Aldi - Technosonic PVR £99.99 - Freeview

bobbert

Another one going back tomorrow.....

The RF passthrough isn't working, the picture quality it passes is terrible and it will only find about 10 digital channels, won't even find C4 or ITV.
The quality of the ones it does find is not that good anyway, my old On digital Pioneer is much better.

Ah well, I think I will wait until the technology improves and the cost of the good ones comes down.

creddish

Poppycat wrote:

The Humax 9200 has the advert skip and you can change the amount of time you want it to skip the default is 30 secs but can be more, just a simply click a couple of times and ads have gone. I heard on Radio 4 the other day there trying to get the rules change for product placement because technology is now advanced that viewers can skip ads.

Yes the Humax does have the COMMERCIAL SKIP but it is limited to a maximum duration of 60 sec. The Technosonic is fixed at 2 min so to skip a 4 min advert break it requires only 2 button presses as opposed to 4 for the Humax. A minor issue for some I'm sure but convenient advert skipping is a priority issue for me. I think the Humax 9200 has many good features but it is twice the price of the Technosonic and has it's own reliability problems, which may be sorted in time.

Colin

dc

Searcher2 wrote:

I made a decision to buy the Fusion 200
I just hope Currys actually have the stock because when I ordered it it said 'In Stock' but the order confirmation email said 'subject to availability'.

Searcher sorry to hear more troubles, I'm sure I saw the Fusion fvrt 200 in a Curry's stores for £159, that with the Egg % would be better than the web. Drop in when passing to see the website is not ripping you off. The Humax 9200 is £229.

dc

LesD

Well there I was, quietly watching the Dutch football, when it decided to go off and check for software updates at 3 a.m.! Didn't find any of course.

Has anyone else noticed that Technosonic are not listed as a manufacturer on the dtg website?

Having said all that, and seeing the enormous size of this thread and the number of 'views', I have to say that ours is doing all it says on the box. The Aldi marketing team obviously got carried away with the twin tuner thing. Record one/watch another is what it should always have been.

I know we're only comparing it with our old OnDigital Nokia, but it's much faster selecting things and the picture quality is much better.

We've lost no sound and channels are what they should be.

Recordings are indistinguishable from the original and I'm sure we're gonna make use of many of the inbuilt functions as time goes by.

In conclusion - we're happy here!

diygardener

Since doing a complete switchoff off the PVR101, I have been unable to reproduce the "no signal" problem. I've even tried re-installing the box and it seems to be now working perfectly. I'm now inclined to stick with the box I currently have rather than risk changing it for something worse. Has anyone out there found that the "no signal" problem continued after a complete power off?

terrierlady

my son brought the box yesterday worked fine last night, I thought seeing these threads it would play up but worked ok, TODAY it has decided to play games, no signal has appeared and dispite reboot which made it work fine for all of 15 mins keeps returning to the no signal mode plus on channel selection mode just pressing the ok button wont display full screen we have to select a channel then press menu button to bring on full screen picture.
ps we did rescan twice.

dr_nick_uk

I wouldn't rely on this box to record you programs when you go on holiday or you may bit a bit annoyed when you get back, mine didn't make it through the night without crashing. I was turned onto standby at about 12.30 and when I got up this morning the clock said 5.31 even though it was 8.30. I had breakfast then checked on the box again, still 5.31 and no response from the remote or buttons on the front, so turn off and on again to fix the problem. (The most used switch on my box!)

Also I've noticed I can't record from channels 18-22, is this normal for these channels?

gromituk

LesD wrote:

Has anyone else noticed that Technosonic are not listed as a manufacturer on the dtg website?

Well that's not surprising, because a lot of these offers are something re-badged in small quantities.

I know we're only comparing it with our old OnDigital Nokia, but it's much faster selecting things and the picture quality is much better.

I'd be surprised if the picture quality were noticeably different, unless you were actually gettting decoding errors on the Nokia (blocking and freezing pictures). Perhaps the Nokia was only connected to the TV via composite (CVBS) and this one via RGB? With CVBS you smeary colours with crawling dots on them.

Recordings are indistinguishable from the original

Lots of people are saying this, because they don't have the digital mindset. This is a digital recorder which records exactly the same data you watch live, so pictures will be indistinguishable from the original. ALL PVRs will behave like this.

dangergoat

I got my parents to pick up one of these from Aldi yesterday as they live MUCH closer to a store than I do. The thing is, I won't get to try it out until the new year. Given the problems people are having, anyone know how Aldi are with returns? Would I be OK returning this at the end of January, say? Of course I may be one of the lucky ones - maybe I won't have to return it.

Zaphod_Beblebrocks

Searcher2 wrote:

What amazes me is the quality control these machines must go through. I have had 2 machines for a few hours each and one had obvious bugs within 1 hour (which many others experienced) and the other had a non-functioning hard disk (which thankfully only a few experienced).

Working in Quality control what you will probably find that a problem has been flagged up and management have decided that rather than dissapoint a retailler and possibly incur a penalty they will make a "commercial" decision and ship them anyway, sad but it happens.