Could anyone please offer a brief outline of the pros and cons of this box for me? I am a Thomson Topup TV box user who wants out and I'm not sure what box to go for.

Does this box have the same crashing/failed recording issues the Thomson box has?

The 5800 is reliable provided you don't use the Freeview Playback firmware. It's even more reliable if you use one of the patched firmwares available on toppy.org.uk. Crashes are rare and things that can cause them are well documented so it's easy to avoid them.

Pros
Quiet - no fan.
Quality remote, surprisingly ergonomic given its shape and very sensitive. I can bounce the signals off any wall in the room!
Recordings can be filed in folders.
USB connection to PC/Mac.
Customisable with TAPs and you don't need to be a tech wizard to load them onto the box.

Cons
The built in user interface is disappointingly basic and sports a fetching turquoise/grey theme.
Interrupts viewing of DVD/XBox when it wakes to make a recording.
Remote keypresses sometimes get ignored.
The older, stable firmware only fast forwards at 6x speed and rewinds at 3x.
A bit more expensive.

As long as you've a PC available somewhere in the house so you can get a TAP such as MyStuff onto it, I'd thoroughly recommend it. If you've no intention of loading TAPs, a Humax might be more suitable.

Cons:

Overpriced

Noisy - Many Topfields are known to suffer from an intermitent loud buzzing. Ours does. This is NOT a quiet machine.

Terrible EPG

Sluggish operation.

TAPs - Although these address some of the EPG problems, and auto-padding, they are difficult to download, and add the the overall sluggishness of the machine. I wouldn't recommend you rely on the TAPs if you are not PC savvy. With Mystuff, our Topfield takes 40 seconds from pressing the 'on' button, to the point where it allows you to do anything else.

If you use your television digital tuner for day to day veiwing, the Topfield will change it to the PVR tuner when it starts to record a programme.


Pros:

It has a larger than normal disk

Only crashed once

(That's it)

Not true.

Glen.

Ah well, I have ordered one of Dixons.co.uk (184.95 inc delivery!), so I suppose I will find out for myself!

Thanks for the help people.

There's one respect in which he is correct. The time from 'switch on' to 'remote control response' is about 10 secs on a 'naked' Toppy and about 30s while MyStuff "loads" (up the EPG) and "searches" (for CTs). But it's not a big issue as far as I am concerned...

K

The Topfields are certainly quieter than the Thomson, and the majority of them are not noisy at all, certainly not the ones with the newest hard drives.

The Thomson can be heard when the TV is quiet in my living room; neither Topfield (5800 or 5810) makes any noise; one has a Samsung drive, and one a Western Digital.

I'd also disagree with the assertion that downloading TAPs is difficult; installation is pretty simple - for most there's just one file to copy to the PVR. Plug into the PC, find the Program Files folder in the left pane of the transfer software, which shows the PVR, find then TAP file in the right hand one, on your PC, click the arrow in the middle to transfer it.

I'd agree that it's VERY sluggish though. After using an access devices PVR (quick) and a Panasonic IDTV (very very quick) for some time, I was amazed that this premium product trogs around so very slowly when using the menus or channel hopping - to the point where it actually ignores presses of the remote.

ATM I personally am VERY disappointed with what I thought to be a fool-proof purchase.

What firmware have you got? With the latest one, we've had the oppposite - some people (especially with programmable remotes) complaining that it responds too many times, until they change the settings on the remote.

Fool-proof? Because it cost more than other brands?

Glen.

£180 from Dixons/Currys is only £25 more than the Humax. That's not overpriced. Now if you were talking about the 5810 I might agree.


I'd happily have a Topfield in a bedroom, but I wouldn't have a Humax. You don't have to suffer a noisy unit. If it's unsatisfactory, return it and be sure to tell the supplier why. If it's out of warranty, loosen the middle rear case screw, if that doesn't do it, open the case and remove the metal plate between front panel and motherboard.


Turning off Interactive vastly improves things. It's a pity to have to do this as you lose BBCi and Teletext, but it makes the unit far more usable. The Humax is definitely more snappy when it draws menus and the like though.


I really can't see what is missing from MyStuff other than Freeview Playback based series link (which I can happily live with out at the moment). Quicker boot would be nice though. Some TAPs are known to bog down the 5800, most don't though. Installing the TAPs themselves is easy once you've got the USB driver installed.

There is a very loud occasional buzzing come from our machine, and I know this is a known issue with Topfields, so I brought it to the OP's attention.

We don't use the interactive function. We disabled it.

I didn't say there was anything missing from Mystuff. It's a vast improvement on the original EPG and general functionality. However, we have turned on our Topfield from cold three times today, and it takes 18 seconds to start without Mystuff, and a full 40 seconds with it. Now, that might not be a problem to many, but I was addressing the OP's question about the pros and cons, and I have informed him of this so he can make his own decision.

We had difficulty downloading the TAPs, and almost gave up. Anyone who isn't PC savvy is just not going to do it. This is a machine for PC geeks, and I don't mean that in an unkind way. But people need to know that.

Would we buy another? Most likely not.

My toppy is in my bedroom, and linked to the main TV via a video sender link thisd odd set up id due to aerial arangements as the main TV aerial doesnt give a good signal becasue of its age.
the only noise it makes is a feint whiring noise with the hard disk spinning, and a tiny bit of noise when the disk is 'searching'

As for the tap hassle, heres how it works connect the topfeild pvr to your p.c using a USB lead, downlaod the sfotware from the internet, its available at http://www.toppy.org.uk and install the software ( it should tell you what to do as ity goes along)
download a Tap from the internet, taps are usualy 'zipped' right click and select 'extract all' then transfer it to your toppy using the altair program from the topfeild software thingy that you downloaded.

I'd say it was no more difficult than, for example, installing a printer and that's not exactly a task for only the 'PC savvy' - drivers, a cable, software.

Glen.

One of the problems we had when downloading was the intructions seemed to be in Korean, and we had to guess what to do.

As for the noise, well, it's a VERY loud noise and it is a known issue. Simon suggested we should loosen a screw at the back, which suggests he also knows about this noise issue, and I think the OP deserves to know about it too

Another pro which amazingly hasn't been mentioned yet is the support available on the www.toppy.org.uk forums. If there ARE any problems you can be sure someone will help you resolve them.

Glen.

I imagine the forums haven't been listed because most PVRs have a site.

http://www.hummy.org.uk/invison/

Yes, the original 2005 manual was written in Korenglish. It was rewritten by a native English speaker in 2006 IIRC. If you're using MyStuff, you'll barely need the Topfield manual.

I had occasional resonance of the lid, not especially loud, but somewhat annoying. Prodding the lid stopped it temporarily, loosening the screw sorted it out permanently, however, when I tightened it again a few weeks later the resonance didn't come back. A few users (bare in mind that there are 8000 registered at toppy.org.uk alone) have complained of noise unrelated to the lid and have fixed it by removing that internal divider. There also seems to be some variation in hard disk noise level, so you may be unlucky, but that just reinforces the need to send it back for a replacement if you're not happy.

The Toppy.org.uk is more active than most, partly because TAPs keep drawing people back. You get upgraditis if you're not careful.

The only noise we had was the disk clicking (ours is in the bedroom too) and it was solved by installing and tweaking the HDD Info TAP.

K

No, I don't mean the manual. I mean the instructions that come onscreen when you try to download the programs you need to use to download TAPs. I think one of them is called Altair, and there's another too. It was hard to work out that we needed both these programs installed, and it was made harder because the prompts were in Korean, and we didn't know which icon to press,

Where did you get the Altair download from? Mine (which I've had for around two years) is in English and is a quite simple "highlight and click an arrow" application...

K

Oh yes, sorry, I misread you there. The PC tools suffer from a lack of clarity (the firmware upload tool especially), however, you can dispense with Altair and the other Topfield supplied tools and use Topset instead. It does, amongst other things, file transfers (recordings, mp3s or TAPs) and firmware updates.

Like you said, you do need to be PC savvy to get the thing set up with TAPs, so it's not for everyone.

Yes. I'm afraid that despite everything, our Topfield remains the worst peice of technology in our home. We really do despise it and very much regret ever buying it. It annoys us every time we have to use it and we can't wait to throw it away and get something better. The fact that when we go online to try to correct the faults on the machine, the Topfield online instructions are in Korean, shows how they have hung us out to dry, and they've done little, if anything, to help us to get over the shortcomings of this unit, that they have the audacity to sell at a premium price (£50 above the Humax, when we bought it six months ago).

We are left in the hands of third parties to try to right the many wrongs with this machine. I think that is plain wrong, and Topfield deserve no credit in here for doing that.

Yikes, why don't you ebay it? You'll easily get £130 for it. I really don't see the point suffering something you don't get on with.

Or better still, sell it to me & save the fees!

I'm serious if you want to PM me.