Freeview boxes with Hard Disk drives

sort of. If you're comfortable playing with pcs then you might like to consider this. I bought a tuner card for my pc so I was just limited to the size of the hard drive in the pc. A single HD struggled a bit with recording so I got 2x200Gb and striped them.
PCs video is in dualview with the tv and the sound is routed through the av2. Recording is now just a few clicks away.

quote:

Originally posted by John Sheridan:
sort of. .

Thanks John. I did consider using a Mac & freeview addon, but I'd rather go for a self-contained unit. Cheaper too!

Regards

Stephen

We're just about to follow my brother into buying a Topfield freeview box.
It has twin tuners and a 160Gb HD. It seems to be the current favourite of those on some very boring looking forums that my brother frequents.
He has no complaints about it at all.
Not sure of links/sites, and I'm at work so the Gestapo will be monitoring my usage.
Just try google. I think they're £270.

Tony

quote:

Originally posted by Stephen Bennett:
Cheaper too!

less than £200 including cables with a 400gb hard drive?
Of course the self-contained ones do have the advantage of letting you pause your current programme.

A friend of mine has a humax pvr 9200t and being friends we do not discuss the price of "Boy's Toys" but if you wished such function in a pc it might take some time a bit of fiddling about. I know people who travel the Microsoft Media Centre Edition road and for some it works or you can depart from the MCE and "roll your" own with all the added fun of finding the correct mix of software, hardware and performance to meetr your exact requirements. But rolling your own can take a fair bit of time and research - the choice is yours.

quote:

Originally posted by John Sheridan:

quote:

Originally posted by Stephen Bennett:
Cheaper too!

less than £200 including cables with a 400gb hard drive?
Of course the self-contained ones do have the advantage of letting you pause your current programme.

Where can you get a PC with legal software and the hardware/software for freeview for that price?

I can't use my existing Mac(s) just for TV.

Stephen

I don't use my pc just for tv either. A tv tuner card is about £60 with recording software. A hard disc if you need another can be had for about £40, so if you want to stripe them £80. A 10m dvi cable to run from my pc to the tv was £45. Still, if it's not the solution for you then it's not the solution for you. Just something to think about, that's all.

quote:

Originally posted by John Sheridan:
Still, if it's not the solution for you then it's not the solution for you. Just something to think about, that's all.

And I appreciate the suggestion.

Regards

Stephen

Go for the Topfield if you have a PC. The only box that lets you take recordings off the FreeView hard drive and transfer via USB to you PC to burn onto DVD

I bought a Digifusion stand alone box. It has a 40Gb hard disk and twin tuners, cost about 180 GBP, but may now be available cheaper as they have brought out a model with a larger hard drive. It's brilliant, the electronic tv guide is a revelation.

What about the Humax PVR-9200T. The Humax has 160 GB HD and Dolby Digital 5.1 optical output. You can even record 2 programmes simultaneously while watching a previous recorded programme from the HD. You can edit the material on the HD and copy to and from a computer. Here is the user manual.

Stephen,

I can vouch for the topfield 5000 PVRt. It is simply awesome. This box has transformed my TV watching and I'll probably be buying another for the bedroom. It is not perfect, I get the odd failed timer and clock loses a few minutes a week but to be able to watch a show and record two others at the same time gives the old VCR a major kick to the kerb. The playback is digital unlike a DVD recorder which only analogue and files can be downloaded via USB for editing and later DVD burning. More info can be found here
DBA forums

and you thought the naim forum was a rabid bunch

I also have a two channel PVR for satellite and the two boxes are daisy chained via SCART component into my toshiba 32 inch CRT. Could go on forever...

Dave

And the Toppy is coming down in price: http://www.empiredirect.co.uk/content/products/details/...+Box&make=Top&bhcp=1

Tony

I also have the Toppy 5000, w/120 gb hard drive. A brilliant machine which, unlike some others of the same type, actually works as claimed.

The twin tuners are essential in my household, wife and daughter often want to record two different programs while they're watching a third. Playback quality is identical to broadcast and management of recorded material is superb. The 1 hr 'real time' buffer is also very useful, removes the requirement for sitting in front of the TV as the news etc starts, just rewind to the start and skip the ads.

Definitely the most useful TV gadget I have ever owned.

We have an older Humax with an 80Gb HDD which pretty much does what it says on the tin. Fuss free and painless. It doesn't have twin tuners and you can't edit recordings - not a problem as everything we want to keep gets transfered onto a DVD recorder whic does allow editing.

I must check out the specs of the new box - looks like a logical upgrade.

Cheers

harry

I have a Pace Twin.

As with all such boxes, it has its faults.

See comparison at twin tuner, single record PVRs and twin tuner, twin record PVRs.

In case you're wondering, dual-record facility seems to be well worthwhile, and bigger hard discs are better ('cos you can't just switch tapes to get more capacity).

cheers, Martin

Took delivery of the new Humax 9200 (twin tuners + 160GB hard drive) this week to replace my Pace Twin.

First impressions are very good - easy to use, very good picture quality and the fan is very quiet.

I found Hughes Direct the cheapest - I think it was around £220.

Matt.

We bought the Toppy at the weekend. Great piece of kit, and quite customisable by 'TAPS' to be even better: http://www.toppy.org.uk/ look at the top right for TAPS.

Tony

Bet you got the black one only did silver when I got mind. They are good though

Silver for me too! It hides in a cabinet with smoked doors, so it doesn't matter. Also, the name badge on the black one is to gaudy and obvious.

Tony

I recently bought a Freeview DVD-R (Panasonic DMRES20), to supplement my Pace Twin PVR.

This is almost the only DVD-R with Freeview currently available on the market. The DMREH60 is very similar, but also includes a 200GB HD. I might have bought that if it had offered more than single recording, and hadn't had the same PQ issues as below.

I guess I was expecting something as slick and fast as a PVR, but just writing to DVD instead.

There are a few things that are dissapointing.

With most PVRs, the data received off-air is recorded directly to HD. DVD needs to be recorded in a different format, so it has to be converted first. This is done in a very unsophisticated way - instead of just converting it, the data is completely decoded to a picture, then re-encoded for DVD. This box is almost a separate Freeview receiver & DVD recorder just crammed into a single box.

At the standard "2 hours on a disc" the picture is noticeably poorer. 4 hour is worse again, and 6 hour approaches VHS quality. The 8 hour mode has the same picture as 6 hour, but reduced audio bit rate (and may not play on other DVD players).

There is a 1 hour mode, which isn't far off broadcast quality.

Neatly, there is a mode where a program (eg a film) can be exactly fitted onto a disc, setting the data-rate accordingly.

The player can be pretty slow in the program guide, and isn't lightning fast when accessing the disc.

Graphics are less sophisticated than you'd get on a PVR.

The guide doesn't seem to have any background info on programs, so I often look them up on the Pace before setting up in the Panasonic.

It can record on DVD-RAM, DVD-RW & DVR-R/DVD+R, RAM being the preferred medium. It allows "chase play" (replay a program before it has finished recording), and it can start recording another program immediately after another has finished. Unfortunately, these are £8 for five, so the "80 hour" capacity of the better PVRs would cost £140 at near broadcast quality (and you could only record one hour at a time before switching discs).

The other disc types have a 30-40s delay after one recording before you can start another (finalising a "session", I guess). Also, they "forget" whether the program is in 4:3 or widescreen, so the TV must be switched manually. Also, it seem that when reording to these, you cannot also watch the off-air picture on your TV at the same time.

It's also annoying that you must put the player into Timer mode to make a timed recording, and it doesn't seem to offer any way to make it ask for a new disc when the current one is full.


Although it's not up to a PVR, I don't regret buying it. We needed a new DVD player, because the old one died and I'd have spent half the £200 budget on a replay-only unit anyway.

Since our Pace can only record a single program & only has a 20GB disc, it is very nice to have that "second recording" ability. Since the Pace does occaisionally crash (much less often since recent firmware upgrade), I can setup to record on both if I'm really desperate to see something.

There are also a few programs where you just want to record them to keep. I can do that now.

cheers, Martin

I am interested in one of these combined Freeview/HD/DVD boxes. Does anyone know if any of the ones mentioned have the ability to receive the TopupTV service?

Cheers,

Jon

Hi Jon;

Looks like the Topfield can - see bottom of the page for this quote:-

"The Topfield is even Top-Up TV compatible, so you can pay for extra channels on top of the existing free-to-view Freeview channels".

John.

The Toppy has two card slots, just in case.

Tony

John and Tony,

Many thanks.

Cheers,

Jon