Humax or Topfield ?

On Thu, 6 Dec 2007 22:21:26 -0000, "Dr Zoidberg"
wrote:

"PeterT" wrote in message
.. .
On Wed, 5 Dec 2007 16:01:25 -0800 (PST), widgitt
wrote:

The only the two PVR's worth mentioning.

Im a Humax lover and have dealt with a few hundred of them.
Reliability is good but not faultless.
I have never failed to teach even the oldest and most technophobic to
use them. Even the old couple that initially failed to understand and
made me take it away, eventually came back for another one and have
now got to grips with it and love it.

Humax is great for recording radio, using the guide just like
recording TV. Dont know about the Topfield in this respect.

Photo and music storage can be fun.

can you please advise if it is possible to record radio progs on the
Humax and then transfer them to a flash memory card - either directly
or via a laptop?

Yes , but it's not a single step process.

Transfer files to laptop via USB.
Convert files to mp3 format
Copy onto memory card.

Thanks for the info - will make futher enquiies as to how succesful
such transfers are.
--
Cheers

Peter

Grumps wrote:
"bugbear" wrote in message
...

locate, record, and file programs selected by name, channel or day
with no further operator intervention.

Which is quite the killer feature IMHO.

Are TAPsfree and easy to install?

Mostly, and fairly.

BugBear

They can ALWAYS do this - but you may have a limitation on the third
channel

That's a contradiction in terms. You can't _always_ do something and have a
limitation on it.

To clarify for the OP: you can record from two separate muxes but only watch
a third channel if it shares one of those muxes. If you want to watch a
channel on a third mux, you can't - theHumaxwill simply show an error
message on the screen.

Also, if recording two separate programmes, with myHumax9200Tthe pause
and rewind live TV doesn't work on a third programme I'm watching, even
though it shares one of the muxes. I don't know if this is a fault or not.
Perhaps someone can enlighten me.

--
Jeff
(cut "thetape" to reply)

It's a PVR not a magician...to be able to record 2 shows and watch a
third is that not enough for some people?
2 hard drives 2 tuners 2 channels recording... Understandably to me
the 3rd show is not being recorded while you watch it, hence the
inability for it to rewind or pause. Simply both drives are being
utilised It is just asking too much of your Humax I'm afraid

Personally, I can't remember the last time I recorded 2 shows and
watched a 3rd...that is TV overkill. I have a streaming media player
so I would just download one of the shows if needed, but that is
another topic

Damon

On Dec 7, 10:16 am, Kiwi1971 wrote:

It's a PVR not a magician...to be able to record 2 shows and watch a
third is that not enough for some people?
2 hard drives 2 tuners 2 channels recording... Understandably to me
the 3rd show is not being recorded while you watch it, hence the
inability for it to rewind or pause. Simply both drives are being
utilised It is just asking too much of your Humax I'm afraid

The Toppy only has one HD drive, and I'm pretty sure so does the
Humax.

One irritating thing about about the Toppy is it can't overlap two
recordings from the same channel.

For instance a programme on BBC 2 from 21:00 to 21:30 followed by one
from 21:30 to 22:00 has to be recorded either as single event from
21:00 to 22:00, or two events with the split at 21:30. What you can't
do is set a recording for the first show with padding added to the
end, or for the second show with padding at the start. It the two
shows are on different channels then there's no problem. Odd. My old
Sky+ had no trouble with doing that.

Andrew wrote:
On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 12:50:05 +0000, AnthonyL wrote:

I for one find it difficult to understand what the real (significant)
difference are apart from the TAPS. It is not practical to "just have
a play" as there may be features that you do not realise you want
until you have used the thing for a month or two.

TAP's are the fundamental difference between them. I had and hated the
Humax for about a month before I returned the bug ridden POS to the shop
and bought a Toppy which I have loved ever since. I don't get the "high
maintenance" message earlier, you just install MyStuff and get on with it.


Been nagged recently?

BugBear (in cryptic mode)

"bugbear" wrote in message
...
Grumps wrote:
"bugbear" wrote in message
...

locate, record, and file programs selected by name, channel or day
with no further operator intervention.

Which is quite the killer feature IMHO.

Are TAPsfree and easy to install?

Mostly, and fairly.

Don't you get clashes between different TAPs?

--
Max Demian

"Mark Carver" wrote in message
...
On Dec 7, 10:16 am, Kiwi1971 wrote:

It's a PVR not a magician...to be able to record 2 shows and watch a
third is that not enough for some people?
2 hard drives 2 tuners 2 channels recording... Understandably to me
the 3rd show is not being recorded while you watch it, hence the
inability for it to rewind or pause. Simply both drives are being
utilised It is just asking too much of your Humax I'm afraid

The Toppy only has one HD drive, and I'm pretty sure so does the
Humax.

One irritating thing about about the Toppy is it can't overlap two
recordings from the same channel.

For instance a programme on BBC 2 from 21:00 to 21:30 followed by one
from 21:30 to 22:00 has to be recorded either as single event from
21:00 to 22:00, or two events with the split at 21:30. What you can't
do is set a recording for the first show with padding added to the
end, or for the second show with padding at the start. It the two
shows are on different channels then there's no problem. Odd. My old
Sky+ had no trouble with doing that.


Maybe the Freeview play back will overcome this as you shouldn't need the
padding

http://www.toppy.org.uk/static/FreeviewPlayback.shtml

--
Michael Chare

Kiwi1971 wrote:

It's a PVR not a magician...to be able to record 2 shows and watch a
third is that not enough for some people?

Not necessarily. Sometimes the sound in some of today's programmes is so
bad (muffled, or too much background noise) that it would be nice to be able
to instantly play it back to check what was said.

2 hard drives 2 tuners 2 channels recording... Understandably to me
the 3rd show is not being recorded while you watch it, hence the
inability for it to rewind or pause. Simply both drives are being
utilised It is just asking too much of your Humax I'm afraid

I happen to agree with you - it's just that it isn't covered in the manual.

And there are other strange things not covered. For example - and to extend
my reply above about poor sound - if you aren't recording anything, and want
to instantly play back, you can. But it is not possible to use subtitles at
that stage - you get an error message. You have to go back to the start of
the time-shifted programme, record it, and then when you play it back
subtitling becomes available!


Personally, I can't remember the last time I recorded 2 shows and
watched a 3rd...that is TV overkill. I have a streaming media player
so I would just download one of the shows if needed, but that is
another topic

I am afraid this does happen. The Schedulers seem to take a perverse
delight in pitting new programmes against each other. Sure, most of the
time it doesn't matter, but Sod's Law must come true now and again...

--
Jeff
(cut "thetape" to reply)

Mark Carver wrote:
On Dec 7, 10:16 am, Kiwi1971 wrote:

The Toppy only has one HD drive, and I'm pretty sure so does the
Humax.

One irritating thing about about the Toppy is it can't overlap two
recordings from the same channel.

For instance a programme on BBC 2 from 21:00 to 21:30 followed by one
from 21:30 to 22:00 has to be recorded either as single event from
21:00 to 22:00, or two events with the split at 21:30. What you can't
do is set a recording for the first show with padding added to the
end, or for the second show with padding at the start. It the two
shows are on different channels then there's no problem. Odd. My old
Sky+ had no trouble with doing that.

That seems odd. The Humax will do it - even with padding - provided you
aren't recording anything else at the time. In other words, it appears to
use two completely separate heads to record the programmes. You get - eg
with -2 and +5 minute padding using your programme times example - 2058 -
2135 on one head, and 2128 - 2205 on the other, even nthough both are on
BBC2.

--
Jeff
(cut "thetape" to reply)

In article 4e6128c4-3368-4ceb-8299-
, Mark Carver wrote:
One irritating thing about about the Toppy is it can't overlap two
recordings from the same channel.

For instance a programme on BBC 2 from 21:00 to 21:30 followed by one
from 21:30 to 22:00 has to be recorded either as single event from
21:00 to 22:00, or two events with the split at 21:30. What you can't
do is set a recording for the first show with padding added to the
end, or for the second show with padding at the start. It the two
shows are on different channels then there's no problem.

Won't it let you program the duration of both as a single recording and
split it into two files afterwards?

Rod.