Hallo

I have been lurking here for a while trying to understand the ups and down of a PVR.

My budget will not stand going to one of the top of the range and we do not watch that much to warrant the expense.

Really the Thomson DTI6300 is probably the only one that comes within my price. I have noticed that there is seller on Ebay that sells a lot of these - in fact there seems to be two sellers with the same location.

Does anyone have any experience, good or bad, about purchasing from him and whether it works as well if you do not take up the Top TV option.

I see that some of his sales are refurbished or returned items. Presumably buying the new version would be better?

Thanks for any replies and any other information that I have not considered.

Regards

David

i have one, i bought form tesco though for £80 ish i dont have top up tv and it works fine, annoys me how the hard disk never spins down but it does work fine!

Thanks

Are you able to adjust anything in the engineers menu. Don't know if the details are available on this site but I found a link here

http://www.radioandtelly.co.uk/topuptvanytime.html

towards the bottom of the page.

yes i can adjust anyhting which it lets me

i didnt know about that so thanks for enlightening me, ive got it in a small bedroom and its fine for me, go on treat yourself.......... not sure about ebay though! is there much price difference?

Is reception ok and your aerial suitable?

eBay is not so good if there are hardware problems and p&p can be a bit steep; with gadgetry like this maybe it is best to buy locally, and get a more practical guarantee

Sparkie - about the same price


Thanks Chris

Good point about Ebay.

I have a Phiilips set top at the moment and that shows full signal on the channels except in windy weather when it is a bit iffy.

I think set top boxes are more tolerant and and the picture usually just breaks up and no harm done

However, if the signal is iffy at all frequently, I think this could cause problems with a PVR, when most things depend on the supply of clean data to the hard drive. As a result of poor reception, recordings, chase play, and epg download etc. can fail and lead to crashes which require at least a re-set

We are in a marginal area and get poor signal (in spite of aerial upgrade and booster in the loft) and crashes due to weather still occasionally occur. I do not especially blame the Tomson because our otherwise reliable Digifusion is equally vulnerable at those times

At first installation it is understandable that new PVRs often get the blame - so if your set top glitches, fairly often, you might need some mods to be done to avoid this sort of frustration. Maybe there is just something loose which flaps around in the wind, but if you can get your Philips working reliably it would give a better chance of success with a Thomson or perhaps a less expensive s/h PVR like Digifusion FVRT 100/200, (have you looked at that forum) if you don't mind a bit of fiddling to get it right

Thanks Chris

Good to know those points. Currently I have a loft aerial which has been ok for many years. My chimney needs repairing before I can risk putting one there.

Your comments make a strong case for buying locally so that I can get cash back if necessary.

Thanks

David

i have had one of these for two weeks now and am on my second one - i have to say i am not impressed with its performance - teh video quality is not as good as i had expected even from a cheapy digibox. further that my first box kept dropping into negative

Thanks

I think I will save my pennies and give this a miss for the time being.

Does the HD run all the time or just the fan? I've had a reply (eventually) from TopUp saying its just the fan that runs continuously and the HD just as its needed.

Mine doesn't sound like its doing that....

Currently the HDD runs all the time - Although it has been mentioned by TUTV that future software versions possibly may only activate the HDD as needed. Whether or not this ever happens remains to be seen.