[andymboyle]

Hi

I am trying to drag my parents into the digital age and have promised them a HDD \ PVR \ Freeview+ recorder for Christmas. The most important quality is ease of use, it has taken them an age to work out how to use the programme guide on their new Plasma TV. Reliability is also a big issue (saves them ringing me at all hours when it hasn't recorded this weeks gardeners world!)

should have following specifications

Hard Drive - 200gb+
Twin Tuner
DVD drive not required
Budget £100 - 200 roughly
Series link recording

HDMI \ Upscaling to 720 \ 1080

Any help would be appreciated in helping me choose a suitable model.

Many Thanks

Andy

[Geofbob]

There have been several threads in this forum recently on the same topic - eg PVR - up to £150. Humax? & the longer & rather more involved advice on humax 9200ts or alba aldtr160

These discussions usually boil down to a choice between one of the well reputed but more complex Humax PVRs, or a group of PVR known as Vestel-clones, these having an excellent reputation for reliability & user-friendliness. Although I actually have an earlier PVR of the latter type, if I were to buy a PVR today, I would plump for this one - Buy Alba ALDTR160 160GB Digital TV Recorder. at Argos.co.uk Though it is well within your budget range, its disc capacity doesn't meet your 200GB criterion - though I must say that even 160GB is well above that needed for my "record, view & delete" operational mode!

PS. As regards Series Link, both the above Alba & any newer Humax model have this.

[grahamlthompson]

Originally Posted by andymboyle

Hi

I am trying to drag my parents into the digital age and have promised them a HDD \ PVR \ Freeview+ recorder for Christmas. The most important quality is ease of use, it has taken them an age to work out how to use the programme guide on their new Plasma TV. Reliability is also a big issue (saves them ringing me at all hours when it hasn't recorded this weeks gardeners world!)

should have following specifications

Hard Drive - 200gb+
Twin Tuner
DVD drive not required
Budget £100 - 200 roughly
Series link recording

HDMI \ Upscaling to 720 \ 1080

Any help would be appreciated in helping me choose a suitable model.

Many Thanks

Andy

Forget the the upscaling option it's pretty worthless in a budget pvr. Most decent TV's have better scalers than stb's so apart from the convenience of a single hdmi connection you are paying extra for a facility that will most likely give you a worse picture. The advertising blurb usually says something like improves SD pictures, what they don't say is a decent TV will also do this and produce better results

[creddish]

Originally Posted by Geofbob

There have been several threads in this forum recently on the same topic - eg PVR - up to £150. Humax? & the longer & rather more involved advice on humax 9200ts or alba aldtr160

These discussions usually boil down to a choice between one of the well reputed but more complex Humax PVRs, or a group of PVR known as Vestel-clones, these having an excellent reputation for reliability & user-friendliness. Although I actually have an earlier PVR of the latter type, if I were to buy a PVR today, I would plump for this one - Buy Alba ALDTR160 160GB Digital TV Recorder. at Argos.co.uk Though it is well within your budget range, its disc capacity doesn't meet your 200GB criterion - though I must say that even 160GB is well above that needed for my "record, view & delete" operational mode!

PS. As regards Series Link, both the above Alba & any newer Humax model have this.

As an alternative to the Alba ALDTR160 you may want to consider the Hitachi HDR253 250GB HDMI here. For an extra £6.20 you get a bigger 250GB HDD, a Low Power standby option and for what it's worth an HDMI port. It will otherwise have the same functionality as the Alba but with slightly different hardware and software. Which will perform the best, if there is any difference, remains to be seen as the latest Alba ALDTR160's with the T845R hardware have not had much forum discussion yet.

Colin

[Bigfeet]

What a timely thread, I just popped on here to ask similar, my Thomson topuptv box seems to have thrown its hand in - no lights on it at all - suspect that the hard drive threw a wobbly when the mains electricity was switched off the other day.


So, I've been wondering about replacing the hard drive etc but am now erring towards just replacing the thing, the Hitachi one above looks perfect for me.

[Gavtech]

Originally Posted by Bigfeet

What a timely thread, I just popped on here to ask similar, my Thomson topuptv box seems to have thrown its hand in - no lights on it at all - suspect that the hard drive threw a wobbly when the mains electricity was switched off the other day.

You may find that if you give it an extended rest from the mains [ a day or so] that it may restart.

It is more likely a power supply section problem.
Usually a capacitor in the primary start up circuitry... which may reform.

[Bigfeet]

Originally Posted by Gavtech

You may find that if you give it an extended rest from the mains [ a day or so] that it may restart.

It is more likely a power supply section problem.
Usually a capacitor in the primary start up circuitry... which may reform.

Ooh, thanks - it's unplugged at the mo, will leave it a while to check that then.

Reasons I thought it could be the hard drive are a)I was watching something I'd recorded when the mains power got switched off , and b)When it is plugged in I can hear a quiet ticking noise, as if perhaps something's stuck?

[Gavtech]

Originally Posted by Bigfeet

Ooh, thanks - it's unplugged at the mo, will leave it a while to check that then.

Reasons I thought it could be the hard drive are a)I was watching something I'd recorded when the mains power got switched off , and b)When it is plugged in I can hear a quiet ticking noise, as if perhaps something's stuck?

Hmm- Indeed that does sound bad.
Evidently the HDD was not able to park graciously.

I'm much less optimistic of this re-living unfortunately... but good luck.

[Bigfeet]

Originally Posted by Gavtech

Hmm- Indeed that does sound bad.
Evidently the HDD was not able to park graciously.

I'm much less optimistic of this re-living unfortunately... but good luck.

It's annoying 'cause I know it's my own fault - I knew that the electricity was about to go off but didn't think to at least put the thing on standby, never mind unplug it.

To have a bliddy recording playing though .

[creddish]

Originally Posted by Bigfeet

It's annoying 'cause I know it's my own fault - I knew that the electricity was about to go off but didn't think to at least put the thing on standby, never mind unplug it.

To have a bliddy recording playing though .

Powering off the Thomson TUTV is not usually an issue. As you are probably aware this is a necessary operation frequently as they do tend to lock-up frequently for which the only cure is to disconnect the power. As the HDD is always running on these units, even in standby, you have no choice but to disconnect in this state. Maybe there was something different about the power disconnection in your case causing power spikes?

In any case IMO getting rid of the TUTV unit is probably a good move.

Colin

[Andy.Carr]

TVonics have just launched a 250GB, recorder.

The DTR-HV250 upscales the standard TV broadcast to higher definition viewing, getting more out of your flat-screen TV and resulting in sharper and clearer images. For those of us whose TV’s only have one HDMI port on the back, the TVonics DTR-HV250 also features an HDMI switch that allows you to connect up to two other HDMI devices to the unit and ‘switch’ between them without having to unplug or plug-in any cables.

Andy