HD-TV PVR recommendations

[roguefan99]

My old SD TV is dying (tube is going, bleaching, wierd scanning problems), so its time to upgrade to a new flat screen TV. Gonna go HD because well thats the only way to go it seems, so the old Mediastar PVR is heading to the pool room (well computer room).

This means its time for a new HD PVR. I was looking in the Topfield direction, however I noticed the words of evil on it "Freeview".

I'm looking for a PVR with decent HDD space (probably around the 500Gb mark), the ability to transfer recordings to the PC (for DVD if needed) and also AD SKIP. The last one of these is probably the most important to me and is why I'm not looking at a Toppy at the moment.

Any recommendations?

[dilligaf]

Just upgraded from the mediastar SD twin tuner to the Beyonwiz DP-P2, 'only' has the 320Gb drive in it but I now hear tell they come with a 500Gb. Very easy to transfer recordings to an external HDD and use the tools listed at the Beyonwiz forms to edit and convert to mpeg2 (VideoReDo also works). Comes with an Ice-Tv trial, but Im using the free-to-air EPG for programming ok. Plays dvds and avi's off of an external HDD nicely, or these can be uploaded (via the PVR menu) to the internal HDD. The PVR's usb's do not like powering USB Ext HDD's so I have fitted a cheap powered hub to overcome this. The remote is a wee bit slow to respond, but once you're used to this small lag you learn not to get to many button presses ahead. The 'ad-skip' is adjustable forwards and back, the four cursor buttons can be assigned different skip durations. Cost me $800 from local Bing Lee for the 320Gb version, very happy with this PVR thus far

[roguefan99]

LOL dilligaf, sounds like you have done what I'm thinking about (moving from a Mediastar SD twin to a new one). Gonna go have a look at the Beyonwiz DP-P2 tommorrow, especially now I have found the manual. Its either this or the Topfield and the transfering of avis is helping with this one.

[dilligaf]

LOL dilligaf, sounds like you have done what I'm thinking about (moving from a Mediastar SD twin to a new one). Gonna go have a look at the Beyonwiz DP-P2 tommorrow, especially now I have found the manual. Its either this or the Topfield and the transfering of avis is helping with this one.

I guess the main contenders for quality PVR's are Tivo, Topfield and Beyonwiz. The media-player attributes of the Beyonwiz won me over and it did not disappoint. Just a note with the HDD's, the Beyonwiz will read & write Fat32 drives, but will only read from NTFS drives.

If you're using HDMI, the Video Output menu will not give the option until you set the resolution to 1080, when you return to the menu the HDMI option will appear, this was not made clear in the manual

BTW My Mediastar is also still running well, quite a robust piece of kit these

[Variable]

Gday,

I still have an old 68cm CRT and no STB.

Am interested in going digital and being able to record by buying an STB with a USB port for an external drive. Do these STB's come with software to set up timer recording?

Can I use just any HDD with a USB plug or does it have to be in a portable case etc? How do I convert an IDE/SATA socket to USB?

Also, I won't be able to see the PQ difference between SD and HD on my old TV. Is the channel content on the HD channels just the same as the SD channels, so no point in going HD yet?

Any recommendations for boxes please?

Thanks, any advice appreciated.

[roguefan99]

Gday,

I still have an old 68cm CRT and no STB.

Am interested in going digital and being able to record by buying an STB with a USB port for an external drive. Do these STB's come with software to set up timer recording?.

If we are talking about the STB with an internal HDD then yest they should have the software inside to set up timer recordings. The FTA channels all send out Electronic Program Guides (some are only 3 days but they are improving slowly), which makes it eaiser to set a recording

Can I use just any HDD with a USB plug or does it have to be in a portable case etc? How do I convert an IDE/SATA socket to USB?

This can be STB dependant from what I see

Also, I won't be able to see the PQ difference between SD and HD on my old TV. Is the channel content on the HD channels just the same as the SD channels, so no point in going HD yet?

Hmm as someone who went SD in the last round and has gone HD in this round and had to spend up again, if the price is pretty close I would probably just go HD. If there is a massive price difference then for sure go with the SD because its generally the same content on SD channels as HD channels now that the restrictions have elapsed.

[admin]

Gday,

I still have an old 68cm CRT and no STB.

Am interested in going digital and being able to record by buying an STB with a USB port for an external drive. Do these STB's come with software to set up timer recording?

Can I use just any HDD with a USB plug or does it have to be in a portable case etc? How do I convert an IDE/SATA socket to USB?

Also, I won't be able to see the PQ difference between SD and HD on my old TV. Is the channel content on the HD channels just the same as the SD channels, so no point in going HD yet?

Any recommendations for boxes please?

Thanks, any advice appreciated.

Some of the broadcasters are now slowly starting to make more use of channels by broadcasting different content between SD and HD channels. Spend the money on HD as you will end up missing out on some content.

[pbezza]

From what I've been reading, ensure that you purchase a HD Box/PVR that is capable of decoding MPEG4 H.264 video as every brodcast will be using this codec sooner rather than later. I believe that all the FREEVIEW compliant devices are able to decode MPEG4 H.264. Foxtel HD is alreading broadcasting their HD channels as MPEG4 H.264.

[Mgoldbe1]

Forget a standalone HDD Recorder...If you are going to spend $800 you can build your own HTPC with a Hauppauge HVR-2200 and 1TB hdd.....with so much more flexibility.

[B52]

Just upgraded from the mediastar SD twin tuner to the Beyonwiz DP-P2, 'only' has the 320Gb drive in it but I now hear tell they come with a 500Gb. [/IMG]

Mediastar have released the HD8000T full HD, Dual tuner MPEG4/2 H264. 500GB on board, Divx/Xvid format, Ethernet IP,HTTP,FTP, 3 usb's, Best ever graphic interface, Touch screen controls, more on Google

[AussieM8]

After using the sd toppy for many years, I now have a Tivo.

A little on the pricey side and the software features could do with some tweaking, but happy with it after a few months. The biggest issue I have with it, is the inability to merge programmes when you want to record them back-to-back.

You need 24/7 internet access as it downloads the guide and updates software automatically, but can also be used to access weather info via the net.

I upgraded the internal HDD to 1TB so we have hours and hours of storage

[jeffro186]

Another way of using the streaming for the beyonwiz, is to have the wiz connected to your network. Instead of worrying about plugging in/out usb devices directly to the wiz, I just have my external drive with my movies/shows on them permenantly connected to my pc and just stream them straight over the network.
Works no problems with no delays etc.
I have the DP-S1 with wireless, but found some lag etc. when trying to stream using the wireless instead of a wired connection.

[Satman]

I upgraded the internal HDD to 1TB so we have hours and hours of storage

I am currently looking at the TIVO as a PVR that is simple to use for the wife and kids etc... but the 160GB internal HDD is not big enough.

Was it fairly easy to upgrade the original internal 160GB HDD with the 1TB HDD?

I know the external eSATA HDD is an option but gets a bit messy...

Look forward to hearing from TIVO owners with any ideas and suggestions, cheers.

[shlocker]

I would like to buy a HD twin tuner PVR that can also be a media player from a USB or network drive. Is there any such thing?
Otherwise I would have to buy 2 separate boxes.
1 PVR and 1 media player such as Popcorn Hour.
The less boxes cluttering up my TV room, the better.
More cables and TV only has limited inputs.

[roguefan99]

The DP-P2 can be a media player from USB, HDD or even networked (ethernet). Works great for that, I use it to watch revision3 shows I have downloaded off the net. Also watched stuff I downloaded off youtube and it worked great.

[AussieM8]

[QUOTE=Satman;231158]I am currently looking at the TIVO as a PVR that is simple to use for the wife and kids etc... but the 160GB internal HDD is not big enough.

Was it fairly easy to upgrade the original internal 160GB HDD with the 1TB HDD?
QUOTE]

Sorry for the slow reply mate ... it's been a few months since I did the upgrade, but it wasn't too difficult.

From memory, the worst part is having to swap out the old drive and open your PC to format the new drive and setup the drive.

I used instructions from here:


and

Here:

(Windows version half way down)

[shlocker]

Anyone had a look at these?
Found them for under $300
Any feedback?




Astone Media Gear AP-360T 1080p Media Player with PVR & HDTV Tuner

Western Digitgal WD8088AADS 808.8G 32M IntelliPower SATA2 Caviar Green Hard Drive inside

•Model name: Astone Media Gear AP-360T
•Disc format: FAT16/FAT32/NTFS/UDF
•Subtitle: Chinese Traditional/Chinese Simplified/UTF8/Europe
•Resolution: 1080p HD decoding & output, upscaling, CVBS & YPbPr & HDMI output simultaneously
•Aspect ratio: Pan Scan 4:3 / Letterbox 4:3 /16:9
•Video Interface: CVBS composite RCA Video, YPbPr RCA, HDMI 1.3
•Analog Audio: Analog: AUDIO L/R RCA
•Digital Audio: SPDIF, TOSLINK & Coaxial, HDMI
•USB: USB 2.0, 5V-1000mA, For USB External HDD, USB Flash Disk, USB DVD-ROM¹
•SATA II: For internal 3.5" SATA II HDD x 1
•Ethernet: RJ-45 10/100 Mbps Ethernet port
•Optional Wi-Fi dongle: Astone AW-N290 USB 802.11n Wi-Fi Dongle
•Analog Video Record: NTSC/PAL
•Record quality: HD, HQ, SP, LP, EP, SLP
•DTV Support: DVB-T, DTV EPG
•Record Function: DTV EPG / Timer Recording, Pause Live TV, one-touch recording
•Movie Video: MPEG-1 (DAT / MPG / MPEG); MPEG-2 (MPG / MPEG / VOB / ISO / IFO / TS / TP) MPEG-4 (MP4 / AVI / MOV); DivX 3/4/5/6, Xvid (AVI / MKV) H.264 AVC (TS / AVI / MKV / MOV) VC-1 (TS / AVI / MKV / WMV); WMV 9 (WMV); Real Video HD 8/9/10 (RM / RMVB); FLV (FLV)
•Movie Audio: Dolby Digital AC3/Plus/TrueHD, DTS/HD Master Audio/LBR, LPCM, MPEG-I Layer 1/2/3, MPEG-II Layer 1/2 multichannel, MPEG-4 HE AACv2, Real Audio
•Movie Subtitle: srt, sub, smi, idx+sub², ssa, DVD subtitle, DivX subtitle
•Music: MP3, WMA, WAV, ASF, AAC, OGG Vorbis, FLAC, iTune, M4A(AAC), M3U(Playlist)
•Photo: JPG(40-mega pixel without limitation of resolution, Baseline), BMP, PNG, GIF, TIF, TIFF
•Power rating: +12V 2A
•Power consumption: Operation: 7 W (USB device/HDD consumption not included)
•Standby: 0.5 W
•Size: 206 x 151.5 x 51 mm (L x W x H)
•Operation temperature: 0-40 Celsius
•Package Contents
•AP-360T HD Media Player
•Power adapter
•Remote control unit
•AAA batteries
•Mini jack to RCA composite cable
•RCA YPbPr cable
•User's manual

[weirdo]

Great find shlocker, looks tempting.
Shame it's ala DM500 with external PS.

[shlocker]

Catchoftheday.com.au
SOS deals for subscribers
$299 plus $9.95 delivery
I was tempted to buy one now but maybe wait a little longer, I feel better things will come out and with the Aussie dollar climbing, even cheaper prices.
A quick google search have found them even cheaper
as low as $179 but without the harddrive.

[shlocker]

I couldnt resist the temptation.
I read more about it and there is great support with forum and firmware downloads. It just made available in Australia November so its the latest flagship model.
Its only single HD tuner, thats the downside.
But I can always record on my PCs digital tuner card and stream the recording from network drives via Lan.
$300 for its capabilities seems like better than what the stores have to offer.