Since getting my PVR (A digicrystal) the only thing I find disappointing is when I tried to play things back at fast motion playback speed as I did with my VCR. With my VCR I could play back the motorsport or rugby league at 2x or 6x speed and the picture would be still quite watchable. Good for zooming past the boring bits when in a hurry. With my PVR the slowest fast playback it has is 6x and it results in frames being flashed up at a rate of a couple of times per second which results in very jerky motion and gives me a headspins if I try to watch it.

Is this normal with all PVRs including the more expensive ones? Why can't it display frames at a faster rate to give smoother motion like a VCR? Is it something to do with reading the data of the HDD or something?

Also I note my digicrystal (equivalent of Wintal X10) has no slow motion playback. Is this the same for all PVRs?

At the risk of giving the Toppy Legions fodder, the Strong PVR has awfull FF. It's probably related to the decoding process.
However, it does have decent slowmo (1/2 ; 1/4 ; 1/8 and 1/16)... (only problem here is the slowmo graphic never leaves the screen,,)

FWIW, the Toppy has smooth FF (at 2x, 4x 6x), reverse (1x, 2x, 3x) and slow-mo (1/2x, 1/4x, 1/8x).

Just a shame it doesn't do "sound sampling" like my JVC HR-S9400 S-VHS VCR ... which also plays the audio during FF at natural pitch (by playing samples instead of doing a speedup) so that one can also [sort of] follow the dialogue during FF ... great for "speed-reading" a boring movie segment at double or higher speeds ... ... It would only take some simple firmware enhancement in a digital PVR to achieve this.

Well there you go! Toppy wins the round, it seems.
My old old VCR used to have a FF/RR with audio, but none of the newer units do...
(However, speeding through SBS movies on SVHS is OK thanks to the subtitles!)

How does the Wintal PVR compare in this regard?

After reading this conference I'm thinking of buying one.

The Wintal Fast Forward is great.. It has 6 speeds and I can zoom through the ads in under 3 seconds. Only improvement suggestion is adding a 30 second jump rather than fast forward. But the fantastic speed of the fast forward makes the 30 second jump feature only a minor improvement. Other issue worth mentioning is the DD2.0 sound sync problem after a fastforward needs to be fixed. Its fine if you only use MPEG sound (using RCA or setting to Stereo when using SPDIF). This is not a real issue as even though we have DD2.0 transmission in SD, its not true DD2.0 (I suspect stereo transmitted as DD2.0). I have never heard my other speakers (Center/surround) used other than the 2 main left/right speakers. Overall though, I'm extremely happy with the Wintal (considering the low price) and my VCR is mainly gathering dust...

Fully agreed there. The Topfield is limited to a relatively tame fast forward speed (I think someone mentioned in these forums that was because it plays back every frame while fast forwarding, which the Wintal sensibly does not), something that works better as "trick play" than as a useful ad-zapper - but then, the Toppy can deal with ad zapping in other ways The FF speed, though, really annoys a couple of Topfield-owning friends.



Dolby Digital is an encoding format, not a surround sound method. Dolby Digital 2.0 is stereo, by the very definition of it (2.0 = two channels). Those stereo channels can - and do - carry matrixed surround information that can be decoded by a Dolby Surround decoder.



Try hitting the "surround" or "Pro-Logic" button on your decoder or receiver

The only thing usually NOT transmitted with Dolby Surround material on Australian networks is a digital flag that tells your decoder to automatically switch to surround mode. Not all decoders obey this flag anyway (for example, Onkyo decoders do not, while Sony ones do).

It comes down to how well the PVR can decode the mpeg2 stream at speed. It may be in your case that the PVR is only presenting I frames as they are the easiest to decode (they have all the information in the one frame), thus keeping speed up with the least effort, but giving you stilted video. You will notice that many DVD players have similar issues during fast playback.

Damn!

Well, it doesn't play the frames to the TV, but it does decode every frame. The reason is actually a legacy of the CAM/encryption stuff. You see, the Toppy can record an encrypted program without your CAM decrypting it (say, you were watching another channel and using the CAM for that while recording something else), but you may want to decrypt your stored recording so that, if, say, you had to return the CAM (or the keys changed once a month or whatever), you simply play back the encrypted stream, and while it is playing (and being decoded), hit "REC" and this will save a decrypted copy of the program. To speed up this process, you can then FF 6x, and the saved recording will be a decrypted version (Aussie Toppy owners can still try this just to see how it operates, but of course there is no decrypting going on).
I reckon Topfield should have thought a bit more about this, and put a high speed (well, as fast as the CPU and CAM will operate) "dubbing/decrypting" mode, and leave the FF to have 2x4x8x16x32x or something.
At least we have the +30sec key (and a TAP to do 6 quick presses to therefore jump 3mins in only about 3 seconds!!)
Regards

As a user of both the Topfield and the Foxtel iQ, I have to say that the iQ leaves the Toppy for dead when it comes to picture search. It is smooth as silk even at the 30x speed, whereas the Toppy is very jerky even at it's annoyingly pedestrian speeds.

I'm hopeful that this is an issue that can be addressed in future firmware updates, but I may well be completely mistaken that firmware alone can fix it.

I also have the digicrystal 9000PVR and don't have that problem with mine. You can FF or RW in varied speeds options 1-6 (1 the slowest and 6 the fastest). You shouldn't have any problems seeing it if you FF 1. I can see mine fine.
I just put in a posting on this forum yesterday under Digicrystal SDT-9000PVR, about things I found out about it and what I think of them.
http://www.dtvforum.info/index.php?showtopic=16015&st=20

I have you noted with the digicrystal that if you are recording something while playing it back then the FF playback gets quite erratic. Often get the same frame being shown for a second or two.You are right that watching at FF 1 is not to bad but at about 6x it is a bit too fast and jerky for my liking. Someting around 2x or 3x normal speed would be good and no doubt much smoother.

Still would like someone to explain why it does not display frames at a faster rate and therefore produce smoother motion when FF. Is it because it only read every xth frame off the HDD and display it? What is a CAM?

Conditional access module. It is a decryption system for encrypted broadcasts. Satellite uses it, terrestrial overseas uses it in some places for "enhanced services".
The Toppy with Sat heritage has this hardware in place still (well, up to board revisions 1.1, 1.2 has done away with the PCMCIA bits to read the CAM).
Regards