Anyone seen or heard about the new PVR advertised in the latest Bing Lee cattledog?


http://www.binglee.com.au/

Current Catalogue



Twin tuners, 200gb HDD USB2 $799.......

Can't find any info anywhere, not even the DGTec homepage


Cheers

JD

First real contender. Interesting to see how well it operates.

When I her Digitec then I feel frustrated. If it works like the STB than you might as well forget it.

check this from the dba newsletter.

http://www.dba.org.au/newsletter/IB-JunJul...ll.asp#PRODUCT4

theres been a thread on this one already.

Bought the 80 gig version seems to work really well !! transfers files easily and quickly via usb 2 to laptop just need to work out how to watch them or burn for later watching , any ideas? noisy fan is only problem i have seen so far , that i can live with for the price ..
Paul

Paul,

try downloading and editing the files with VideoReDo, it's a commercial program but the demo lets you save video up to 30 or so mins in length; and is the best and easiest video editor I've come across for editing MPEG2 SD or HD files on PC.

Gizmomelb

PS: I'm considering one of these PVRs for my wife, as she doesn't like using the PC based PVR (too fiddly and it crashes). I wonder what the insides of one of these boxes looks like/is running?

Also I wonder if the 80GB can be swapped out and replaced with a bigger driver? $300 extra RRP for the 200GB drive seems extortionate considering the actual price difference is about $80 for an equivalent PC drive.

Paul,

any comments you've got on the operation/usage of this unit would be greatly appreciated, especially comments on:

the remote control (layour, usage, range etc.)
timeshifting (can you pause/playback while the other tuner is recording)
playback of video when also recording
dual tuner recording
etc.

many thanks in advance,
Gizmomelb

When I hear the name D-G-T-E-C I start to feel ill....

...however while I have no desire to buy one I am interested to see how it fares.

Hi there,

DGTech products have been notoriously unreliable & the attitude of the company has been nothing short of disgusting in regards to the way that they treated their customers. I had one of their boxes that failed in under 24 hours & they wanted me to send it away to be repaired. Once bitten twice shy.

This appears to be a copy of the much loved TF5000PVRt & putting in a bigger HDD & giving it a cheaper price may trick some people into buying it. At the end of the day the Topfield is still the king & DGtech is still going to be just another footy. My advice would be to avoid it like the plague.

The company doesent seem to support their products well they just bring out a new model when the old one has problems & forget about the suckers that have the dodgy machines. Units that I have seen lately have been made in China, Malaysia & god knows where else. I think they just source the cheapest available at the time.

I agree with the comments above. I hear Dodgytech & I aslo start to feel sick. It may be worth other customers who have been stung also posting their experiences to stop others getting burnt by them. The company & products are CHEAP & VERY NASTY!!!

BUYER BEWARE.....

Transferring digital SD & HD streams to PC MPEG files... I used to use a program called PVAStrumento with my old PC digital tv tuner card, used to demux the streams and fix the audio sync problems.

Does HD recorder mean hard disc or high definition?

I'd say it's Hard Disk, I don't think there are many Hi Def PVRs available at the moment, and certainly not for this price!

I'm a bit interested in this box (sorry to all the DGTEC haters out there), as all reports from owners of this box seem to be fairly favourable, and although I'd like the Toppy it's still priced above what I can comfortable spend at this point.

Does anyone know if the noisy fan reported by Paul D above is a typical problem with this box, or was Paul just unlucky?

Hiya gremlin ,
The prob with the fan is that it is probably overkill on dgtec's part. It seems to be pulling to much air through the unit , sounds no different to most computer fans I have heard ,just a little annoying when sound volume is down
low.
Paul

Any gear that fails that fast is effectively DOA. Under Australian consumer law, whoever you bought it from MUST refund your money.

I have successfully gotten refunds on a few occasions when I've bought equipment that's failed in the first week, and the response has been "send it away for three months to be looked at".

The legendary one was my Panasonic TV, which I bought at great expense and which failed within days. Panasonic came and took it away, sent it to Hills Telefix, and that's the last I saw of it for - and I'm not kidding here - nearly six months. By that stage Hills were making all sorts of excuses ranging from "we're waiting on a part from Japan" (the set was made here in Australia!) and "it's in bits on the bench and we still don't know what is wrong with it." A phone call demanding to talk to the general manager or else I'd go to Consumer Affairs did the trick. A new TV rolled up at my house within an hour - and 15 years later, it's still perfect. Presumably they gave me the "manager special" model

But I digress...



Sounds like a company we know... Wintal, anyone? Or Strong?

This is one of the reasons why digital TV won't get mainstream acceptance in this country until the big names step in with gear. Well intentioned as they all might be, these cheapie companies rebadging generic east-asian products either can't (Strong) or won't (Wintal) do after-sales support and necessary firmware updates - which wouldn't matter if the things worked properly in the first place. But they rarely, if ever, do.

All that said, the Wintal turned out to be a great buy - not thanks to Wintal, mind, but thanks to Digenius and Grobi in Germany, whose unwitting "support" has gotten the Wintal PVR to a very solid and reliable state indeed.



While I have no love for the Malaysian products I've suffered through as they gradually fell apart (almost all of them Sony!) I have been very, very impressed with the build quality coming out of China these days. My Pioneer DVD writer and DVD player have been absolutely 100% flawless, and all the other smaller Chinese-made gadgets I have have never once given me any trouble. The Wintal PVR is built in China too - but no hardware issues here! The only hassle has been with the firmware, and you can't blame the Chinese for that

I don't know where you get the impression that Strong can't do after-sales support and firmware updates, their Australian agents in Melbourne do fantastic support, VERY fast updates and turnarounds and they have even written a supplement to the (dreadful) manual that actually makes sense. IMHO they offer the BEST after-sales support of any company I have ever dealt with.

How many complaints about their support have you seen in these forums in the last 12 months? I don't recall any.

Sure, the product (5390) has had a few minor glitches, but these have been rectified quickly and effectively.

Kudos to Strong Australia from me!

Cheers,

David.

Around 8 months ago Strong Australia (AGENT) was bought out by Strong Head Office and the Australian division is now fully run by Strong so there is no middleman, etc. I must admit since the inception of Strong in Australia, they have been sensational in their after-sales.

[/QUOTE]Hiya gremlin ,
The prob with the fan is that it is probably overkill on dgtec's part. It seems to be pulling to much air through the unit , sounds no different to most computer fans I have heard ,just a little annoying when sound volume is down
low.
Paul [QUOTE]

Thanks Paul, I'll have to venture into a retail outlet somewhere and have a listen, although any fan noise isn't probably going to not be noticeable in the typical noisy shop environment.

I'm another one with a trusty Strong 5200 that hasn't missed a beat the entire time I've had it, and I've also found strong support to go out of their way to assist when I had an issue that turned out to be reception related and not the box. Just looking for something now that has recording ability, hence the DGTEC.

Pity they didn't do the same for the 5200, which had a timer that never worked properly; general advice was "ah well, it's fixed in the 5300/5390".

This one looks good too

http://www.teac.com.au/documents/PVR100T.pdf

Either nobody has any interest in these units or being 'footys' they are already back in the factory awaiting repair. It doesent look like they are going to set the digital TV world on fire.

Heaps here in Victoria .. J'b has bucket loads of them,retravision has them and warehouse sales has them.
For what its worth , considering all the knockers out there dgtec offers what they call a 123 warranty on the unit,
one month money back
two year parts and labour
3 months replacement
as long as they honour this i'm quite happy.
As yet no problems i cant live with , maybe i'm just not as fussy as some
and no i'm in no way connected with dgtec ..lol
Paul

Hi Gremlins,

I recently got a DG-SD80PVR and it does have a noisy fan, though the unit seems to remain quite cool, compared with the Teac DV-B400 I have, which even in standby is like a heater!

The fan is really the only issue I have, though it would be better for me if it had a SCART RGB output as well.

Interested if anyone has the best way of converting the files and burning to DVD?

I saw this box out there - does look a pretty solid piece of work. Does worry me though what lurks under there under its smart looking demeanour.

Interestingly talking to the sales guy about it. He said he'd been talking to the LG sales rep who said they had a new LG HDPVR that should be out in a month or so. The sales guy strongly suggested that would be better option worth waiting for. He thought the LG was a Humax effort. Which is probably a good thing as theve been making pvr's for a while now so should hopefully get it right without too many cock ups.

Hmm, yes I got one of the 200GB ones for my birthday .
However, I am a bit dissapointed as it has a number of significant problems

1) You cannot tune in 'radio' services. You can on the Teac PVR!
2) You cannot tune in video services without any audio such as some on the d44 channel here in Sydney.
3) There is no signal strength indication of any kind.
4) Needed 2 scans to enter in ABC2 service for some reason.
5) Unit wakes up to do a timer record but does not shut itself down afterwards.
6) if you are watching a channel and the timer record starts, it will switch to that channel rather than using the other tuner. Have to start up PIP to resolve.

Some things are good though such as Pitcure quality, PIP, mp3 playback etc.

I would take a look at other options before putting your money down on this one!

have returned dgtec 80pvr for money back gaurantee as the unit was very noisy or to noisy it did not have digital radio

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Join Date: Nov 2003
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Arcade Info

I have just bought the DGTEC dgsd80pvr for $465. Myer matched the price from a web price. After testing all weekend I am so far happy with the unit doing everything it says it should.
After finding a few minor problems I phoned customer support who advised the following.
1: Contrary to what the box and manual says it doesn't have a standby mode which displays a clock. Unit switches completely off.
This feature was taken out when a larger fan was added.
2: Picture froze on a few occasions.
Was advised to upgrade the firmware from their website which was very easy via USB.
3: It wont scan radio.
This may be fixed via a firmware upgrade in the future.

Overall the picture/sound quality since the upgrade is excellent. Have had no problems with the time shift or recording. Fan noise is only annoying if watching TV with no sound. Functions are easy to use and channel changes quickly. Haven't yet used the MP3 function
Probably not as good as a Toppy but at half the price worth at least trying until the 3 month replacement warranty runs out.

Also would anyone know if there is a way to hook up a satellite box via the 2nd tuner. Unit has no inputs. Can you hook up a Sat box with any other units?

Hi there,

I spent an hour testing one of these in a store with the permission of a curious salesman who looked onward. It is pretty easy to set up but thats about all that is good. It is very confusing, the menus are awful & overall it is a very poor effort.

From what I saw you could not record from the TV guide. Recordings did not use the broadcast name & timedshifting was not available when recording. It was frustrating & just felt tacky. My guess is that we will not ever see people raving about these on the forums.

The Toppy is still king while IMHO the Teac is second in the best of a very bad bunch....

At a regularly done $750 the original Toppy isn't that much more than the DGTEC... and certainly a lot better in features and function IMHO.

And that's supposed to be reassuring? What kind of 20-cent power supply does this thing use? An LED clock display when the unit is turned off surely wouldn't tax a plugpack, let alone a properly built power supply...



Or may not. We know how these companies operate by now.

The no led clock is annoying. Not likely to use the radio anyway.
The unit runs cold, no chance of overheating.
At $465 it so far is doing everything I wanted.

Will keep posting if anything changes.

Not that much more? The DGTEC is $465, the Toppy is $750.. I wouldn't call $300 (3/4 of the total unit pricing) 'not that much more'.

I'm neither pro/anti DGTEC or Topfield, but the lack of standby on the DGTEC is a good thing in my opinion, by turning off my all my HT gear at the wall instead of leaving it all on standby for most of the day, there was a noticable difference with my power bills.

There were a couple of DGTEC 80Gig units sold on ebay just recently for $400 and $405. At that price point it's very tempting despite the mentioned problems.

Would I be right in assuming DGTEC have installed a larger fan (as mentioned in some posts above) to address the fan noise issue reported earlier on in this thread?

It would be interesting to see the justification behind turning off the clock display though, that seems a bit weird to me.

The fan noise is very similar to a computer fan. Unnoticeable if watching TV with sound.

From the conversation I had with customer support, I gather these boxes are available overseas maybe under another name and a few changes have been made for the Australian market.

I recently purchased the DGTEC DG-SD200PVR. Yes the fan noise is a bit noticable but I don't think it shld stop you buying it. I do have a problem however and Im keen to know if anyone else does...

When I use the 'My Video' function the machine sometimes freezes and needs rebooting (unplugging from the wall). Does anyone else have this issue? Otherwise the machine works as it should. Im considering taking the machine back, I still have a couple of months of warranty left.

Re their service I have found the guy or guys on the end of the DGTEC line very helpful and knowledgeble so far.

I'm starting to think my purchase was not so smart. Too bad because it has all the functionality that I want and a large HDD.

D

Is the box the upgraded version? If not have you downloaded the firmware? My box froze only on very small videos 5-10 secs when I was testing it.

I've got the 80G version, and had the freeze issue on playback of some recorded video, and had to turn the unit off etc. as you suggest. This was fixed with the firmware upgrade.
Apparently, there is another upgrade coming that will give these units some additional features also.
Not sure exactly when though?
I've still got a bit of time on the money back guarrantee, so still playing!

Marc

I saw the 200g Dg-tec @ JB today and i may be being a little shallow here but it was the ugliest thing i have ever seen.Very bulky,plain and just plain UGLY.But as the saying goes "never judge a book by its cover" but then again there is always an exception isnt there!!!

Cheers Ryan

I have had the dg tec sd-200pvr for about 1 week now.

This unit is no topfield but then again neither was the price I paid.

There a few things worth mentioning:

1) You can not simultaneously record and time shift

2) Maximum time shift cache size is only 2gb despite what it says in the manual. I think this is a little small esp with a 200 gb hard drive (only gives about 45-50mins of time shift)

3) There is no way to adjust the image (ie colour, contrast, brightness). The component outputs on my unit are quite oversaturated (composite is ok tho)

4) You can only simultaneously record and view a previous recording if and only if you are recording on tuner 1 and playing back on tuner 2, it will not work the oher way around.

5) The firmware upgrade stopped the unit from freezing occasionally and was easy to perform once you managed to understand the instructions. For those that may be wandering as I was just download the file and unzip it on your computer and dump it in the root directory of the PVR and then turn the unit off and on.

6) The fan is noisier than I expected but not enough to mention. No louder than when I have the xbox on.

7) Manual is horrible.

on the positive side:

1) I am happy with the image quality

2) USB 2 works well and recordings can be processed the same way as toppy files.

3) Cheaper than a toppy, look around there are some good prices for this unit.

I did call customer support and while they were very helpfull they couldn't answer any of my questions.

This unit has a very annoying red REC symbol over the top left hand side when you are recording. There is no where in the manual that tells you how to remove it. For anyone else that is also frustrated by this, the solution is to press the exit button and this will dissapear, that is also the same for the counter when you are playing something back.

Hope this has helped.

P.S. Someone earlier mentioned that the toppies are down to $700 where have you seen them this low?? as at that price I might consider them

after returning the dgtec 80pvr i bought the topfield and find it a better choice i am very happy with it

Has anyone got the processing of files from the DGTEC PVR, ie converting format and burning to DVD down to a fine art?
I'm about to have a crack at it, but was hoping for the best method/software?
Thanks,
Marc

Yes you can it is just a WD 80gig HD. $300 is far too much to pay for the 200 gig model.

Can pick up the 80 gig model for $460 from Harvey Norman.

Cheers Bill

Hi,

I recently bought the DGTEC 80PVR and have so far been very happy with it. The only things (as mentioned by many other members), are that there is no standby clock, the noisy (and not even needed) fan, the timeshift size (and the fact that if u accidently hit 'stop', you wipe out the whole timeshift), and finally the recorded files issue.

Basically, it outputs to VIDEO.MTS (which is essentially an MPG with MainConcept audio/video codecs), which is no problem to obtain from the net, but after the file goes over 1Gb (about 20 mins), it creates VIDEO.001 for the next 1Gb then presumeably VIDEO.002 etc etc.

I have copied off the VIDEO.MTS and VIDEO.001 file to my computer, and can play the .MTS file, but not the .001 file. I have tried changing the extensions to MPG, but same problem. I have tried several Video editing programs and SOME read the .MTS file, but NONE read the .001 file (even when changed to .MPG). Media Player 10 opens it, but its just a black screen with no sound.

The only program I have got which plays the 001 is Media Player Classic (which came with the 'K-Lite Codec Pack' where I got the MainCooncept Codec from, but what good is watching it on the PC - I want to put the files back together and make it into a DVD!!

I am about to try VideoReDo Plus (Trial Version) and see if that can handle the files. I will re-post if I have any luck, but if anyone can help me out I would be MOST appreciative.

It's just standard MPEG2 video with MPEG1 audio - Mainconcept have a codec that can play it, but so do lots of companies

The encoding, of course, was done at the broadcaster.



Have you tried simply joining the files togather using the Windows "copy" command?

Ok, well VideoReDo did work, as I could open the .001 file and re-save as an mpg (which Media Player played), which I could join them and burn a DVD. The results were good, but VideoReDo is just a trial version.

And as far as using commands to join them, I never though of that. It worked even better though, as there was no hiccup were the join was. For all of those who don't know how to do this, open up cmd.exe, change directoty (cd) to the directory where the files are located, and type the following. If there are more files, simply just add + VIDEO.002 etc to the end.

copy /b VIDEO.MTS + VIDEO.001 outputFile.mpg

You can add multiple files in ProjectX (free) and it will demux them all as one file, creating M2V video and MPA (and AC3 if it exists) audio "elementary" streams.
Many authoring packages support elementary streams.
Regards

Well the DG-tec lasted 11 days .

Even after the firware upgrade the unit continued to freeze, and the only thing you could do was to pull the plug. Not so bad if recording something -- you only lost a little bit but you lost every thing in timeshift.

Its now gone back and I made the trip to good guys frankston and picked up a toppy 5000 for $750.

Good joke .

What joke?

Masuta - do you get the 120GB topfield for this price (or perhaps this is now the base model size)? Can I ask where you got it for this price?


Also has anyone comments re reliability/support on either the following:
* Legend - DTLegend 160
* TEAC PVR-100T

I'm still trying to find a online manual for the TEAC PVR-100T if anyone has a link to it?

Cheers