My elderly neighbours have recently bought a new TV. Inevitably these days, I suppose, it was 'smart'. It's a Panasonic TX-40FS500B. They are struggling with it.
I don't know what they had before, but whatever it was, they had it fronted by a BT PVR, connected via a SCART cable. The new TV doesn't have a SCART socket, and the chap who brought it (from the company who's name sounds like a popular Indian food) said they couldn't use the BT box any more. But they were used to using that box, especially for making recordings, and the aforementioned chap said all they needed was a memory stick, which they bought, which they told me didn't work.
I reconnected the BT box via the Component (red/white/yellow) sockets and cable (which is what the installer chap should have done), and it all worked perfectly OK, except that they must have forgotten how they used it before, because they kept getting muddled (he was 90 last week). So I went back to the memory stick, and no, it didn't work. The message that came up was along the lines that it was not compatible, or some such, and that it needed an HDD. Another black mark to Mr Indian food for suggesting the stick.
OK, so I dug out an old HDD, complete with caddy and power supply, from my computer-bits box and fitted that up for them. Worked a treat. They could now put away the BT box and just use the record function of the TV when they wanted to record a programme.
Or so I thought. They now find that when the TV is recording a programme, they cannot watch anything other than that programme at the same time, which is rather limiting, to put it mildly. Looking in the e-manual, it says 'no other channel can be selected while timer recording is in progress'. My interpretation of that is that means they can't record one programme while watching another, even on the same MUX.
Is that really the case? Is this 'smart' TV really so stupid that it can't do what PVR's have been able to do for a decade or more? Or have I misunderstood, and is there a way to record one programme using an external HDD while watching another, on this Panny TV?