TV recorder

For Freeview, I reckon you've got a choice of Humax, Panasonic, or Manhattan. Panasonic no longer do a simple PVR; all have DVD/Blu-ray built, which adds to the price. My Panasonic has been fairly reliable, although I use a timer to switch it off for 15 minutes each day (around

I've looked at the Manhattan T3-R, and it seems ok, except that it doesn't do slo-mo! It's also not had a software update in 21 months.

Are any of these products actually available at present due to the chip shortage?

Humax and Manhattan seem available. We don't currently have a DVD player unless I can feed from my desktop.

Not spotted a Panasonic yet. Oh yes. John Lewis.

Yes. I have used a variety of laptop drives powered from the USB port on the TV. Both an LG and a Panasonic

These work in a variety of ways. If you have disk in a USB slot then these work as expected, the square is international standard for "stop".

If you use one of the built in apps, iPlayer, All4, My5 then again as expected.

Dave

What about the BT YouView boxes. They do have a wide range of applications. Plenty available used on E-bay e.g.

Richer sounds do them too.

Indeed. My sort of pricing:-)

Still get the adverts...

Thanks.

You can watch them now on ITVX

I recently bought a Humax Aura 1Tb box from John Lewis. Richer Sounds had none in stock and couldn't give me a date when they would become available. The buttons on right and left of the OK button will jump the recording forward or back by 15 seconds per press but if you hold the button it will whizz forward past the adverts. Will also record up to 3 programmes at once. I've been pleased with it as a replacement for my TalkTalk box.

Well basically, plug in a USB hard drive, SSD drive, or thumb drive...

However this kind of recording is limited. It is ok for pausing live TV, but for recording it can probably only record the program you are watching due to lack of tuners.

When my topfield died I decided against resuscitation and DIYed my own:

A good project for DIY

I have plex set to skip them on recording, so I don't have to!

Its usually a set of 5 electrolytic caps that does for toppy.

It is quite common to have line power for masthead amps running up the coax - it ought not bother anything else connected to it.

If the power supply has gone way out of spec, which was the common problem on a Toppy, one of the elevated power supply voltages takes out the transistor associated with tuning. 10 years ago it was recommended that more than 5 capacitors were replaced in the power supply. 15 years ago it was recommended that only one needed replacing but later it was found that others failed, but just took a bit longer.

Yes. I had to change mine. Said to be dodgy Chinese electrolyte at the time.

No evidence other than the recorder not tunable after the mast head power supply was replaced and some possibly injudicious aerial cable swaps. What would be the effect of 12V dc fed to the Toppy aerial input socket?

I replaced all 5.

Good to know.

I have actually bought a refurbished Humax but can pass it on down the family if adverts become unbearable:-)

Ok. As I suspected.

Ha ha! You know my limitations. I'll see how I get on with the refurbed Humax and possibly save up for the Aura!

Thanks

...with ads unless you pay extra.

TVs with built-in PVR functionality usually have the disadvantage that they only have one tuner and you can't record one programme while watching another. They are often fussy as to what kind of external drive they work with: usually they won't work with solid state drives (not USB sticks anyway), and whether the external HDD needs its own power supply.

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