RE: [OT] Freeview PVRs

["Andy Laurence" <andy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Phil Harris <mailto:phil@xxxxxxx>
wrote:
> What's the current flavour of the month in the line of freeview PVRs?

I've had Tivo for a number of years, and have wanted to get onto
something Freeview to get round the digital-analogue-digital process.
I've tried lots of PC-based solutions as nothing was as good as Tivo.
The only software I found that was as good as Tivo was MythTV.  Sadly, I
never managed to get it working.  A few months ago, I spotted Toppy
(http://www.toppy.org.uk), which as
standard doesn't offer much, other
than VCR functions to a large hard disk.  However, it's upgradable with
freely downloadable software, and there's an SDK for writng your own.

I use Jag's EPG, which gives me text searching on the over-the-air EPG.
I've migrated all my season passes to Toppy, and will be boxing my Tivo
up to go on Ebay very shortly.  It's not quite as easy to use as Tivo,
although there are user interfaces like Sky+ that can be installed.  A
big benefit over Tivo is the USB connection.  I can download the
recordings in perfect quality onto my laptop, and burn to DVD, as well
as edit (and backup) my season passes.  On the subject of season passes,
it's not able to determine episode numbers, so it will record the same
episode over and over.

The only thing that bugs me is that if two programs are recorded on the
same channel one after the other, it won't split them into two
recordings.  It also has twin tuners, so can record two channels at the
same time.  As a bonus though, it can record more channels at the same
time, provided they are all on no more than two muxes.  Geek factor :-)

Cheers,
Andy