Aldi - Technosonic PVR £99.99 - Freeview

creddish

I'm a bit behind on this thread so appologies if I repeat or contradict anything already said in later posts.

kcegginton wrote:

Here's an interesting observation - when you get the 'No Signal' message, go to any desired channel and press 'Record'. Wait a while then play back the recording.

The programme has recorded despite the on-screen 'No Signal' warning (at least it does on my machine). It looks as though the 'recording' tuner behaves itself even when the 'watching' tuner doesn't.

The same applies if you "Pause" the current programme. The buffer is obviously being recorded from the "Watch" tuner as it can be played back from the paused point, albeit without sound some times. The sound recovers eventually and the buffer can be replayed from the start complete.

I wonder if ANY of this batch works correctly - I doubt whether their owners are still looking in these forums, so I guess we'll never know.

Clive.

Interesting question. I would have expected that as the thread has had nearly 58,000 views that if there is a significant number of fault free boxes then we would have had several owners posting to say so. There will be a significant number of owners following the thread just to get more info on the box. The fact that there has been no reports of fault free boxes from owners who have usesd them extensively I suspect most if not all have some problems.

Colin

creddish

jackson3 wrote:

Having read the news about a swap out deal in January, I decided to go back to Aldi and purchase another one - (new stock) I really do like what it does for the money...
Anyway, up till now, iv'e not had any of the reported problems - works like a dream.
It will get a good "flogging" over Xmas so I'll report back.
Peter

What version of the software does your box have? How long have you used it for so far? Have you actually used all the various functions frequently yet. Your post appears to be unique in reporting no probelms if you have used it for a significant time. Please keep us updated.

Colin

dr_nick_uk

DogtanianUK wrote:

I'd be interested to hear how the box is behaving with the lid off, could this be a simple overheating problem? If so then maybe a few minutes with a borrowed dremel 'modding' some air vents might be the answer.

I've been running mine with the lid off for the past to days and when I came back today it had crashed in standby again.

A few things I've noticed, both the tuner chips (Philips) do get hot but not so hot you can't touch them. The main processor (zoran) gets warm but not what I would call hot.
The main thing I noticed is how close the tuner chips are to the modulators for the UHF (aerial) in/out and that they don't have any shielding around them even though the board is designed to have it! (See picture below) There could be a problem with the oscillations from the modulators causing interference with the receiver chips causing the to crash/loose signal.

Jefft_2

talkshop wrote:

Don't be fooled by people selling 'digital aerials' . All TV aerials will receive digital TV.

It is not true that all TV aerials will receive digital TV it needs to be wideband which is what is meant by 'digital'.
If you do not use a wideband aerial this will result in not receiving all the channels.

Jeff

robonz

got mine last thursday, worked great the first day, then the next day started to get the no signal problem, which i can remedy by switching it off via switch on the back. then i found 2 programmes i recorded keep reappearing after deleting them. now im finding anything i record keeps deleting by itself before i get to watch it!

keep the software appears to be well dodgy, just hope that update comes out soon, i will hold out for awhile before considering returning it. was going to try formatting the disk but my mom wants strictly come dancing final kept! oh dear, so can't record anything new now!

dont these people test their products?

jackson3

creddish wrote:

What version of the software does your box have? How long have you used it for so far? Have you actually used all the various functions frequently yet. Your post appears to be unique in reporting no probelms if you have used it for a significant time. Please keep us updated.

Colin

Spoke to soon......No signal box re-appeared......
I'm still prepared to hang on to the box. I find it very good whilst
its working and am putting my faith in a manufactures upgrade/
swap out.
Software version same as everbody else - V.1.0(UK)D

Peter

Lorian

dr_nick_uk wrote:

The main processor (zoran) gets warm but not what I would call hot.

I can see on the right the board is labelled "supraZ rev .1.11" but is there a manufacturer name anywhere?

dr_nick_uk

I'm not sure how much faith I have in the ability of the manufacturer to fix all the bugs in the software, because if you look at the pictures in the manual, you will see the the example programs that have been recorded,the screen shots were recorded in November 2002. If they had a kind of working software in 2002 and they've had 3 years in which to fine tune it to the current level, how long will it take to fix all the bugs it has now!!!

dr_nick_uk

Lorian wrote:

I can see on the right the board is labelled "supraZ rev .1.11" but is there a manufacturer name anywhere?

Nope, I guess the name on the board just relates to the processor it uses -Zoran SupraTV

creddish

dr_nick_uk wrote:

I've been running mine with the lid off for the past to days and when I came back today it had crashed in standby again.

A few things I've noticed, both the tuner chips (Philips) do get hot but not so hot you can't touch them. The main processor (zoran) gets warm but not what I would call hot.
The main thing I noticed is how close the tuner chips are to the modulators for the UHF (aerial) in/out and that they don't have any shielding around them even though the board is designed to have it! (See picture below) There could be a problem with the oscillations from the modulators causing interference with the receiver chips causing the to crash/loose signal.

Were all your earlier problems reported in your earlier posts all prior to removing the lid? It does not appear from my tests and others that the "No Signal" report actually means loss of tuner signal as the programmes can still be recorded or Timeslipped and replayed subsequently.

I'm interested in your comment about modulators. Does the RF Feedthrough require RF Modulators? If so could the same modulators be used to output the PVR signal. I was hoping the unit would have an RF Modulator for this purpose.

Colin