Hi all,

Okay, you've convinced me that I want a Topfield 5000 to upgrade from my original Thompson that I got sooo many years ago.... I went to Harvey Norman a couple of hours ago, only one left and they wanted $999. Best they'd come down was $879. Knowing I'd seen $750, I left (would have paid $800).

Myer Megamart in the city didn't have any stock and told me they were $1000 and wouldn't deal hypothetically.

Cheers,

Simon....

POSTSCRIPT: I've got the bug, have had a read through the posts and $750 isn't all that common and is largely east coast. I'm going back in to HN to pay the $879. That's only a couple of lunches in the city and I want to play!

Know the feeling. I wanted a Toppy when the first came out, and was prepared to pay well over $1000 at that stage.

After 2 days of not being able to find a stockist with stock, I just HAD to buy something. Now a happy Strong 5390 owner of nearly 18 months standing and eagerly awaiting the Strong HD PVR.

Best of luck,
Dik

Reasons for buying a Toppy over a Strong:

1. Dual tuners
2. USB out to computer

If the above is of no great concern, save $400+ & get a Strong 5390. Clunky software, and a horrible little remote but excellent video quality & as sensitive as any other STB around. Same capacity (120 mb) as the Toppy.

John

Check SimonB's other thread. He purchased a Topfield from Harvey Norman in Perth.

If you're in Perth then I can tell you that I got one last year for $850 from the Good Guys, Cannington, with the extent of my haggling consisting of "I am going to buy one of these from someone today. What's your best price?"

I sent my friend there about a month later... he got his for $800

(Don't get too caught up in the haggling though... is it really worth so much time & effort to save a couple of % on your purchase? Keep it in perspective.)

Stop it already, I've bought one!!!

Seriously, I am in love and should have done it ages ago. I don't care if I spent $80 above what I could have got it for, I'm happy. Been playing around with TAP's tonight and it just got better (ImproBox is great).

This is one nice piece of kit.

BTW: Did anyone know that ICETV want you to update your firmware to one on their site of 10th of May, 2005? No thanks...

I paid $1100 for mine from the 1st batch that were shipped to the country, and I am still completely satisfied with my purchase, even at this price. I was looking at the 5290 at $1200 just before hand (ok, it got reduced to way less than this before the Toppy came out), but I was looking at getting a SVHS VCR at $400(!), and the Thompson crappy normal non-PVR STB was $300 at the time, and the Toppy was like 2 SD STBs plus a decent (non-VCR) recording system (my old HiFi VCR was starting to chew up tapes a little too often for my liking, plus trying to find recordings even from a couple of days ago, plus the poor quality of analogue etc etc tipped me to getting a digital PVR).
So afaic, it is worth whatever you end up paying for it, if you manage to get it for $750-800 then you have got a bargain, it out performs all other PVRs currently.
Regards

Umm, why not? This new f/w is the best produced so far, why wouldn't you??

I think Simon's just delved into the realm of poor grammar? I assume he's saying
"Thanks ICE for not letting us know about it". I would have thought ICE would have all users on an email updtae list. But always a good idea to pop into the site now and then.

Regards

Peter Gillespie

The fact that the f/w has only just been tested could have something to do with it.

Geez, this forum's certainly quick to pounce on people, isn't it? Poor grammar? No, Peter, I am saying exactly what I said. I downloaded the ICEtv stuff to have a look at it with the 7 day trial and was surprised to see, in the instructions, that they told you to update the Topfield firmware with a version dated the 10th of May, 2005. I had seen no mention of that on the Topfield site, nor on the forums here or the TF forums about it.

I was hardly going to upgrade the firmware of a device with a copy of only a few days old froma 3rd parties web site without any indication that it was official and supported or supplied by Topfield. Is this firmware specifically for ICEtv? If so, will it be upgraded in parallel to the mainstream firmware? If not, why isn't it mentioned anywhere else?

Simon....

Topfield Australia are slow to announce anything f/w related. Most of us download the f/w from the Korean website when it shows up completely un-announced. You should be thankful that you have been given the heads up that a new f/w is imminent!
Because all the timer and epg uploading stuff had previously caused a few issues here and there, this new f/w sorts this out, and thus most impacts the performance of the ICE uploader more than anything else, hence ICE recommending to upgrade.
If any new f/w comes out I am keen ASAP to run it, as you can see from the developments from Korea that each new version brings improvements (99% of the time!), and that Topfield maintain an ever improving core for the Sat, Cable & Terrestrial Toppies world wide, so it isn't just a tweak or two for Australia here, it is often a vast improvement with input from world wide.
Given the filename of the upgrade (and looking at the previous upgrades) this is definitely NOT ICE specific, it is just that ICE users have had a prob here and there and that ICE have specifically gotten Topfield Korea to sort some of these out.
Regards

Thanks Tony H, a most lucid and thoughful response. I will check it out. I asked ICEtv about it too, so will see what their response is. The worst that can happen is that I need to go backwards.

Simon....