Well folks, after 3 months of absolutely trouble free service from this cheapie from JB Hifi, it has shown up a little problem. Record reservations generally work very well, but recently, the weekly ones have picked up days of the week in 6 figures, resulting in no recording at all. I went through my record reservation table to check them all and some were corrupt in this way and some were not. Fixing them was simply a matter of restarting the reservation from the next day on which it was to occur.

Given that this Hotchip make is a derivative of the earlier Digicrystal and other brands, this problem has probably been seen before by owners of those machines.

Any one with any suggestions??

Meanwhile, I still love my Hotchip PVR and thoroughly recommend it as a good entry level standard definition box.

I even transcribed a recording to a VHS tape and it worked very well, inlcuding providing the opportunity for an all black lead-in with synch for a semi-professional look.

The Duck

I rang Hotchip in Sydney today and they told me that PVR's get their timing info from the TV broadcast stream, and sometimes the stations send out incorrect information. This is why the PVR gets confused and fails to do the recording.

Hotchip suggested a reset to factory settings from time to time to ensure that the PVR has got good quality data in its timers.

We discussed this model further, and I learnt that a few people have some trouble getting their PC to read the USB output, but otherwise it has given no problems.

He recommended uploading MP3's and JPEG's to the PVR for effective music and slide shows.

I think it's a very good model, and considering the problems I read about on the forum regarding very expensive models, I think I've done well.

Duck