Aldi - Technosonic PVR £99.99 - Freeview

Scoota

I bought one of these today.

Started off fine and then hit the now infamous 'No Signal' problem. Gave it the benefit of the doubt incase it was a one off, but alas its happened three times in 4 hours.

I bought this to replace my existing digibox that keeps having funny turns. However its still more reliable than the PVR-101.

I wish I'd read the reports here before purchasing it.

This is an obviously flawed and untested bit of kit. Mine is now back in the box and will be taken back tomorrow.....a big disappointment.

virgo17

Scoota wrote:

This is an obviously flawed and untested bit of kit. Mine is now back in the box and will be taken back tomorrow.....a big disappointment.

I echo everything Scoota has said.

I thought I had been lucky with mine but after an hour or so of playing it is exhibiting exactly the same symptoms as his. Going back to Aldi tomorrow.

Very disappointed really as we really wanted a simple PVR. Guess we will wait a while until we can afford a better more mature model.

V.

ToAoB

bought one of this - alas same issues as some of you.

I was not able to record anything nor format (I read here - should take abt 2 secs). This made me think - what if...

...so I opened the cover and the Hard Drive IDE cable was not connected fully to the disk!!!

It then become fully functional which is great - BUT recording with subtitles is a factor here and I can confirm this is not possible with this PVR grrr! :mad:

So have put everything back in the box - has anyone been in contact regarding the subtitles and whether it will be in the next software release to enable subtitle recording...?

emujuice

hi guys,
i've not been keeping up to date on this thread so i'm not sure if this has been posted already. Comet (or my local one in sheffield at least) have the humax 800 single tuner recorder reduced to 120 squid as a discountinued line. get some good reviews so may be worth paying the extra 20 for. HTH
(picked up the humax9200 while i was there. very impressed so far

solomonp

Update from me. Have recorded three progs tonight OK and paused and continued to play another channel while the recordings were being made. So tonight it has done all it said on the box and hasnt fallen over yet. No sign of line hold problems.

I am receiving Winter hill and I have the ITV sound problem

ffacoffipawb

PVRBUDDY wrote:

I picked mine up today, my 3rd box after 2 sagems, the 40, then the 80 models. I was expecting the worse after all the problems you guys are having. Opened it up, plugged it in, turned it on, boot displayed for about 30 seconds, then it turned off. By then, had found the remote, so turned her on. Did a channel scan and set screen etc.. all pukka! Fast EPG etc... tried a recording from standby, pukka - infact - absolutely over the moon! I am on Hannington, so no ITV sound issue. I am wondering if perhaps by leaving it alone until it has booted up and turned off - finalising set up maybe for first boot up, is the route of the troubles. I only say this as on the first boot, it is programmed to load user prefs etc... so by trying to fast boot it is screwing it up?

Is is so fast compared to the 80GB sagem I took back to Argos today, quiet too. It boots from standby almost instantly and channel hops like a freight train. No lock ups, no quirks, just a damn good box, and for that price! Thanks Aldi, very happy bunny.

Looks the part too, also the buttons on the top are handy for when the remote goes missing, often in my house!

Great box, great performance, great price. Buy,buy buy!!!!

Or am I just one of the lucky few?

Can I ask why you have / need 3 PVR's?

(Justify if I need more than one!)

i-luv-free-stuff

gulp!!!

i bought one of these today from aldi ..it was the last 1.
i hadnt read any of this thread at all and was a bit of in impulse buy....
im going to try it now but not gona hold my breath after all these bad reviews.
i read them all from the start and it was getting worse and worse and then i read winter hill is a bad reception!!!!
aghhhhhhhhh
oh well gonna give it a go now.
i will report back

dc

This box has possibilites, it is well designed, solid, quality parts, well packed, but seems it was hurried out for Christmas. Too soon.

Some of you have been lucky to get a fully functioning box. But beware of putting any stress on the aerial sockets, as there is no physical support for the printed circuit board anywhere near the plugs. Mine was so loose, I thought something had unplugged itself in transit, not so.
Mine doesn't even see a signal, though the transmitter is visible from the window a few miles away, and even the analogue signal is noisy on the loop through, so somthing obviously wrong with the receiver rf section. This one seems to have skipped testing after manufacture.

Aldi and their supplier should be taken to task for selling a device that seems to have had very poor quality control. I dont want to take it back, Just for a refund, I want what I was offered by Aldi, even if it has an English/ Chinese rather than a German/ Chinese pedigree.

There seems to be some problems with transmitters, some with software and some with manufacturing faults.
dc

boyohboy

As I said before I was getting the no signal fault every couple of hours, but tonight also got a picture freeze when doing time slip for more than about 30 mins. Sound was still correct but just a frozen picture, the only way to clear it was to switch channels or one time, switch it off at the back. Either way you lose the program !! That's it ,just backed it up. My Sagem 40Gb from Argos Ive had for 4 months and not one fault or complaint.

LesD

PVRBUDDY wrote:

I picked mine up today, my 3rd box after 2 sagems, the 40, then the 80 models. I was expecting the worse after all the problems you guys are having. Opened it up, plugged it in, turned it on, boot displayed for about 30 seconds, then it turned off. By then, had found the remote, so turned her on. Did a channel scan and set screen etc.. all pukka! Fast EPG etc... tried a recording from standby, pukka - infact - absolutely over the moon! I am on Hannington, so no ITV sound issue. I am wondering if perhaps by leaving it alone until it has booted up and turned off - finalising set up maybe for first boot up, is the route of the troubles. I only say this as on the first boot, it is programmed to load user prefs etc... so by trying to fast boot it is screwing it up?

Is is so fast compared to the 80GB sagem I took back to Argos today, quiet too. It boots from standby almost instantly and channel hops like a freight train. No lock ups, no quirks, just a damn good box, and for that price! Thanks Aldi, very happy bunny.

Looks the part too, also the buttons on the top are handy for when the remote goes missing, often in my house!

Great box, great performance, great price. Buy,buy buy!!!!

Or am I just one of the lucky few?

No problems (so far) with mine. We're in line-of-sight to Sutton Coldfield - although it is 20 miles away!

Not having a digital mindset, I've not been looking for problems and none have appeared.

Enjoy.