What PVR are you using?

On Mon, 4 Apr 2011 13:02:45 +0100, "Dr Zoidberg"
wrote:

"Paul Ratcliffe" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 2 Apr 2011 08:18:10 +0100, Daniel Cohen
wrote:

I use the old 9200. I believe the supplied software for transfer was
problematic, but there was third-party software that (with a hardware
modification that voided the warranty, but was easy and safe) worked
well.

Arguably there's no need for transfer to PC with the large hard drives
in the latest models.

Of course there is, if you want to do something else with the content
apart from play it back on the local machine.


What percentage of Humax (or indeed PVRs in general) users do you reckon
actually do that?
I'd guess that it's a tiny number , probably only about 1%

The vast majority use them for timeshifting and that's it.
I haven't archived or edited a broadcast program for a very long time

I admit I do it less than I used to since everything seems to be
repeated so regularly. But I do sometimes burn something to DVD to
send to someone who missed the original broadcast. UPSNet is cheaper
than streaming over t'interweb if you're on dial-up or low download
volume account

bugbear wrote:
Topfield 5800, rented.

Dreading it breaking down, not looking forward to freeview HD
making it obselete.

Obsolescent, surely, not obsolete. It will go on doing what it's doing now
when you have DSO (I assume that's what you're referring to). It just won't
get the new HD channels which will then be available to you.

I like my Topfield!

As do I. And I would be very reluctant to move to something else which (a)
isn't as customisable (since I'm inclined to take for granted that the 'out
of the box' user interface will leave much to be desired) or (b) can't
transfer recordings from the hard disk in all their digital integrity to my
PC for me to have my wicked way with them.

Fortunately, with the support available at the forums at www.toppy.org.uk
(including the individuals there offering excellent and cheap replacement of
PSU capacitors which would otherwise make most Topfields land-fill after
four or five years), I won't have to move to anything else - unless I get an
irresistible desire to watch in HD.

André Coutanche

On Tue, 05 Apr 2011 13:58:18 +0100, Peter Duncanson
wrote:

On Tue, 5 Apr 2011 11:58:31 +0100, "MarkU" wrote:

Mark wrote:
On Mon, 4 Apr 2011 13:02:45 +0100, "Dr Zoidberg"
wrote:

"Paul Ratcliffe" wrote in
message
...
On Sat, 2 Apr 2011 08:18:10 +0100, Daniel Cohen
wrote:

I use the old 9200. I believe the supplied software for
transfer
was problematic, but there was third-party software that
(with a
hardware modification that voided the warranty, but was easy
and
safe) worked well.

Arguably there's no need for transfer to PC with the large
hard
drives in the latest models.

Of course there is, if you want to do something else with the
content apart from play it back on the local machine.


What percentage of Humax (or indeed PVRs in general) users do
you
reckon actually do that?
I'd guess that it's a tiny number , probably only about 1%

The vast majority use them for timeshifting and that's it.
I haven't archived or edited a broadcast program for a very
long time

My Humax (9300), although it has a large HD, does not make it
very
easy to archive stuff. Once you have a few programmes recorded
it is
very hard to find what you want since the UI is dreadful. You
can
only sort the programmes in date (recorded) order, not based on
title
or genre. In addition it truncates the programme title so, for
a
series, you cannot tell which episode is which.

Wow. That's retrograde. The Humax 9200 allows you to sort on
title. I do it all the time.

I have a 9200 and I've just looked at the manual for the 9300. The
displays and interface appear to be the same.
http://www.humaxdigital.com/global/p...9-0626_low.pdf

The programme titles are indeed truncated to 20 characters but the dates
and start/finish times are shown.

In the lists of recordings accessed either via the Play List button or
the Menu button the list can be sorted by title, ascending time or
descending time (Blue button).

Pretty sure the blue button only toggles between ascending and
descending time but I'll try to re-check this later.

What the Humax Freeview boxes lack but their Freesat boxes have is the
ability to get details of a programme by pressing the "i" button while
in the programme list.
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) Due to the amount of spam posted via googlegroups and
(")_(") their inaction to the problem. I am blocking some articles
posted from there. If you wish your postings to be seen by
everyone you will need use a different method of posting.

"Mark" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 5 Apr 2011 12:36:55 +0100, "tim...."
wrote:


"MarkU" wrote in message
...
Mark wrote:
On Mon, 4 Apr 2011 13:02:45 +0100, "Dr Zoidberg"
wrote:

"Paul Ratcliffe" wrote in
message
...
On Sat, 2 Apr 2011 08:18:10 +0100, Daniel Cohen
wrote:

I use the old 9200. I believe the supplied software for
transfer
was problematic, but there was third-party software that
(with a
hardware modification that voided the warranty, but was easy
and
safe) worked well.

Arguably there's no need for transfer to PC with the large
hard
drives in the latest models.

Of course there is, if you want to do something else with the
content apart from play it back on the local machine.


What percentage of Humax (or indeed PVRs in general) users do
you
reckon actually do that?
I'd guess that it's a tiny number , probably only about 1%

The vast majority use them for timeshifting and that's it.
I haven't archived or edited a broadcast program for a very
long time

My Humax (9300), although it has a large HD, does not make it
very
easy to archive stuff. Once you have a few programmes recorded
it is
very hard to find what you want since the UI is dreadful. You
can
only sort the programmes in date (recorded) order, not based on
title
or genre. In addition it truncates the programme title so, for
a
series, you cannot tell which episode is which.

Wow. That's retrograde. The Humax 9200 allows you to sort on
title. I do it all the time.

The 9150 does as well. I think the PP's probably wrong in what he says
about that.

Unless the option to do this is undocumented and hidden then I am not
wrong.

You are correct that it is not documented :-(

tim

"Peter Duncanson" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 5 Apr 2011 11:58:31 +0100, "MarkU" wrote:

Mark wrote:
On Mon, 4 Apr 2011 13:02:45 +0100, "Dr Zoidberg"
wrote:

"Paul Ratcliffe" wrote in
message
...
On Sat, 2 Apr 2011 08:18:10 +0100, Daniel Cohen
wrote:

I use the old 9200. I believe the supplied software for
transfer
was problematic, but there was third-party software that
(with a
hardware modification that voided the warranty, but was easy
and
safe) worked well.

Arguably there's no need for transfer to PC with the large
hard
drives in the latest models.

Of course there is, if you want to do something else with the
content apart from play it back on the local machine.


What percentage of Humax (or indeed PVRs in general) users do
you
reckon actually do that?
I'd guess that it's a tiny number , probably only about 1%

The vast majority use them for timeshifting and that's it.
I haven't archived or edited a broadcast program for a very
long time

My Humax (9300), although it has a large HD, does not make it
very
easy to archive stuff. Once you have a few programmes recorded
it is
very hard to find what you want since the UI is dreadful. You
can
only sort the programmes in date (recorded) order, not based on
title
or genre. In addition it truncates the programme title so, for
a
series, you cannot tell which episode is which.

Wow. That's retrograde. The Humax 9200 allows you to sort on
title. I do it all the time.

I have a 9200 and I've just looked at the manual for the 9300. The
displays and interface appear to be the same.
http://www.humaxdigital.com/global/p...9-0626_low.pdf

The programme titles are indeed truncated to 20 characters but the dates
and start/finish times are shown.

In the lists of recordings accessed either via the Play List button or
the Menu button the list can be sorted by title, ascending time or
descending time (Blue button).

What the Humax Freeview boxes lack but their Freesat boxes have is the
ability to get details of a programme by pressing the "i" button while
in the programme list.

and what a PITA that is (though not as big a PITA as the pressing the "back"
button in text mode swapping channels)

tim

On Fri, 01 Apr 2011 11:21:50 GMT, lid (AnthonyL)
wrote:

So what did you opt for and how do you find it?

Humax 9300 upstairs (replaced an aged FVRT200 on its second HD).

Humax HDR T2 downstairs. It replaced a FoxSat when I finally gave up
on FreeSat.

I like the user-friendliness of the Humax UI. They do seem prone to
bugs, but at least I have _some_expectation that they might be fixed
one day. I liked the 9300 so much that's why I bought the FoxT2 as
soon as I could get one.

The latest update to the HDR T2 has left me with (much worse) HDMI
sync issues, very low level sound on HD and occasional audio/frame
dropouts on HD channels. But the Humax is still better than the
Digifusion, which had an appalling thermal design. Used to keel over
every so often until I drilled holes in its cover. Couldn't keep the
PSU anywhere near it, because that got so hot. Incompetent design.

I've never owned a Topfield.

"Bob Moore" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 01 Apr 2011 11:21:50 GMT, lid (AnthonyL)
wrote:

So what did you opt for and how do you find it?

Humax 9300 upstairs (replaced an aged FVRT200 on its second HD).

Humax HDR T2 downstairs. It replaced a FoxSat when I finally gave up
on FreeSat.

I like the user-friendliness of the Humax UI. They do seem prone to
bugs, but at least I have _some_expectation that they might be fixed
one day.

I had that expectation three years ago :-(

tim

On Tue, 5 Apr 2011 18:35:30 +0100, "tim...."
wrote:


"Mark" wrote in message
.. .
On Tue, 5 Apr 2011 12:36:55 +0100, "tim...."
wrote:


"MarkU" wrote in message
...
Mark wrote:
On Mon, 4 Apr 2011 13:02:45 +0100, "Dr Zoidberg"
wrote:

"Paul Ratcliffe" wrote in
message
...
On Sat, 2 Apr 2011 08:18:10 +0100, Daniel Cohen
wrote:

I use the old 9200. I believe the supplied software for
transfer
was problematic, but there was third-party software that
(with a
hardware modification that voided the warranty, but was easy
and
safe) worked well.

Arguably there's no need for transfer to PC with the large
hard
drives in the latest models.

Of course there is, if you want to do something else with the
content apart from play it back on the local machine.


What percentage of Humax (or indeed PVRs in general) users do
you
reckon actually do that?
I'd guess that it's a tiny number , probably only about 1%

The vast majority use them for timeshifting and that's it.
I haven't archived or edited a broadcast program for a very
long time

My Humax (9300), although it has a large HD, does not make it
very
easy to archive stuff. Once you have a few programmes recorded
it is
very hard to find what you want since the UI is dreadful. You
can
only sort the programmes in date (recorded) order, not based on
title
or genre. In addition it truncates the programme title so, for
a
series, you cannot tell which episode is which.

Wow. That's retrograde. The Humax 9200 allows you to sort on
title. I do it all the time.

The 9150 does as well. I think the PP's probably wrong in what he says
about that.

Unless the option to do this is undocumented and hidden then I am not
wrong.

You are correct that it is not documented :-(

I tried it last night and it does work as you say. I'm sure I tried
it in the past. Maybe it was changed with a firmware update.

OTOH I think I have found a bug. I got one of those DSO nag messages
when I switched it on and I pressed the wrong button to dismiss it. It
then got stuck in teletext mode and, eventually I had to cycle the
power to get it to work again.
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) Due to the amount of spam posted via googlegroups and
(")_(") their inaction to the problem. I am blocking some articles
posted from there. If you wish your postings to be seen by
everyone you will need use a different method of posting.

AnthonyL wrote:
(Apologies for including this in digital-tv as well but .pvr seems a
bit dead.)

A couple of years ago it seemed that Humax and Topfield were generally
the top choices for PVR.

Now it seems that there are numerous options.

So what did you opt for and how do you find it?

Thomson TiVo. Best one available 10 years ago and still going strong. ;-)

Tim

On Wed, 6 Apr 2011 11:02:40 +0100, "Tim Downie"
wrote:

AnthonyL wrote:
(Apologies for including this in digital-tv as well but .pvr seems a
bit dead.)

A couple of years ago it seemed that Humax and Topfield were generally
the top choices for PVR.

Now it seems that there are numerous options.

So what did you opt for and how do you find it?

Thomson TiVo. Best one available 10 years ago and still going strong. ;-)

What are you planning on replacing it with when the service shuts down
in a couple of months? I'm having a hard time finding something to
replace mine.

Jerry Brown
--
A cat may look at a king
(but probably won't bother)

http://www.jwbrown.co.uk