For the last couple of years, I’ve been quietly using a PVR (Hard disk based Video Recorder) that plugged into my G4 Powerbook (See my review here. Unfortunately, it suffered from the problem that it required my laptop to be both next to the tv, plugged in to the EyeTV, with sufficient space. It also failed the “mess test”, ie. there were a lot more cables in front of the TV than strictly necessary.
Well, I’ve now moved the EyeTV up to the loft, and am streaming it with the EyeHome product. But it’s sort of become redundant, as we now have a the Humax PVR-9200T plugged directly into the TV.
First impressions were good. It worked out of the box; Did what it said, and sure enough enables you to record two programmes, and watch a third if the digital winds are in your favour and you’re on the right streams. Most of the time though you just want to either watch one of them, or a previous recording. It does all that quite nicely. Plus the 160Gb hard disk should ensure we can build up a lot of programmes that we never have time to watch, for those evenings where you just want to veg.
So, whilst it does the job, and works, it’s not perfect. The net effect of these gripes is to question whether I’d recommend it at all to folk. So, take a deep breath, and read on after the jump…
Gripe list:
No time padding: When we first started recording things, it was all good. Until we realised that it didn’t “pad” the timings at all, so bang on the hour it’d stop, even if the programme had started late. Good news is this feature is in the latest update. Only problem now is that if you’ve got two sequential programmes, it sometimes ‘forgets’ the second one, because the scheduling gets confused due to the time for the start of second programme has past when the first programme finishes.
No rewind on recordings in progress. This was almost a show-stopper. My nice EyeTV allowed me to rewind on in-progress recordings if we got in late, or were watching something else on another channel. The Humax didn’t do this at all, and I came very close to returning the box as simply not up to the job. However, the update came to the rescue, and this feature is supported. There’s the same annoyance with EyeTV’s with getting booted out of recordings when the recording finishes (so you have to relocate yourself), which baffles me as it’s a serious UI flaw.
Rubbish Guide: The guide is awful. Sure, you can review what you’ve got coming up over the next eight days (which is a Freeview limitation), but if I want to use the guide to see what else is on, I can’t change the live channel. It’s purely for setting recordings, so I have to exit the guide and then change channel. Bizarre UI oversight that really makes me think the folk that design it don’t use it.
No programme thumbnail. It’s nice on my EyeTV to have a little thumbnail of the programme, normally where you left of viewing. Be nice if that was available (The display has a spot to do just that, but it’s a black box).
No “New recording” status, so you have a pile of “Simpsons” episodes, and you can’t work out which has you’ve watched or not.
Deleting is a pain – You’ve got to go through too many menu options to delete things. Whilst I like the on-screen recording overview, it’d be nice if you could click to delete there too.
Awful remote control – It’s awful. Big, and difficult to lose, sure (Which some may consider a feature on a remote control), but it’s too big, and half the useful buttons are hidden behind a silly little slider. So I’ve removed the slider to save on hassle. The skip process is painful too (You have to press the play button, rather than just release one of the advance buttons), and the skip-forward N secs button badly implemented. Repeated presses required, and it doesn’t work all the time.
Updating a pain. I mentioned the firmware update, but don’t expect to be able to do it yourself very easily. Despite the USB connector, you need serial cables and a Windows PC to do it, and it’ll be slow as a result (Serial lines pushing 1Mb updates is a bad idea when USB-2 is available on the kit). So, it’s only via Over-the-air updates. As I discovered with my On-Digital box, this is (probably) fine until the manufacturer stops supporting it, and you’re at the latest update. If you’re behind, like I was, it can be several weeks before your update is available.
Unstable. It’s not crashed on me yet, but I’ve heard from somebody who’s had one for longer, and they have problems with it crashing. We do get ‘resets’ of a sort, where the screen goes black for a second, and then comes on again – often I think when there’s ‘red button’ stuff going on. It’s perhaps an undocumented feature, but it wouldn’t display anything more than a couple of seconds of the Big Brother content (TV or sound) on E4 the other day when I was flicking around whilst having my lunch.
Conclusion
It’s great having a PVR that’s permanently connected to the TV, but I’m kind of regretting having got this particular one. It just seems horribly rough around the edges. There are support forums, where I’ve heard mention of some of the features, but I’m short on patience.
I initially bought mine from Dixons website (after hunting about on Froogle), but despite saying it was in-stock, their website seems unbelievably crap that it took them a long weekend to realise this and cancel my order (after I enquired), confirming everything I’d feared that Dixons don’t quite “get” the e-commerce age (sorry Stew). So I went elsewhere via Froogle.
Marks out of 10? 6.5 – It’s got potential, but they need to get a move on and fix the software/interface gripes.
See also
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