Pace Twinview - First Impressions

["Kenneth Watt" <kwatt@xxxxxxx>]

I'll try and be as objective as possible here, but being a confirmed
TiVo fan it won't be easy.

It arrived this afternoon and it's a cute little silver box with a
decent enough display as all it does is time/channel really, a few
buttons and a card slot. Okay, it's fairly compact and cute, not a lot
else can be said really, you've seen one boring silver box you've seen
them all really, I'm more interested in what it does.

Right, so the unit has RGB SCARTs one for TV and one for a VCR or
suchlike, and RS232 (hell knows what for), an S-Video out, audio,
digital optical out and a composite all pretty standard fare really bar
the S-V and optical out which is nice to see.

Plug it in, tells me the drive is initialised already and then it
searches for channels, finds them all.

One thing I noticed immediately was the speed that the thing moves at as
opposed to some of the older Freeview boxes, in comparison it's like
pitching a Reliant Robin against a Ferrari!=20

Enough of the tosh, what's the recording like...

The EPG for recording is utterly woeful! :/

It stinks, sucks and blows, I'm glad it's only for SWMBO to record her
soaps on if I had to use it I'd be so hacked off it's unreal! To be fair
it is better than a VHS deck, but after experiencing TiVo (if you've had
the pleasure) you will be so disappointed in how it's been done. There
is no season pass option, there is only what's on now and next shown in
the EPG. There seems to be no quality settings either, it's fixed at
whatever the default is. The interface to all this isn't exactly the
fastest either, not the easiest to use.

Live TV pausing is, well, live TV pausing, what more do you want? ;)

Picture quality I will say is excellent for what it is but then it's
excellent from a standard Freeview box anyway with a decent signal in
the main so that's no great shakes.

The nice thing is you can record one channel and watch another, not that
that affects me personally as I don't watch live TV bar the news but
SWMBO seems to think it's a plus.

So is it worth it?=20

Well, if you need a second recorder, or like me to reclaim your own PVR,
then yes it is, it's functional enough for most people I guess but Pace
have a lot to learn and sort out to make it anywhere even close to as
desirable as TiVo is. If you don't have and can't get TiVo or Sky+ then
I suppose it is worth the money, although 10 hours recording is not
enough IMO.

I haven't messed with Sky+ yet but I'm led to believe that the interface
is reasonable, not as good as TiVo, but good enough and I can't believe
it would be as bad as this Pace box is. If it is and they have just
ported over the Sky+ system to this then I pity the users of Sky+!

If you have TiVo and don't need another PVR, avoid, especially at =A3350!

K.

(Whose TiVo is finally free of its Eastenders & Corry shackles!)