Would I benefit from a PVR

I've been reading so much about PVR's on here and how no one can live
without one. Well, I have a Sony DVD/HDD combo, which I am very happy
with, but would I benefit from having a PVR aswell?

Marky P.

"Marky P" wrote in message
...
I've been reading so much about PVR's on here and how no one can live
without one. Well, I have a Sony DVD/HDD combo, which I am very happy
with, but would I benefit from having a PVR aswell?


Well Marky I've now owned a Humax for around four months now and as they say
'I'm over the moon with it', however if the enthusiasm of others are to be
believed I'm pretty certain that if I had purchased a Topfield instead then
by now I would be sleeping with it!

You don't say if your Sony incorporates a Freeview tuner, if so surely it
can be used in the same way as a PVR?



Marky P.

In message , Marky P
wrote
I've been reading so much about PVR's on here and how no one can live
without one. Well, I have a Sony DVD/HDD combo, which I am very happy
with, but would I benefit from having a PVR aswell?

Marky P.



Buy a Topfield


--
Alan
news2006 {at} amac {dot} f2s {dot} com

On Fri, 07 Dec 2007 14:40:29 +0000, Marky P said...
I've been reading so much about PVR's on here and how no one can live
without one. Well, I have a Sony DVD/HDD combo, which I am very happy
with, but would I benefit from having a PVR aswell?

Tricky. My Dad has a DVD/HDD (with analogue tuner) coupled to a TV with
Freeview tuner. This means he only has one Freeview tuner, and using it
is pretty cumbersome IMO. Does your DVD/HDD have a freeview tuner? I
imagine that would improve usability a lot.

Either way, I guess you can do chase play, or begin watching a recording
while it is still being made, which are the mechanisms I use to allow
advert skipping on a programme while it's being broadcast.

Can you pause live TV? Not a must have, but quite handy.

Can you record two programmes at once? This is a pretty useful feature.

Does it automatically pad the recordings to allow for a bit of schedule
drift?

When you do a timer recording, does it always get the programme name and
info wrong because you had to start the recording a bit early? It was a
revelation to my Dad when I explained the Toppy always got the name
right, unlike his DVD/HDD, which invariably got it wrong.

Can you get your DVD/HDD to scan the EPG and record programmes for you?
It's a feature for the lazy, some might say, but once you've tried it
it's really great. Especially for those programmes that get shunted
round the schedules (I'm looking at you, Larry Sanders on ITV4). (NB the
Toppy is the only one that I know for sure can do this feature.)

Otherwise, I dunno, the interface on a PVR is specifically designed to
allow one touch recording from the EPG, and though I'm not familiar with
the Sony, all the DVD/HDD combos I have seen have looked like clunky
monsters compared to either of the two PVRs that I've fiddled with
(being the Humax, and the Toppy with MyStuff TAP installed).

Where a PVR falls down over a DVD/HDD is of course the ability to burn
DVDs. But I don't do that very much, and I can always copy the
programmes to my PC via USB and convert them there. Which I've done a
few times with excellent results.

So on balance, it depends how good the Sony is and what features you
want, and maybe how much TV you watch ;-)

--
Mark Myers
usenet at mcm2007 dot plus dot com
I call that a radical interpretation of the text.

"Mark Myers" wrote in message
.. .
On Fri, 07 Dec 2007 14:40:29 +0000, Marky P said...
I've been reading so much about PVR's on here and how no one can live
without one. Well, I have a Sony DVD/HDD combo, which I am very happy
with, but would I benefit from having a PVR aswell?

Tricky. My Dad has a DVD/HDD (with analogue tuner) coupled to a TV with
Freeview tuner. This means he only has one Freeview tuner, and using it
is pretty cumbersome IMO. Does your DVD/HDD have a freeview tuner? I
imagine that would improve usability a lot.

Either way, I guess you can do chase play, or begin watching a recording
while it is still being made, which are the mechanisms I use to allow
advert skipping on a programme while it's being broadcast.

Can you pause live TV? Not a must have, but quite handy.

Can you record two programmes at once? This is a pretty useful feature.

Does it automatically pad the recordings to allow for a bit of schedule
drift?

When you do a timer recording, does it always get the programme name and
info wrong because you had to start the recording a bit early? It was a
revelation to my Dad when I explained the Toppy always got the name
right, unlike his DVD/HDD, which invariably got it wrong.

Can you get your DVD/HDD to scan the EPG and record programmes for you?
It's a feature for the lazy, some might say, but once you've tried it
it's really great. Especially for those programmes that get shunted
round the schedules (I'm looking at you, Larry Sanders on ITV4). (NB the
Toppy is the only one that I know for sure can do this feature.)

Otherwise, I dunno, the interface on a PVR is specifically designed to
allow one touch recording from the EPG, and though I'm not familiar with
the Sony, all the DVD/HDD combos I have seen have looked like clunky
monsters compared to either of the two PVRs that I've fiddled with
(being the Humax, and the Toppy with MyStuff TAP installed).

Where a PVR falls down over a DVD/HDD is of course the ability to burn
DVDs. But I don't do that very much, and I can always copy the
programmes to my PC via USB and convert them there. Which I've done a
few times with excellent results.

So on balance, it depends how good the Sony is and what features you
want, and maybe how much TV you watch ;-)

I'd agree with almost everything that Mark says, except that pausing live TV
is a real "must have" for me. I've got a Philips DVDR7260H (160GB HDD with
one analogue and one digital tuner). It uses the GUIDEplus+ EPG
http://www.europe.guideplus.com/ and it's excellent, allowing pausing of
live tv, chase play etc., etc but where it really is "PVR-like" is that it
has a 6 hour "time-shift buffer".

I recently bought a Sony HXD870 but am going to put it on Ebay this weekend
because I was really disappointed that it doesn't have the time-shift
buffer.

But go on, buy yourself a PVR if you want to - I love spending other
peoples' money )

John

On Fri, 07 Dec 2007 14:52:52 GMT, "Ivan"
wrote:


Well Marky I've now owned a Humax for around four months now and as they say
'I'm over the moon with it', however if the enthusiasm of others are to be
believed I'm pretty certain that if I had purchased a Topfield instead then
by now I would be sleeping with it!

And if you'd bought a TiVo you would have married it!

On Fri, 07 Dec 2007 18:20:44 +0000, Steve Pearce
* wrote:

On Fri, 07 Dec 2007 14:52:52 GMT, "Ivan"
wrote:


Well Marky I've now owned a Humax for around four months now and as they say
'I'm over the moon with it', however if the enthusiasm of others are to be
believed I'm pretty certain that if I had purchased a Topfield instead then
by now I would be sleeping with it!

And if you'd bought a TiVo you would have married it!

And if you'd bough a Pace Twin, It'd be under the patio...

Cheers,

Colin.

In article , Marky P wrote:
I've been reading so much about PVR's on here and how no one can live
without one. *Well, I have a Sony DVD/HDD combo, which I am very happy
with, but would I benefit from having a PVR aswell?

A DVD/HDD combo effectively *is* a PVR, so whether you would "benefit"
from a different make and model depends on how well you like the
particular features the available types offer.

You say you're perfectly happy with your DVD/HDD combo, which would
appear to answer your own question.

Rod.

On Fri, 07 Dec 2007 14:52:52 GMT, "Ivan"
wrote:


"Marky P" wrote in message
.. .
I've been reading so much about PVR's on here and how no one can live
without one. Well, I have a Sony DVD/HDD combo, which I am very happy
with, but would I benefit from having a PVR aswell?


Well Marky I've now owned a Humax for around four months now and as they say
'I'm over the moon with it', however if the enthusiasm of others are to be
believed I'm pretty certain that if I had purchased a Topfield instead then
by now I would be sleeping with it!

You don't say if your Sony incorporates a Freeview tuner, if so surely it
can be used in the same way as a PVR?



Marky P.

It has analogue and digital tuners. I just thought PVR's had more
'functionality' and are more 'versitile' than a DVD/HDD recorder.

Marky P.

In article ,
Colin Stamp wrote:


And if you'd bough a Pace Twin, It'd be under the patio...

mine still works fine after 3+ years.

--
From KT24 - in "Leafy Surrey"

Using a RISC OS computer running v5.11