My parents have had Topup TV for a couple of years and bought into the Topup TV Anytime scam.
So they now own the Thompson DVR which is dedicated to freeview.
In short it is a piece of crap.
It has dual tuners, so theoretically you can record one channel while watching another. Except, that when the timer is due to start, it places a popup on the screen warning that the tuner needed for the recording may be in use. No recording will take place unless you "ok" this message. So if this happens when you are in bed, no recording.
If you have the pause live tv feature enabled, the live transmission stutters due to hard disk activity. This was proved by disabling the feature.
Topup TV Anytime downloads programs overnight and stores them on the hard drive. Fine, except that every program stored this way is unwatchable because hard drive access causes the programs to halt and stutter.
At regular intervals, the box has to be given a hard reset (turned off at the mains) because it hangs and won't respond to any remote commands.
All in all, it is a load of crap and I warned them about this before they bought it, but hey, it's their money.
Personally, I have XP Pro running 2 Nebula DigiTV cards and can record entire muxes with no issues, to my 250GB drive. I can also archive recordings, pause live tv, etc, etc. Ok, so it's a pc, but the features it makes available are well worth the extra space / noise involved. And given a longer link cable to the tv (I have a projector), it could always be placed in a cupboard or different room. Did I mention you can use it over a network too (local or WAN) ?
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Thompson Freeview box
My parents have had Topup TV for a couple of years and bought into the Topup TV Anytime scam.
So they now own the Thompson DVR which is dedicated to freeview.
In short it is a piece of crap.
It has dual tuners, so theoretically you can record one channel while watching another. Except, that when the timer is due to start, it places a popup on the screen warning that the tuner needed for the recording may be in use. No recording will take place unless you "ok" this message. So if this happens when you are in bed, no recording.
If you have the pause live tv feature enabled, the live transmission stutters due to hard disk activity. This was proved by disabling the feature.
Topup TV Anytime downloads programs overnight and stores them on the hard drive. Fine, except that every program stored this way is unwatchable because hard drive access causes the programs to halt and stutter.
At regular intervals, the box has to be given a hard reset (turned off at the mains) because it hangs and won't respond to any remote commands.
All in all, it is a load of crap and I warned them about this before they bought it, but hey, it's their money.
Personally, I have XP Pro running 2 Nebula DigiTV cards and can record entire muxes with no issues, to my 250GB drive. I can also archive recordings, pause live tv, etc, etc. Ok, so it's a pc, but the features it makes available are well worth the extra space / noise involved. And given a longer link cable to the tv (I have a projector), it could always be placed in a cupboard or different room. Did I mention you can use it over a network too (local or WAN) ?
You can keep your consumer electronics, thanks.