Aldi - Technosonic PVR £99.99 - Freeview

dc

Disturbing news from Key. 6 months down the line.

It looks like those, imho, uncaring Germans ( Technosonic) are refusing to supply Key ( Uk product support company) with spare parts :shocked: :shocked: :rolleyes2 :rolleyes2 , so no possibility of "Swopouts" EVER.


So if yours has a fault or one develops then it is a Moneyback-Only trip to Aldi.

I will be interested in Aldi's view as to what happens after the 12 months is up, as this callous lack of product support can only sour customer relations even further.

After all, it is you the customer, that has forced them ( via the Forums), to get the product into a reasonable working state by software updates. My info was that the Germans wanted to cut and run from day one, due to the cost their dodgy product would involve them in . Business Ethics ha :rolleyes2

dc

Lorian

I pretty much expected that to be the case. I purchased the £20 3.3 year extended warranty, so I can get my money back anytime it goes pop.

Not often I'd buy an extended warranty, but this one seems a good buy.

It would be nice to know what happened to all the returns. I could easily have put them on ebay for them....

rowantoad

It's back on sale Thursday 15th June badged Tevion.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=209104

scoobie

EricF wrote:

Following on from the above . . .

This morning I had a few hours left on the disk, recorded the skiing the morning on Channel Four, Ski Sunday this afternoon on BBC and then my wife asked me at one minute to 9 pm to record The Virgin Queen on BBC1 which was one hour long.

I didn’t have a chance to see how much space there was on the disk but I set it to record anyway.

When I went to watch the BBC Ski Sunday programme at about 11pm, all that is listed when I press the play button is five recordings from 10:54pm to 10:59pm (not one at 10:57) all of zero minutes duration. The amount of free space is shown as 50 [MB], time 00:02 [H:M].

I’ve just been checking the machine out and it seems that the disk space ran out at 10:53 and at that point the machine rebooted, then as it still had time left to record, it kept trying but was forced into a reboot each time until the timer ran out. At some point in this sequence it appears to have deleted all the previous recordings.


Eric

Pretty much the same thing happened to me today, ie its deleted ALL recordings as the disc became full ! Arrghh!

It looks like the software is very unstable when the disc nears full.

I got used to trusting the thing as its been quite reliable after all the software upgrades.

Does anyone know of a way of retrieving recordings that are deleted? I had some things I was wanting to keep and archive to disc.

I presume it hasn't actually wiped the recordings?

I am tempted to send it back to Key and get them to sort it out.

creddish

scoobie wrote:

Pretty much the same thing happened to me today, ie its deleted ALL recordings as the disc became full ! Arrghh!

It looks like the software is very unstable when the disc nears full.

I got used to trusting the thing as its been quite reliable after all the software upgrades.

Does anyone know of a way of retrieving recordings that are deleted? I had some things I was wanting to keep and archive to disc.

I presume it hasn't actually wiped the recordings?

I am tempted to send it back to Key and get them to sort it out.

According to posts in this thread and on Digital Spy I think you will find that when this occurs the recordings are NOT recoverable and the only option is to re-format the Hard Disc to restore operation.

Colin

scoobie

creddish wrote:

According to posts in this thread and on Digital Spy I think you will find that when this occurs the recordings are NOT recoverable and the only option is to re-format the Hard Disc to restore operation.

Colin

thanks for the reply. I've read digital spy and that seems to be implied by the answers.

My thinking is its possibly the directory of recordings that's gone wrong. I can't believe its overwritten the whole disc with blank 00000's. My view (maybe I'm being over optimistic) is that the original files will still be there, somewhere , in some sort of shape.

Does anyone know what format it saves to the disc in and has anyone tried to access the disc?

Anyone have the number for Key???

Lorian

scoobie wrote:

Does anyone know what format it saves to the disc in and has anyone tried to access the disc?

Anyone have the number for Key???

Key don't know the format of the disk, both they and I have asked technotrend for information on the format, but it seems they wish to keep the information proprietary.

roses

Hi, I have trawled through quite a few pages in this thread but I can't seem to find an answer to my question. I am considering buying this Aldi freeview tuner. Does anyone know if:

1) I can replace the 80gb hard disk with eg a 160gb one? Is it a special type of hard disk or can I buy a normal ide drive & stick it in?
2) Can I take the hard disk out & stick it in my pc? I don't have a standalone dvd recorder to archive the programmes I really want to save forever.

Brockyman

I believe that the maximum size of HDD the unit will recognise is 120mb. You can use a larger one but will still only get 120mb of space. The old drive could be used in a PC but your PC will not read the saved info as it is in an unknown format (see the post immediately above yours). You would also void your warranty which is a shame as it has gone up to 3 years.
Ian.

scoobie

roses wrote:

Hi, I have trawled through quite a few pages in this thread but I can't seem to find an answer to my question. I am considering buying this Aldi freeview tuner. Does anyone know if:

1) I can replace the 80gb hard disk with eg a 160gb one? Is it a special type of hard disk or can I buy a normal ide drive & stick it in?
2) Can I take the hard disk out & stick it in my pc? I don't have a standalone dvd recorder to archive the programmes I really want to save forever.

You'd be better off buying an integrated Panasonic Freeview HDD DVD recorder and save yourself a lot of hassle, including the tendancy of the Aldi to miss recordings and wipe the HDD completely. It's just not worth the money to try to save yourself a few pounds on this.