it and all is well.
Anyone who wants it, just PM your email address and I'll send it over.

He mentioned the twin record firmware and confirmed that it didn't come from Vestel, but that he'd tried it himself and it works fine.

Interesting. Last I heard was the v5.3 was the last. What's the build date of v5.6? (you can find this by scanning for an upgrade).

I don't think I'd describe the twin record firmware as "working fine", unless discounting the EPG problems and broken MHEG interactivity .

Build date is 2007-06-08.
What's the date on v5.3?

Yes, I guess he didn't test the twin record extensively.

What's MHEG?

I don't know the date of v5.3 exactly as I don't have any T810 units anymore, but it was certainly sometime in the last quarter of 2006.

I wonder what was urgent enough to warrant the v5.6 update a month before the T810 was discontinued??? Perhaps the black line at the bottom of the screen bug which was fixed for the T816 some months earlier. Or perhaps the EPG works properly, giving a full 8 days? With v5.3 the EPG was 3 day at best.

I also wonder who handles the repair of the Vestel based PVRs in the UK, since when I returned mine back in September it was sent off for "repair" twice and I would have thought it would have been sensible for boxes to be upgraded to the latest software instead of just reformatting the HD and sending it back, at best . But, mine came back with v5.3 on it still each time - who knows, if they'd flashed it with v5.6 I may have kept the box if it had fixed problems I'd been experiencing.


Digital text services, basically (i.e. the red button ).

No, still got a black line on mine. Hardly noticeable really but might be an issue with screen burn on my plasma.
I think this is probably a hardware issue. It's more apparent on RGB because of the image shift. The line is almost gone on composite video.

No again I'm afraid. The EPG is still up to about three days.
Again, probably because of the lack of memory.

Still, £45 in Sainsburys can't be bad. I'm happy to pay that just to be able to skip those wretched adverts!!

"I don't know the date of v5.3 exactly as I don't have any T810 units anymore, but it was certainly sometime in the last quarter of 2006."



2006-09-19 is the date.
And my 5.3 epg is 7 days

Yes, mine too, but doesn't it take ages to populate past 3 days?

No, not always but sometimes it drags on a bit.
Being on the channel you want to see info for usually helps speed it up.

Yes, that definitely speeds it up.

Yeah, £45 isn't so bad, and you can always take it back there if it turns out to be a problem . I'm not so sure the black line is a hardware issue, or rather not a hardware issue that can't be worked around on the software side. But then again I don't have any answer on that either way as I reported the problem back in September 2006, and when I got my T816 v1.9, a year ago, the problem was already gone, or at least improved (there is still tons of wasted overscan above and virtually none below, but at least there is more than on the T810 so that the black line is just gone on the two TVs I tried it on). I remember that the Sagem's that were using the same PVR chipset and middleware as the Vestel units have/had the exact same issue.

Interesting stuff. These devices are never perfect are they? Especially at this end of the budget.
But saying that, I must say I'm really quite surprised at what a good little unit it is. The control interface has had some thought put into it. Things like the 1 min skip are way useful.
I know there are plenty of stories of these things failing but from what I can gather from the forum, this one is pretty reliable.
Time will tell.

You can probably tell this is my first pvr. Bit of a novelty at the mo

Yes, generally speaking, the Vestel units are comparatively good when it comes to reliability, and obviously price. And, yes, there is no perfect PVR yet... The T810 was pretty close to perfect software wise taking its simpler features into account, which is why it's so frustrating that the newer T816 and T825 are some way off reaching that level. Feature-wise the T816 and T825 are so much better, but they are let down by more quirky/buggy software compared to the T810. With more effort on the software side, Vestel would have a perfect product on their hands.

But, anyway, you mention "1 minute skip" - is that right? Previous software versions had 30 minute skip (can't remember if it was on the up/down arrow buttons).

Now you've said that I just checked it. You're right, the up/down keys give you 30 sec jumps.
On my old firmware it was definitely the left/right keys, and I could swear it was 1 min jumps.
Left/right keys now give scan function, same as the <</>> keys.
I also notice the OK key gives you pause, and then while paused, left/right give you 1/4 and 1/2 speed.

The original firmware on this Goodmans clone was actually labelled 1.2, so god knows where that originated.

Also, on the original firmware, when in the EPG, it was not possible to go back past present-time, but on this version you can.
Waste of memory as you want future programmes not past.

It's a shame you can't extract the firmware. I would have liked to backup the original. As it is, that's lost now.

I have v4.9 so I'll load that and see if the skip function is different on that.

I don't know....us geeks eh...always fiddling

No need to bother, v3.5 and up all had 30 second skip, just as you describe with v5.6. I only mentioned it as I thought it might have been changed to 1 minute, considering the T816 went through lots of various configurations on the up/down left/right keys with 30 second, 1 minute skips and now most just have a 2 minute skip on the left/right buttons.

Your v1.2 was probably quite old - did you have any particular problems with it, prompting you to contact Vestel? Just curious .

Ok, that's good to know.

It has 11/06 on the sticker underneath. When did these units first appear?

No, no problems with it. Only had it since Sunday though!!
I just thought it was worth seeing if they had the most up-to-date firmware, and whether they'd readily hand it over. No problem there, he was only too glad to help.

One thing I have noticed is there is some colour bleed in the image. If you go to BBC3 say, there is a red shadow on the logo. It's noticeable on the blues and greens also. This is there on the live picture as well, so not a playback problem. I put this down to budget video processing.

I've just updated my two (v5.3) boxes with the v5.6 firmware from Crank61. No ill effects at all. Hopefully it will improve the reliability of one of my boxes which has been a bit shakey of late.

As another note, I've found that disabling the automatic update option helps prevent the odd overnight crash. Really there is no point in any of us owners having this turned on any more as we won't be getting any further updates.

I don't get that on my T810 - however, it's connected via CVBS, not RGB. That said, I see hardly any difference between the two.

parthena

Hi Crank61, any chance of getting a copy of the firmware, have sent you a PM.

Cheers

I'd like a copy too, if that's not too much bother. I've sent you a PM as well.

If anybody else needs this bin file, I got it from crank61 and can send it on. He sent it me last month but I only just round to installing it (actually, I'd forgotten I had it).

ShamblesX: I'd like a copy too. I've sent you a PM. Thanks in advance

Zetter - I replied to your PM yesterday with a link to the file

I could do with the link for the update please.

It's here

http://cid-6465ac3b0bf08b01.skydrive..._t810_v5.6.bin

It's moved to here

http://rapidshare.com/files/11073371..._t810_v5.6.bin