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New PVRT200 owner - initial thoughts and comparison with pace twin
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Hi,
Thought I would post my initial views on the FVRT200. I have also owned a pace twin for 18 months so a comparison with that might be useful.
Apologies as I'm sure many of these things have been covered before.
First impression was not too good as the unit went in the pls wait power cycle after tuning all channels and then watching for about 10 mins. More details in the pls wait thread. Basically my unit had the 2amp supply. A 3amp from digifusion sorted this but not a good start. Interestingly the PVRT200 unit is stamped as 3amp underneath yet they supply a 2amp supply...anyway....up and running.
Initial thoughts:
Pros:
1. Great picture - better than pace I would say - sharper and better colours.
2. Useful to record two channels at once (pace only one and watch one).
3. Neat slim unit
4. Always recording last 30mins could be useful
5. Size of hard disk (is it 20 hours in sp?) pace only 10 hours
6. Very fast to come out of standby - pace takes about 15secs.
7. EPG guide is much easier to use then pace as it pre-populated overnight. With the pace it is only populated when you go to it and many times items just do not appear.
Cons:
1. Remote feels cheap and button usage much more fiddly than pace
2. Menus not as easy to follow as pace but that may come over time
3. Display on unit difficult to read due to reflection and size / brightness
4. Cannot really hear the fan in my front room but wouldn't want it in a bedroom - the pace is currently there and totally silent when not recording.
5. When you want to start watching a progamme already recording you have to go to the current point in the programme and skip backwards - not good if you are in the middle of a motor race or football match etc. as you might see the score etc. With the pace you go to recordings and just press play on the currently recording item and you go to the start.
Features missing (I think) that are on the pace and I find useful - I will miss these:
1. Skip forwards / backwards in 1 minute chunks with one press button - great for advert skipping.
2. Automatically resume playing a recording from where you stopped last time (on any recording) by one press from recording menu
3. Just press play button and pace automatically plays from where you left the last thing you were watching from the recordings.
General questions:
1. When I put a user defined scene in it is very difficult to skip back past this mark
2. Does anybody really use the scenes? just a quick way of forwarding through a recording? a single button press for a user defined skip length would be good
That's all for now. I will post a more detailed review after a few weeks / months of ownership.
PS. Before you mention the pace locking up etc. The latest software has not caused me to unplug the pace from the mains since it was installed (many weeks ago). Initially the software was flakey.
.Richard
Thought I would post my initial views on the FVRT200. I have also owned a pace twin for 18 months so a comparison with that might be useful.
Apologies as I'm sure many of these things have been covered before.
First impression was not too good as the unit went in the pls wait power cycle after tuning all channels and then watching for about 10 mins. More details in the pls wait thread. Basically my unit had the 2amp supply. A 3amp from digifusion sorted this but not a good start. Interestingly the PVRT200 unit is stamped as 3amp underneath yet they supply a 2amp supply...anyway....up and running.
Initial thoughts:
Pros:
1. Great picture - better than pace I would say - sharper and better colours.
2. Useful to record two channels at once (pace only one and watch one).
3. Neat slim unit
4. Always recording last 30mins could be useful
5. Size of hard disk (is it 20 hours in sp?) pace only 10 hours
6. Very fast to come out of standby - pace takes about 15secs.
7. EPG guide is much easier to use then pace as it pre-populated overnight. With the pace it is only populated when you go to it and many times items just do not appear.
Cons:
1. Remote feels cheap and button usage much more fiddly than pace
2. Menus not as easy to follow as pace but that may come over time
3. Display on unit difficult to read due to reflection and size / brightness
4. Cannot really hear the fan in my front room but wouldn't want it in a bedroom - the pace is currently there and totally silent when not recording.
5. When you want to start watching a progamme already recording you have to go to the current point in the programme and skip backwards - not good if you are in the middle of a motor race or football match etc. as you might see the score etc. With the pace you go to recordings and just press play on the currently recording item and you go to the start.
Features missing (I think) that are on the pace and I find useful - I will miss these:
1. Skip forwards / backwards in 1 minute chunks with one press button - great for advert skipping.
2. Automatically resume playing a recording from where you stopped last time (on any recording) by one press from recording menu
3. Just press play button and pace automatically plays from where you left the last thing you were watching from the recordings.
General questions:
1. When I put a user defined scene in it is very difficult to skip back past this mark
2. Does anybody really use the scenes? just a quick way of forwarding through a recording? a single button press for a user defined skip length would be good
That's all for now. I will post a more detailed review after a few weeks / months of ownership.
PS. Before you mention the pace locking up etc. The latest software has not caused me to unplug the pace from the mains since it was installed (many weeks ago). Initially the software was flakey.
.Richard
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Comments
Regarding "scene generation"! No-one AFAIK ever generates scenes when prompted - as far as I can tell they are only ever used to set a return point for a currently playing recording (press OK during playback, answer Yes to generate scene). That way, you can resume from that scene if you interupt your playing. I don't know what you mean by finding it difficult to skip past a user defined scene, perhaps this is peculiar to the FVRT200? Someone will tell us!
Unfortunately there is no alternative runtime file (run.bin) for the FVRT200 because there have been no over air downloads (yet). If there had been, you would no doubt have been able to patch the software (or someone would have done it) to prevent the "Generate scenes now?" message which I think most of us seemed to have installed! A life-saver!
I found it quite interesting that each unit has its good and bad points - and none are perfect! At least the Fusion is not so bad as some would have us believe that the only place for it is the skip!
The remote is so easy to use. My Mum who is 81 has no problems with it.
Mike.
The digi was a nice piece of kit apart from a few glaring niggles, which drove me mad in the end. The picture was good, the recording worked great, never let me down etc... but:
- only one program per channel displayed on the EPG, you have to skip through, or go to channel mode.
- no page up/down buttons on the epg, and line by line often accessed the HDD between lines and could take ages
- Scenes drove me up the wall... if you didn't create them, it kept asking you, but creating them could take ages... and I never used them!
- Interactive never really worked for me on this box, and often crashed the box (but aparantly the same is for humax)
- The hard disk spins all the time... even in standby! I worried about how long those barings were going to last
- no autopadding... I had to manually pad everything... same with hummy, but fingers crossed for an update soon
- this box never seemed to get the whole widescreen thing right - I think this is what pushed me over the edge
- the patterned background and fancy 3d icons - horrible to look at, and difficult to read
- no find facility
- no daily/weekly recordings... you have to set what you want every instance, or miss it - which I invariably did
In the end i got tired of waiting for an update. I couldn't imagine the guys at digi understanding my needs. I would say though that it was a really simple box to use... I bet even my parents could have got on with this one.
I just wish Digifusion would read this forum to find out what is losing them customers.
If the three items mentioned above were fixed would you still have jumped ship?