Aldi - Technosonic PVR £99.99 - Freeview

Nautical_2

I have been following these comments since I first noticed the PVR that I got from Aldi was starting to play up.
Most of the faults listed apply to mine except the ones about the recordings going missing/reappearing.
One thing that doesn't seem to have been mentioned, which I have noticed, is the Free Disc space. I only have 76293 (MBs)/55:33 (h:m) showing. This is free capacity after formatting?
I have also been in touch with customer service to be placed on the list for a replacement and when I told him about the Disc space, he commented that there should be more available.
Any one have different readings?

LesD

Nautical wrote:

I This is free capacity after formatting?

....and operating system?

gromituk

76293 MB sounds fine for the capacity of an 80G disk after formatting. I don't think the guy knew what he was talking about.

Lorian

gromituk wrote:

76293 MB sounds fine for the capacity of an 80G disk after formatting. I don't think the guy knew what he was talking about.

Agreed.

scoobie wrote:

Does this mean we might be getting all these problems fixed with a software download?

It seems certain there will be an update (I've heared this from another source too), and it should fix something, But currently no-one outside of TechnoTrend know what's fixed in the release, time will tell.

B33fy

Spotted this on another forum might have a bearing on some of the problems, the failure to allow you to instant record some channels certainly applies to my box.

"I rather like the box but I too have problems, missing recordings, no sound on ITV when switching channels.
I opened the box up considered putting in a 250gb harddrive but after seeing the difference in the amps required decided the power supply would suffer, tried switching to master setting from cable select with the jumper no improvement.
I noticed that whenever I tried to record certain channels with the timer record it always failed whether from standby or powered on, these same channels also failed to record with the instant record button, but i could watch the same channels, strikes me that the watch tuner is getting a better signal than the record tuner, my signal strength on the watch tuner is around 75%, one final step over the next few days is to finally put up a new aerial that has languished in the garage these last few months, if this fails it will have to go back."

i-luv-free-stuff

couldnt get through on helpline today.
a recorded message said due to staff illness the lines had been closed till tomorrow.

i will try again tomorrow!

marsha11_2

Some undocumented features during the replay of a recording:

Green key adds marks to the timeline during replay
Yellow key then goes to the marks in turn (Green then cancels if required)
Blue sets up a repeat loop, third press clears the markers
Red displays the GOTO box (as does the OK button posted by Searcher2)

The markers are lost if playback is stopped.

mk-donald

If anyone is still seeking to acquire one of these (despite all the apparent flaws as reported in the previous 418 messages) - went in local Aldi (Milton Keynes) today to pick up some of this week's specials and there was a stack of around 20 of them still there.

(Haven't unboxed the two I bought last week yet - they're Xmas presents and going to give instructions to get the upgrade and THEN see what. Made sure I kept the receipts safely though

LesD

marsha11 wrote:

Some undocumented features during the replay of a recording:

Green key adds marks to the timeline during replay
Yellow key then goes to the marks in turn (Green then cancels if required)
Blue sets up a repeat loop, third press clears the markers
Red displays the GOTO box (as does the OK button posted by Searcher2)

The markers are lost if playback is stopped.

This is what's so annoying. There is a great deal of functionality built in to the machine, but the flaws are distracting. We are now getting the NO SIGNAL message nearly everytime we change channels. We then sit and wait, hoping the signal will appear. It usually does after 10-20 seconds, but we're never sure!

novice-saver

The thing which has made it useless for me is loosing (unwatched) recordings today.

It had been fine in that respect since last thursday, although it had started to hang up with a stopped clock when in standby, so I left it on operating as a receiver for a couple of days non stop, with spells of use as timeshift, recording and playback, and it didn't hang.

Then last night, for the first time, we were getting the "no signal" problem.

Having read in other forums that the lost recording issue may be due to the disk not being written to (with recording information) if its not put into standby first (and the disk then shutting down after a little while) before being power cycled, I decided to put it into standby this morning, and the next time I looked a the list of recordings a number of the more recent ones have gone.

It wasn't depowered at any point between having a full set of recordings, and loosing some of them, just to standby for a few mniutes, then back in use again.

The recordings seemed to be OK when there was not much more than one "page" of them (I think we got to about 8 or 9 when it went wrong).

I have heard it run the disk up when previously going to access recordings off the bottom of the list, but the first "page" was there prior to the disk access.

Anyway, I've just registered with the helpine number, and am promised an exchange unit, it the OTA update doesn't fix it.

It'll be a shame if it can't be made to work sensibly, as I was getting quite used to the nicer features...


John