Dabsvalue twintuner 80gb hard-drive recorder £59.99

simes

The 2amp / 5amp spec does not apply to this box..There is no power supply issue on this box.
Someone in this post mistakenly mixed it up with the Digifusion box which does have power supply issues. THIS IS NOT THE SAME AS THE DIGIFUSION BOX ( the Digihome is a totally different box made by a different manufacturer).

To work with your Sony TV , connect the RF ( aerial feed) to the Digihome first. Connect the aerial out from the Digihome to the aerial input on the TV. Then connect the digihome to the TV with a scart cable.
Your TV will work as normal. When you turn on the digihome it will switch the TV onto the correct AV channel.

It depends how you have set up your DVD/home cinema as to whether you will get surround sound from your Freeview broadcasts. There are audio outputs on the digihome to connect to the surround unit if neccessary.

flashmat

niteflite01 wrote:

Ah well, mine doesn't work so it will have to go back.

The unit starts up, says "Disk check please wait" on the little green screen, makes a loud whining noise and then does not much else. There's no picture output at all, no menus, nothing - and a factory reset doesn't cure it.

I presume dabs don't have the best quality testers in the world. If any. Not good enough.

Before going through the Dabs returns procedure, have you tried the "factory reset"?

When I first plugged in mine it sat and said it was doing the disk check for over an hour. If you unplug it, then hold down the OK button while plugging it in, it should come up with an option on the screen to format the hard disk.I did this, then the box continued on with its' setup, doing the auto-scan for channels.

In reply to Grabbit, I saw a mod for a humax pvr somewhere (wish I could find it now) where the internal ide cable was replaced by a home made one (an ide extension cable, with an extra plug put on it). Then the two plugs are plugged into the hard disk and the pvr main circuit board, and an IDE->USB adapter is plugged into the socket on the USB extension, with the usb plug pushed out through the cam slot.

On the humax this works because the drive stays powered up when the pvr is in standby mode, and there is also a program to retrieve recordings from the humax. From what I've read, the Digihome uses a disk format which can't be read on a PC, but I've got a feeling I may be able to mount the disk under Linux.

gromituk

niteflite01 wrote:

I presume dabs don't have the best quality testers in the world. If any. Not good enough.

I'd be as annoyed as you if this happened to me, but it's not really fair to condemn them like that on a sample of one. It could have been fine leaving them.

JeLLyMaN_2

flashmat wrote:

To setup: plug in, wait a few minutes, job done.

Simplest usage:

To record: press the guide button, scroll through the channels until you find the programme you want to record, press the record button - programme gets underlines in red in the EPG.

To view - press the lib (library) button, scroll down until you find the programme you want to watch, press play.

I've half filled my hard drive already I'm off to PC World over the weekend to buy the cable to put the dual record firmware on, and then next weekend I've got a little project to put a USB cable onto the box so I can plug it into the laptop, which should be exciting :idea:

Yep, my grandmar is mid/high 70's and she said she can do it without looking now (only had it for a few months). She has a Humax one though - still, they're all pretty similar [like Sky+].

Grabbit_2

gromituk wrote:

I'd be as annoyed as you if this happened to me, but it's not really fair to condemn them like that on a sample of one. It could have been fine leaving them.

I don't think Dabs do the refurbishment. These are Argos returns. They probably went back to a specialist reconditioning firm who then shipped them to Dabs. I enquired about a "don't break this seal" label that already had been broken. They referred me to the manufacturer's hotline.

niteflite01

Ah well, either way it's going back on Wednesday as faulty.

I did try the factory reset as described above, several times, but with no output from either SCART, it was fruitless.

Grabbit_2

flashmat wrote:

In reply to Grabbit, I saw a mod for a humax pvr somewhere (wish I could find it now) where the internal ide cable was replaced by a home made one .

Think you mean here at digital spy which refers to here on wiki.

flashmat wrote:

On the humax this works because the drive stays powered up ....

the Digihome uses a disk format which can't be read on a PC, but I've got a feeling I may be able to mount the disk under Linux.

I suspect if you are able to get power to the drive without powering on the digihome the think that will stuff you will be the disc format. The Humax I have is the model before the one discussed and the problem was that the disc format was proprietary. Since then they have changed to a new format that can be copied.
For now my digihome will be linked by scart into my argos £135 camcorder (thanks MSE & Argos) that just happens to have a firewire out port. This then goes into my pc capture prog. I then burn to dvd after editing out adverts etc. Bit long winded but works.

I'd be interested to hear how you progress with dumping data to the PC by USB.

smsmasters

Does anyone know if the scart sockets output RGB?

Grabbit_2

smsmasters wrote:

Does anyone know if the scart sockets output RGB?

Yep as well as CVBS and S-Video

biglugs

I presume dabs don't have the best quality testers in the world. If any. Not good enough.

So much for "refurbished". What Dabs actually mean is resealed box.
Think I'll give this one a miss and buy new from a reputable company.