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Ferguson FPVR1T - the review - the bee's knees for single tuner PVRs!
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Morning all! Sorry the babysitting lasted until 2100 last night, so had no chance to write up as promised, so here goes… (I may be selfish, however, I decided to start a new thread and have taken in to account virtually all questions in the other (by Bouffont), as it may be easier to answer questions relative to this review only).
Having been a PVR user for nearly 2 years and DVB TV owner since 1999, I feel “user-qualified” enough to go and search for the aspects that are important for most people and whilst this “burn in” is barely 60 hours old , I cannot comment on reliability too much suffice to say that it has not locked up and not failed in any aspect to date
. In summary, its all my Humax PVR8000T ever was, but better!
Basics and Set Up
At first glance, especially with the unit switched on and the large green LED clock/ channel number gently glaring, you could be forgiven for thinking that this was a new model Humax, so similar are the aesthetics. Personally, its very smart looking with a neat reflective embossed Ferguson logo in the centre of the frony panel, rather screen printed, making it feel more luxurious (you can PM me for photos).
The expected, faint, whine of the hard disc brings the FPVR1T to life and a blue screen with a clear white font announces that setup has commenced and the channel scan from start to finish takes 3 minutes. It also announces that there is 44 hours of recording time available and plenty of information such as signal network (Waltham for me), all neatly laid out. A quick flick through channels begins to impress, reminding me of the speed of my Sony DVB tuner (VTX-D800U) – yes it’s that quick! Channel changing can be done from the front Humax style dial on the front panel or the remote...
The remote control supplied is generic (no Ferguson logo… remember other companies such as Comet use the basic unit too), is smaller than most, however, is well laid out and intuitive to use, albeit you must use the up/ down cursor keys to change channels – there are no separate channel change buttons! You can control the volume output from the Ferguson and there is a mute button too – helpful.
Pressing the Menu button on the remote gives a Setup option. For example, you can choose TV formats (4:3 or 16:9), signal output (eg. RGB, CVBS or S-Video). Perhaps to keep the cost down, there is no RF modulation, which may seem odd to some users, however in reality for most is not a problem and if necessary RF channels can be changed on other equipment being used.
One other thing to note is that, unlike my Panasonic TU-CTH100, on switching on the unit from standby, there is no irritating delay whatsoever in accessing the Guide other other Menu features.
The EPG and Recording
On pressing the Guide button, the transition from live TV to EPG is almost instantaneous (relative to my super fast Sony DVB tuner and especially so compared to my slow TU-CTH100 twin tuner from Panasonic!). There are 4 parts to the screen – top left quarter is a live TV channel picture with sound, with adjacent quarter describing the programme. Bottom left quarter shows 5 channels, with adjacent quarter showing a table of 2 hours of programmes for each of them. For the latter, using the cursor keys on the remote you can navigate very quickly around the table, and the Yellow and Blue “teletext” buttons help you jump through the days – very neat, very Humax!
Continuing from the same table, to record, it could not be simpler… just move the white cursor over the programme, press the OK button, and the block in the table turns red and remains red to remind you that you have set it to record. To unset, simply do the above again and the block goes back to clear – I like it :cool:
So hear comes a negative… you can only set 8 programmes to record! That’s fine for a weekend a way (and only just), but for a week let alone two, oh dear! Granted, you do get the option for daily, weekly and weekend repeats which will improve on that, but for soap addicts and their programming all over the place, it's very poor consolation. By the way, manually setting (via Recording Scheduler) does not help further – it’s a total of 8 programmes whether it’s EPG or manually done! A simple OTA patch should be able to double if not triple this aspect, especially considering the hard disc has 44 hours recording capability.
If a programme has already started and you want to record it, there are 3 ways to do this. Just press the white with red dot Record button once, it assumes you want to record to the end of the programme (and pads it with 5 minutes, so long as there are no other programming conflicts); press it twice, and like with many PVRs , Instant Record, however rather than blocks of 30 minutes, you can do this by the minute, though this is could be cumbersome; or press the Guide button, highlight and OK the current programme – all in all very easy.
Unlike most PVRs, the EPG set recordings are automatically padded out by 5 minutes (with no means to switch off or change duration) at the end, so long as there are no other set recordings that might conflict. With 44 hours recording capacity, this is a desired and welcome feature :cool:
Playback
Press the Menu button and then select Recordings. A well laid out scrollable linear table occupies the lower half of the screen with programme title, date, time and duration. Top left is a preview screen, top right describes the recorded programme you have highlighted. The linear table even informs you if a programme is recording (a white circle with red dot)… and if this so happens to be the one you want to watch despite having not finished recording… yes, it performs "Chase Play" admirably – great
For the rest of the recordings, it’s simply a matter highlighting (by using the cursor keys) the recording, view in the preview screen to remind you about it and press OK to play. Like my Panasonic, it offers you to play from the last point it was stopped at or view from the beginning. You can protect recordings from being deleted and further (and oddly) for 1 or 2 weeks or 1 or 2 months – in my mind the former would be just fine.
Time-shifting/ Pause Live TV – it works well, with the added bonus of allowing you to save this buffered recording (e.g. you get a phone call, and then you have no time to view until much later on) :cool:. Fast forward/ rewind is limited up to x 48 (ample for most), with no visible jitter, however on moving from high speed playback to normal play, it's as though it has to slow down (its not immediate), odd, but you get used to it.
TopUpTV
Whilst I hope TUTV survives (and perhaps get better), the installed smartcard reader is no bad thing and perhaps will be used for other PayTV events or programming in the future. I am a TUTV subscriber and have to say decoding is quick with minimal picture degradation.
Some dangerous bits!
The Ferguson might offer Parental Controls to stop the children viewing certain channels, but idiot proof locks are required too! If you are like me and play around with options, programmers normally try to warn you that you could be performing a nasty! Basically, the Software Reset option brings up a window to warn you of what you are about to do, and if you press OK, there is NO back out (with are you really sure… are you really, really sure… enter your PIN)…ALL data (including recordings) is wiped :eek:
If you want to change channel whilst recording, most PVRs will announce that the action is not possible – phew! Not this one, it states that it will stop recording the channel being recorded :eek: and change the channel. Once again, there is NO back out (with are you really sure… etc). The only time this “feature” could be useful is if you want to actually stop recording a programme set via the EPG, as there is no other way to do it, documented or otherwise.
Noise
With all of this happening in the background I ought to mention the noise, or rather the lack of background noise. This unit is supremely quiet. The underside of the box shows provision for a fan, however, no fan is installed. There is the odd click now then of the hard disc (mainly during fast play back), but in the main I would have no hesitation in placing this unit in the bedroom (in fact for my testing this is where it has been and the wife has not complained!) :sleep:
Marks out of 10?
Machine reviewed with firmware/ software 1.2.1; CA Mediaguard Library:1.5.1
Having been a PVR user for nearly 2 years and DVB TV owner since 1999, I feel “user-qualified” enough to go and search for the aspects that are important for most people and whilst this “burn in” is barely 60 hours old , I cannot comment on reliability too much suffice to say that it has not locked up and not failed in any aspect to date
. In summary, its all my Humax PVR8000T ever was, but better!Basics and Set Up
At first glance, especially with the unit switched on and the large green LED clock/ channel number gently glaring, you could be forgiven for thinking that this was a new model Humax, so similar are the aesthetics. Personally, its very smart looking with a neat reflective embossed Ferguson logo in the centre of the frony panel, rather screen printed, making it feel more luxurious (you can PM me for photos).
The expected, faint, whine of the hard disc brings the FPVR1T to life and a blue screen with a clear white font announces that setup has commenced and the channel scan from start to finish takes 3 minutes. It also announces that there is 44 hours of recording time available and plenty of information such as signal network (Waltham for me), all neatly laid out. A quick flick through channels begins to impress, reminding me of the speed of my Sony DVB tuner (VTX-D800U) – yes it’s that quick! Channel changing can be done from the front Humax style dial on the front panel or the remote...
The remote control supplied is generic (no Ferguson logo… remember other companies such as Comet use the basic unit too), is smaller than most, however, is well laid out and intuitive to use, albeit you must use the up/ down cursor keys to change channels – there are no separate channel change buttons! You can control the volume output from the Ferguson and there is a mute button too – helpful.
Pressing the Menu button on the remote gives a Setup option. For example, you can choose TV formats (4:3 or 16:9), signal output (eg. RGB, CVBS or S-Video). Perhaps to keep the cost down, there is no RF modulation, which may seem odd to some users, however in reality for most is not a problem and if necessary RF channels can be changed on other equipment being used.
One other thing to note is that, unlike my Panasonic TU-CTH100, on switching on the unit from standby, there is no irritating delay whatsoever in accessing the Guide other other Menu features.
The EPG and Recording
On pressing the Guide button, the transition from live TV to EPG is almost instantaneous (relative to my super fast Sony DVB tuner and especially so compared to my slow TU-CTH100 twin tuner from Panasonic!). There are 4 parts to the screen – top left quarter is a live TV channel picture with sound, with adjacent quarter describing the programme. Bottom left quarter shows 5 channels, with adjacent quarter showing a table of 2 hours of programmes for each of them. For the latter, using the cursor keys on the remote you can navigate very quickly around the table, and the Yellow and Blue “teletext” buttons help you jump through the days – very neat, very Humax!
Continuing from the same table, to record, it could not be simpler… just move the white cursor over the programme, press the OK button, and the block in the table turns red and remains red to remind you that you have set it to record. To unset, simply do the above again and the block goes back to clear – I like it :cool:
So hear comes a negative… you can only set 8 programmes to record! That’s fine for a weekend a way (and only just), but for a week let alone two, oh dear! Granted, you do get the option for daily, weekly and weekend repeats which will improve on that, but for soap addicts and their programming all over the place, it's very poor consolation. By the way, manually setting (via Recording Scheduler) does not help further – it’s a total of 8 programmes whether it’s EPG or manually done! A simple OTA patch should be able to double if not triple this aspect, especially considering the hard disc has 44 hours recording capability.
If a programme has already started and you want to record it, there are 3 ways to do this. Just press the white with red dot Record button once, it assumes you want to record to the end of the programme (and pads it with 5 minutes, so long as there are no other programming conflicts); press it twice, and like with many PVRs , Instant Record, however rather than blocks of 30 minutes, you can do this by the minute, though this is could be cumbersome; or press the Guide button, highlight and OK the current programme – all in all very easy.
Unlike most PVRs, the EPG set recordings are automatically padded out by 5 minutes (with no means to switch off or change duration) at the end, so long as there are no other set recordings that might conflict. With 44 hours recording capacity, this is a desired and welcome feature :cool:
Playback
Press the Menu button and then select Recordings. A well laid out scrollable linear table occupies the lower half of the screen with programme title, date, time and duration. Top left is a preview screen, top right describes the recorded programme you have highlighted. The linear table even informs you if a programme is recording (a white circle with red dot)… and if this so happens to be the one you want to watch despite having not finished recording… yes, it performs "Chase Play" admirably – great
For the rest of the recordings, it’s simply a matter highlighting (by using the cursor keys) the recording, view in the preview screen to remind you about it and press OK to play. Like my Panasonic, it offers you to play from the last point it was stopped at or view from the beginning. You can protect recordings from being deleted and further (and oddly) for 1 or 2 weeks or 1 or 2 months – in my mind the former would be just fine.
Time-shifting/ Pause Live TV – it works well, with the added bonus of allowing you to save this buffered recording (e.g. you get a phone call, and then you have no time to view until much later on) :cool:. Fast forward/ rewind is limited up to x 48 (ample for most), with no visible jitter, however on moving from high speed playback to normal play, it's as though it has to slow down (its not immediate), odd, but you get used to it.
TopUpTV
Whilst I hope TUTV survives (and perhaps get better), the installed smartcard reader is no bad thing and perhaps will be used for other PayTV events or programming in the future. I am a TUTV subscriber and have to say decoding is quick with minimal picture degradation.
Some dangerous bits!
The Ferguson might offer Parental Controls to stop the children viewing certain channels, but idiot proof locks are required too! If you are like me and play around with options, programmers normally try to warn you that you could be performing a nasty! Basically, the Software Reset option brings up a window to warn you of what you are about to do, and if you press OK, there is NO back out (with are you really sure… are you really, really sure… enter your PIN)…ALL data (including recordings) is wiped :eek:
If you want to change channel whilst recording, most PVRs will announce that the action is not possible – phew! Not this one, it states that it will stop recording the channel being recorded :eek: and change the channel. Once again, there is NO back out (with are you really sure… etc). The only time this “feature” could be useful is if you want to actually stop recording a programme set via the EPG, as there is no other way to do it, documented or otherwise.
Noise
With all of this happening in the background I ought to mention the noise, or rather the lack of background noise. This unit is supremely quiet. The underside of the box shows provision for a fan, however, no fan is installed. There is the odd click now then of the hard disc (mainly during fast play back), but in the main I would have no hesitation in placing this unit in the bedroom (in fact for my testing this is where it has been and the wife has not complained!) :sleep:
Marks out of 10?
- Picture quality: 10 (no difference between live & recorded, natural colours, very pleasing)
- Sound quality: 8 (very good stereo separation, with possible digital out)
- User interface: 8 (intuitive; could do with a choice of background colours)
- Features/ perfomance: 9 (all that I would want from a single tuner and very, very quiet)
- Reliability: 9 (to date!)
- TUTV compatibility: 9
- Oddities: 5 (the dangerous bits – you have been warned)
- Manual: 9 (very clearly written and well laid out)
- Build Quality: 9
- Value for money: 9 (@ £119.99, inc SCART cable, from Currys and Dixons only)
- TOTAL: 8.5 out of 10 – Go and buy it, you won’t regret it (... and I do not work for DLG!)
Machine reviewed with firmware/ software 1.2.1; CA Mediaguard Library:1.5.1
0
Comments
Is there any mention of Pay Per View in the menus
The standard AccessDevices STB's have recently been getting software updates to allow PPV, just wondering if the software in this box handles it at the moment
Hm... good one... believe it or not the unit actually has 7 different sets of software and versions listed under software, in addition to comprehensive information (with versions again) within the CA software section, so I am not sure what I am I looking for - sorry
No problem
It would have some type of info about how much credit is on your card and how much you have spent (only if using ppv and not monthly subscription)
Thanks for checking though
Following Fast Forward did you return to normal speed by pressing the Rewind button to slow down the forward speed? This would take time and several presses depending on what the Fast Forward speed was. The manual (Page 14 and 15) implies that if Play was pressed then normal speed would be achieved in one step immediately.
Is the record buffer automatically started when you select a channel, or is this initiated when you first press Pause? What I am getting at, is it possible to Replay a part of the current programme without having initiated a recording buffer manually first? If having initiated the buffer is the buffer retained when if from time to time you subsequently start and stop chase play on this same channel.
Is there any way of stepping through a fixed time interval (say fixed 30 seconds) with on button press i.e. normally referred to as "skip"? No sign of this from the manual or the Remote control layout?
Colin
Went straight to Play! So perhaps this is behaviour by design!
Buffer only starts went you press Pause (so you cannot go backwards in case you weren't concentrating :sleep: ... unlike my Panasonic (and some other PVRs) where it is running from the moment the unit is switched on from standby... I do not think its too great a loss.
I am afraid not!
TIA TOM.....
How's EPG loading times?
Can you browse other channels' Now/Next whilst watching something?
Any editing?
(sorry, that was 3
Not really other than dubbing to a DVD or VCR via the appropriate SCART.
Yes, you were right, or is it 4 now? :rolleyes:
I also noticed a bug in that if you played back a recording in progress, the time bar was wrong... it always displayed the length of the recording as 1 Minute (I think) no matter how much of the programme had recorded.
To be honest the Astratec was rubbish, not a patch on the Humax 8000T, and I would not recommend it to anyone (the one I had to play with is being returned....very noisy)
Well, considering the "engine" is supposed to be the same, my experience (and of others who now have it too, see other thread) could not be more different - its the quietest and best performing single tuner PVR I have used and recommend it highly, but it is in a different case to that of the Astratec (and branded Ferguson), and is better than the Humax PVR8000T, the latter being better (in many respects) than my Panasonic TU-CTH100
Colin
I'm a bit confused, are you saying that whilst its recording, if you attempt to change channel you get this statement and it just goes ahead and stops recording ? or do you get the chance to leave it recording (albeit with no easy way to back out from the message - presume it backs out/goes away automatically after a timed period?)
If it warns you and gives you the chance to leave it recording then this sounds reasonable enough to me, if not, then it sounds like a major usability issue that'll catch me & the wife out time and time again = major reason for me not to buy one.
Cheers Nirm, think I could live with that, but agree with your comment that a further warning is probably needed.
One final question(or two), and probably not a deal breaker, but are there Volume control buttons + a Source button, e.g. to swap between viewing analogue TV signal and PVR freeview box on the remote control ? Just thinking if the box starts recording something be nice if I could swap to using my TVs analogue tuner without having to use the original TV remote to select the source.
I'm v.green on these things, but assume I could watch normal analogue tv channels while the box is recording any of the freeview channels ?
I have a question for you. Can the remote be programmed to control the TV set or are the volume buttons for the PVR only?
Cheers mate.
For the PVR only... pic later today!
Thank you sir :cool:
Thanks