Dabsvalue twintuner 80gb hard-drive recorder £59.99

twe

was reading at hotukdeals that asda sell the exact same one for £80 new.... but rebadged with the name Duel..... Shame since i ordered one from dabs.com.... for £71....

executiverocker

i bought the digihome from argos one night.....it went back the next morning!

couldnt detect all channels (altho previous bog standard box and aerial could), picture break up and recording would keep breaking up

heavyriffs

Has anyone taken the plunge with one of the Dabs refurb PVR80 models?
I've sent off for one the other day and wondered if anything has changed, or do they still fluctuate between the sublime and ridiculous, as most posts seem to suggest?

As a side note, just had a mail through the post from NTL(Virgin Media after the rebrand), they're going to be offering a V+(?) box, similar to Sky+, but no install or box purchase price they claim?!? Might hang on for that if the Digihome leans towards the ridiculous...............:rotfl:

twe

i bought one, can give u a review when it turns up.... but again if i knew about the argos £80 rebranded version then would have bought it from there....

flashmat

Mine arrived this morning to my office, and the box is looking the worse for wear. Usually dabs ship things inside other boxes, but this one is just the address label stuck to the Digihome box. I'm hoping that because it's a refurb, it's just the box that's taken a battering.

We shall see how it goes tonight (I'll be back on this thread tomorrow morning to post how it's working/if the pvr is as damaged as the box). I've also got the dual-record firmware wat on my pc ready for me to install, to enable recording two channels at once, but that's a project that will have to wait until I've refitted my radiators at home :snow_grin

[edit add]
forgot I've got the day off work tomorrow, so might as well update this now, instead of skiving work tomorrow morning

First impressions of it are pretty good, especially for the money. I had a bit of a scare when I turned it on with a bit of a rattle and a message on the front saying "Disk Err", but I did the factory reset (hold down the ok button while plugging it in) and it came up on screen giving me an option to format the disk.

This done, it fired up fine, did an auto-scan and picked up all the channels. The picture quality isn't as good as the Sony TV, but that was much more expensive 2 years ago. Plus the antenna lead is looping through the TV first - so that's probably costing a fair bit of image quality. I need to rearrange the cabling under the telly anyway, so a re-routing of the antenna wire will happen then.

Pausing live tv is working fine, as is recording from the EPG, and playing back an earlier recording while recording something new.

My only complaint would be that the picture seems to be at a bit of an angle down towards the left, but I've not been through all the calibration screens yet.

All in all(and especially for the money) I'm very impressed.

heavyriffs

Mine has arrived, box was also crappy and battered, however unit and packaging seemedf fine. Whole thing fired up fine and surprising easy to use to be honest, much easier than I thought it might be.
Have recorded a couple of things and they've played back fine, timer works for that matter too. Pic isn't quite as good as cable or sky, but that could also be my aerial...........

Can't afford a Topfield right now, so as a cheaper alternative, i'm more than happy with this so far, hopefully mine isn't one of the temperamental ones that some people have been blighted by!

Grabbit_2

Got one and it works fine. Compared to a Humax 8000 PVR which has been fantastic for 2 years, this is excellent and has some great new features. The hard disc looks a piece of cake to upgrade and looking at other forums there is a good chance that the firmware will be upgraded in the next couple of weeks "over the air" to make it even better.

This product is sold under many guises including Asda, Goodmans, Grundig, Proline, Sharp and Bush. The only difference is the front panel and in some cases a larger hard disc. (160 gb not 80). All come from the same factory in turkey.
The dabs digihome which is an argos ex catalogue is the best price by a mile !

I would recommend it to anyone as a first foray into the PVR market.

alictait

I got mine too - eventually. I had ordered it for next day delivery and waited in all day for it not to arrive. When I checked the Amtrak website - they stated that they had tried unsuccesfully to deliver it at 16.32 on monday. Rubbish !!!, I was in all day and not far from the door on monday at this time. They also state there was a card put through my door. Guess what - no card. I have contacted Dabs about it twice now but have had no response whatsoever.

Anyway,

It seems to be working pretty well although I cant seem to get the antennae output to work. It will connect via my telly through scart just fine, but I can't seem to connect through a standard coaxial lead ? Has anyone else experienced this, or has anyone else got it running via a coax lead ?

Thanks

Ali

alictait

alictait wrote:

I got mine too - eventually. I had ordered it for next day delivery and waited in all day for it not to arrive. When I checked the Amtrak website - they stated that they had tried unsuccesfully to deliver it at 16.32 on monday. Rubbish !!!, I was in all day and not far from the door on monday at this time. They also state there was a card put through my door. Guess what - no card. I have contacted Dabs about it twice now but have had no response whatsoever.

Anyway,

It seems to be working pretty well although I cant seem to get the antennae output to work. It will connect via my telly through scart just fine, but I can't seem to connect through a standard coaxial lead ? Has anyone else experienced this, or has anyone else got it running via a coax lead ?

Thanks

Ali

Forget the part about the coax lead - you can't use this unit without a scart lead as there is no rf modulator on it.

Damn goes that idea. Oh well need to buy a new telly then - jk

Ali

niteflite01

I'm waiting for this to come back into stock