Hi

ABsolutely amazed with the wealth of information on here, my mind boggles !!!!!

Just staring out in digital TV now and looking at a hd/sd box. Looking at a Force 530T (80gig) or 550T(160gig). Ca get or around 490 and 590 respectively.

Anyone got one of these? Are these good prices ? Are the units good as it seems u can buy cheaper units.

By budget is limited and dont wanna spend it on a lemon and have someone else (other half) going off at me !!!!!!


Cheers

Don't know about the SD PVRs but their HD STB (705T) is top class. I picked mine up for only $399 at the Good Guys. Good menus, fast scanning and amazing picture quality. No HDMI out, only DVI.

Hi Noob,

You may wish to clarify. hd/sd refers to HiDef/StdDef STB - HDD/SD STB refers to a StDef Harddrive STB. Or more simply a Personal Video Recorder (PVR). From the products you listed I'm assuming you want the later?

We'll the good news is that PVRs are an amazing machine with a wide virety of prices ($200 up to about $1000). Had a look at the Force specs and have to say it looks like unbelievably poor value for money. I thought it was a 1.5 tuner PVR but it is apparently only a single tuner. You can get the same functionality from a DigiCrystal from strathfield for $210 (add $30 for a 3 year warantee).

A few things to be aware of:

1) All PVRs claim "EPG functionality" - No Oz Network broadcasts EPG data so this is a furfy (Only the a Topfield PVR can upload a 7 day EPG)

2) A single tuner PVR can watch something live OR record something - you can't do both at the same time. You can watch a previous recording while something else is recording.

3) Other PVRs are called 'Twin Tuners' which covers a broad range of functionality (That I refer to as 1.5 tuners, 1.7 tuners and 2.0 tuners). This additional functionality is mostly where the price increases. See at the end for a description of twin tuners.

4) The best PVR is the Toppy 5000 ($750) which is fully customisable with lots of programs that users have written to provide additional features. This is closely followed by the Humax Smart. Read the All Questions Answered thread in the PVR branch for much more info on this machine:

Toppy: http://www.dtvforum.info/index.php?showtopic=16828
Humax: http://www.dtvforum.info/index.php?showtopic=27002
Humax v Toppy: http://www.dtvforum.info/index.php?showtopic=27386

Have Fun

Peter Gillespie

*******************************************

Why all 'Twin Tuner' PVRs aren't the same

Many PVRs claim to be twin tuner PVRs. It is important to realise that this tag can cover very different levels of functionality:

* At its simplest it means the ability to record one show while viewing another (live or recorded previously) - These are sometimes refer to as 1.5 Tuner PVRs. Examples include Nextwave and Opentel.

* The next level up allows users to manually start a second recording while a timer recording is also underway. During this time nothing else can be viewed. These could be called 1.7 Tuner PVRs. Examples include DGTec, Toshiba HiDef and Teac.

* True true twin (2.0) tuner capabile PVRs are still rare but are now starting to appear. They can manually or automatically record two things at once while allowing the user to view a previously recorded show as well. Currently, only the new Humax and Toppy are true twin tuners - other than TAPs these two PVRs perform to a similar capability.

Note: While many people suspect they might not need to record two things at once they should also bear in mind that this functionality covers shows on different channels that have overlapping start and end times. Networks routinely schedule prime time TV to run 5-10 minutes late.

Thanks guys

I am just more confused now !!! Yes am after a hard disk/sd set top box. Budget is around $500 only, so eliminates a few.

Have narrowed it down to :

Strong 120gig (i think) think twin tuner $599
Yess 120gig (i think) twin tuner $500, never heard of them
Teac 160gig twin tuner $579, looks ok ???
Legend 160gig twin tuner $499, looks good
Wintal 80gig single tuner $350 single tuner so sort of out of the question
and the force ones above, and yes think they may be single tuner also as pgdownload said.

Really prefer a twin tuner and a connection option (ethernet or usb) for transferring files from the box to a pc, so data can be burnt that way etc.

Anyone got any of the above, recommend any of these or dislike any of them ? Any other that may have a twin tuner, hdd, and pc connection for around the $500 mark. Wanna buy one tomorrow so i can start playing !!!!!

Thanks.

Your prices all seem a bit high - The Wintal can be bought for under $250. The Teac or the Legend are both fair options. You seem able to streatch to $580 If you're willing to go to $650 you can get the Humax (true twin tuner) all other 'twin tuners' will only be a 1.5 tuner as I mentioned. Which is probably enough for most people. But I'd be looking at only paying around $450 max for such a PVR. Recommend you switch over to the harddrive recorder branch of this forum and look through some posts from the last few weeks. There are several posts asking what PVR? with lots of good recommendations and prices.

Have fun shopping

Peter Gillespie

Thanks heaps will do so. Just realised i posted this in the wrong forum... sorry !!

I just bought a Force 80Gig PVR as Harvey norman had two they were selling at $299... and while I've only had it for half a day so far, I am hugely impressed. (I was going to buy a digicrystal from Strathfield but ALL the ones near me had sold out, even the ones who thought they had stock didn't!)

Being that at $299 it's not much more than the digicrystals/supernets/wintals etc...

* It seems to have a much nicer interface (I haven't used one of the others in person, only seen screenshots... but not having proper keys for fast forwarding etc. is not that intuitive and was of concern for me for my wife's acceptance of it), is really, really easy to use with pause, stop, record etc. all there on the remote...

* It does indeed only have one tuner, but the ones I was looking at under $300 are the same

* It's setup was a breeze, and it claims to have over the air automatic updates... although I'm obviously yet to see evidence of this!

* The picture to my eyes on a lowly 64cm 4:3 tv is superb so far just through the packaged Scart to composite (I need to get a Scart to SVHS as that's as good as my receiver and tv will give me)

* The EPG screen is very nice with the currently playing station in a little window up the top left while you browse (although Australia being what it is there isn't much in the way of information)

* The currently playing information display is also very nice.

* The PVR screen for previously recorded shows is nicely laid out and easy to understand, with the ebility to edit the name etc. of shows if desired.

* The front of machine display is a very nice blue colour


Are there things I should really be trying out to get a good feel as to the quality of this thing? As so far it is just working very, very nicely.

Spoco2

$299 gees my HN has it for $488.............. grrrrrrrrrrrr

Can i ask where did u buy yours from ???

Cheers