Good news, bad news

[Huge]

s/most/all/

[Johnny B Good]

Now there's an expression you'd never ever expect to see in relation to any Sony product, "It does have a really good UI.". :-)

I do believe Microsoft is largely to blame for "lowering consumer expectations". However, to be fair in our spreading of blame, Microsoft may well have looked to Sony for inspiration when it came to redesigning the desktop look and feel used in their ironically named "Vista" windows operating system. Apparently windows XP wasn't quite s**te enough to prevent their 'customers' from 'fixing it' into a less broken state than they'd wished to inflict upon the great unwashed consuming masses.

[Johnny B Good]

+1 (or AoL, if you prefer)

[Huge]

[20 lines snipped]

It makes the Panny look like the hideous PoS it really is. According to a friend who owns a later version of the Sony, they've ruined it again.

They certainly have a role in it. But our "features over reliability", "bells and whistles over functionality" attitude doesn't help.

[bert]

Whose bells and whistles attitude? I don't recall ever being asked if I wanted anything over and above MSDOS1.1

[bert]

They end up giving it to richer people and end up poor again.

[bert]

And Toshiba are just about broke.

[Andrew]

The HD Fox T2 (£59 refurb from humax direct in July 2012 for an emergency Olympics viewing) has a usb port. I bought a cheap samsung 2.5 inch hardisk that is powered from the Humax and that enables pause, rewind and recording. Brilliant.

I have worked out that if you get the mux correct, you can still record and view selected other channels at the same time.

But various apps are steadily vanishing because they don't use https. The Iplayer still works though.

You could spend £300 on humaxes latest with an H3, and I suspect that money would be better spent on a better TV whose smart facilities might be all you need.

[Andrew]

If we have another election this year and Corbyn gets in McDonnell will cause many suicides amongst people who can't afford the garden tax, and are too old to consider downsizing.

[Andrew]

That means no HD, so I'm surprised you still give it house-room.

[Huge]

We rarely use it any more, and TBH, I'm much more interested in plot, dialogue, character development and the like than in how well the CGI explosions are rendered.

[Steve Walker]

I know that the recording box can pause and rewind, but can the second, streaming box?

They cost me £238 (well £195 + £43 worth of Tesco vouchers). I am happy with the TVs we have got and have seen, from those that others are using, that smart facilities can disappear within months of purchase as the manufacturer ceases to support them. Humax may do the same, but they do seem to have a longer lifecycle. The second box is an essential (you can have four apparently) as it is replacing Sky multi-room.

We could have gone for two recording boxes (as we have had with Sky) and distributed them around the house, however it suits us to have all the recordings on one box, but that can be played in two (or more) places independently - with two separate Sky boxes we sometimes found that I wanted to watch something in the living room, while my wife wanted something different in the kitchen, but that both had been recorded on the same box and couldn't be watched simultaneously.

SteveW

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I'd got the idea you wanted some super duper PVR and TV to enjoy playing with.

All the PVRs I've ever seen are quite capable of doing a simple recording and then watching it back. Usually can record two things at once.

[Capitol]

There;s a difference between "seen" and "used". When used the modern ones are unreliable crap.

[dennis]

My TV can record to a USB drive. I have never tried it. Some have twin tuners so you can watch and rewind a program while recording another channel. Mine has twin tuners but one is freeview and the other freesat and I don't know if it will record from both at the same time.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I use my Humax PVR all the time. Recording from the TV might be ok when you're out, but a PVR allows you to record two progs while you watch a third on the TV. May not be needed often, but nice when it is.

Think all PVRs do this.

My satellite receiver has its own HD for recording. Never actually used it yet, though.

[dennis]

Careful you will want sky q, as that can record 6 and watch another. ,

[Dave Plowman (News)]

My old Toppy still works and is plumbed in if I need it. Had the sense to make sure the new TV had a SCART socket. But both the TV and Humax do i-player etc. The TV FreeView playback which is very easy to use.

[Martin Brown]

But now that you can use watch on demand over the internet for a lot of content it is somewhat past its peak unless you have very bad internet.

Also some will let you press pause in realtime viewing buffer the content and resume (but then so will internet streaming).

Some Panasonic TVs will also accept USB memory sticks and record directly to them - snag is they are a bit fussy about sizes (

[Huge]

That's all very well, but stuff isn't available indefinitely on catch-up and sometimes it takes us months (and on occasion years) to get round to watching things.