Recording TV

[thick_mike]

Good luck shaking them off. They hound you for years trying to get you to sign up again.

Not sure why anyone needs a pvr with so many catch up options.

Buy a NowTV box for £20 and away you go.

If you really have to have a PVR have a read of the reviews on WhatHiFi of their award winners

https://www.whathifi.com/products/digital-tv-boxes/freeview

Big advantage of PVR vs catch up is that you don't have to watch the ads.

I bought my Humax Mocha FVP4000t from Richer sounds in an open box sale. It was obviously returned from a customer and had an HDMI and Ethernet cable missing, so I got £40 knocked off. When I got it home I decided to see if there was a Netflix free trial I could activate. Then I realised the previous owners were still logged in! I've had free Netflix for the last six months

 

[JSW]

The NowTV box has BBC iPlayer / All4 etc, so for at least a month after broadcast you can watch programmes again.

What, a WHOLE month !?!? wowser!

Anything on iPlayer, Google Get_iPlayer

On All4 many programmes are archived for good. eg Peep Show

I would still prefer a localised copy, but on initial inspection All4 does appear to have a fair amount to offer, so fair play there, but does that warrant the cost of a NowTV box?

 

[Harbo]

I thought HD programmes on the Humax were encrypted so impossible to copy elsewhere?
Nice to be proven wrong though as I generally record in “standard view” in case I want to keep something.

Rod

 

[novocaine]

there is an aftermarket bit of software that lets you lift the encryption.

as to why have a PVR, mainly because I don't want to be reliant on a network provider to store something and not delete it on a whim but also because I have had pretty poor internet connection until recently and streaming wasn't always an option.

 

[JSW]

I thought HD programmes on the Humax were encrypted so impossible to copy elsewhere?
Nice to be proven wrong though as I generally record in “standard view” in case I want to keep something.

Rod

They are, and I admit I forgot to mention that my Hummys are running a firmware upgrade that bypasses some of the stock limitations of the out-of-the-box model, HD copying being one. AVForums have a years long massive thread about the how-to's, broken down into several parts, it's THAT long! (and it could well be 2-3 years since I last looked)

 

[stuartpaul]

Interesting range of views. We want a PVR so we are in control of what we do and when we want to do it. Something of a hangover from the old days when there were many fewer TV options. Anyhow, - our choice.

We will probably see how we get on with nothing for a while. Having been with Sky for so long it becomes a bit instinctive and you just do 'stuff' without thinking.

Our TV is 'smart' but I'm less so and it's taking a while to get used to driving the damn thing! Sharing Netflix account with our son and so far that seems quite good. We'll see how the catch up stuff works with our lifestyle and take it from there.

Aren't now tv just the PAYG arm of Sky? Certainly looks like it.

 

[MrTeroo]

On All4 many programmes are archived for good. eg Peep Show

I would still prefer a localised copy, but on initial inspection All4 does appear to have a fair amount to offer, so fair play there, but does that warrant the cost of a NowTV box?

Well you may have a smart TV with an All4 app already installed, but if not, the NowTV box is much cheaper than a PVR.

Plus, if you would find any use for it, you can buy daily/weekly/monthly Sky passes.

I sometimes watch a match on SkySports. £7 once in a while doesn't bother me. I would never go back to paying a monthly Sky subscription.

 

[Gerry]

If you use catchup it will be in standard definition only and have limited availability. When you use a PVR you can record in HD and it's yours to keep.

Gerry

 

[llangatwgnedd]

Still using the first generation Humax PVR, also one of the many tester's of the BBC iPlayer where you had to put in a code.
Those were the days.

 

[nabs]

while we are on the subject of PVR nostalgia, like BugBear I am a toppy fan - the Topfield 5800 was way ahead of its time and had a reasonably open operating system that allowed some fairly in-depth customization. I kept mine going for years, replaced it when it failed with a second hand one, but when this eventually gave up the ghost I fell back on Tivo from Virgin - surely one of the most over-rated products of all time.

Its main selling point is it will monitor your viewing habits and record things you will like but may have missed - the reality is that it records vast amounts of arbitrary nonsense and without fail will not record any new series you are genuinely interested in but have not set a series-link for. It also takes about 20 minutes to reboot - brilliant when you live in an area of frequent power-cuts (as I do). grrr.

The toppy was a picture of simplicity and reliability in comparison. Happy days!

PS in the Tivo's defence, it does have one excellent feature which is it is able to construct a 'series-link' based on a mixture of your recordings and online versions of the show available from iplayer and the like. This not only minimizes space usage, but can occasionally help salvage a situation where you have cottoned on to a new series a few episode in , only to discover that the Tivo has failed to guess you might like it (as usual). In these circumstances setting up a series link - assuming the missed episodes can be found online - adds them to your list of recorded shows as if you had local copies.

 

[RogerS]

Interesting range of views. We want a PVR so we are in control of what we do and when we want to do it. .......

Precisely. We always use PVR's precisely for that reason. We never watch anything in realtime. Neither do we forget to record something as all PVR's let you record a series. So no reason to worry about something having access to iPlayer or All 4 etc.

Over the years, we've had Humax's, a Hitachi, several original TiVo's as SWMBO preferred the user interface. We currently are running a Youview Humax. Not because I selected the Youview bit per se but it was an end-of-line deal. The early generation Humax's had issues hence the need to get something newer.

Youview...gives you access to iPlayer, All 4 etc. BUT...a big BUT...you have no control over their user interface and because you'll have it connected to the internet to watch iPlayer etc, then it will automatically update to the latest CoS user interface...and at a stroke removing ALL the useful things you liked....such as it automatically looking through the guide to see if there was another occurrence of a program you wanted to record that was clashing with the other two you'd already set-up...and replacing a perfectly usable list view with a load of stupid thumbnails.

Unless you tell your router to block all internet access to their update URLs :twisted:

So, my advice.. a bog standard Humax...regularly sold off cheap by them.

 

[bugbear]

while we are on the subject of PVR nostalgia, like BugBear I am a toppy fan - the Topfield 5800 was way ahead of its time and had a reasonably open operating system that allowed some fairly in-depth customization. I kept mine going for years, replaced it when it failed with a second hand one, but when this eventually gave up the ghost ...

I've re-capped the PSU in mine, and fitted a bigger HD, as well as using MyStuff (and a few others) to tune it to my preferences. It's sometimes good tobe a full time computer pro!

BugBear

 

[nabs]

yes it was the capacitors that went on my original one too, although at the time second hand models were almost being given away so I did not bother attempting a repair. I used to use MyStuff too - it is astonishing it all still works after more than a decade since introduction!

 

[bugbear]

yes it was the capacitors that went on my original one too, although at the time second hand models were almost being given away so I did not bother attempting a repair. I used to use MyStuff too - it is astonishing it all still works after more than a decade since introduction!

I did the repair because the PSU caps are (were!) a known weakness in the Topfield. They WILL go eventually; so replacing them with good quality caps gives you a unit with a good life expectancy. I also made a little stand to give it more clearance underneath, to increase airflow, since poor heat dissipation is also a Topfield weakness.

My Topfield will finally become obselete due to either only being SD, or a new TV not having a SCART socket. Hasn't happened yet though. Still my standard way to watch TV.

BugBear

 

[RogerS]

...... having a SCART socket. ....... Still my standard way to watch TV.

BugBear

+ 1

I guess our plasma screen may eventually die in which case a rethink might be in order.