Well, it had to happen eventually. I’ve done the full switch over of all my A/V equipment at home to digital formats.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been racking my brain over how long it’s been since I last used my SVHS video recorder for anything other than timeshifting programmes and worked out that it’s probably been about three years. Although the machine works perfectly, for time shifting it can be a bit of a pain if you’ve recorded a couple of programmes, looked at one or two at the beginning of the tape and then need to record another one at the end. I’ve been thinking, therefore, about getting a PVR for a while but I don’t want to be tied into Sky with Sky+, the DVD recorders weren’t flexible enough and degraded the quality to fit a number of hours into 4.7GB and the HDD recorders didn’t have a means to write the programmes off onto longer term storage.
However, last Sunday morning, as I was buying a Christmas present in Comet I noticed a new breed of PVR, a HDD based machine with a built in DVD recorder.. or is it the other way around?
This gave me something to think about, especially as the units now have a DVB-T digital tuner and the switch-off of analogue TV signals in the Central region is only about 3-4 years down the line. It also would allow me to greatly simplify by wrens nest of SCART cables and adaptors at the back of my telly (and decrease the number of units by one).
I did some research and came to the conclusion that the best price/performance compromise system on the market currently is the Panasonic DMR-EX75EB-S at ~£350. It has pretty much all the functionality required (except direct control of a Sky box) without spending huge amounts of money. The only other unit which would meet my specifications would be a Pioneer DVR-940HX-S but that’s about £1200 retail and the disk size is overkill.
The only annoyances with the UK version of the DMR-EX75EB-S is that Panasonic, in their infinite wisdom, have disabled DivX playback for some reason. The pan-european version of the unit has DivX, but the UK one is hobbled. Maybe they’re worried that too many Brits will be downloading US TV shows before they get broadcast locally. There is a multi-region hack for the player though, but that requires something like a Palm PDA with an infrared port.. which I happen to have.
So, last night I popped into Comet in Cowley to see if I could persuade them that they’d like to part with one of these smart little boxes for the web price. The shop assistant told me no, except if I could pre-order it on-line for collection and then bring the confirmation page with me. So, I toddled back home and tried to do as he asked.. well it’s worth it for a £50 saving!
One fly in the ointment.. on the Comet website the machine was the only one not available as order and collect. So, I tried Currys… and they did have it as order and collect, for the same online price. So I bought it from there! (Though not without a problem with my credit card being refused by their system for some unknown reason.. I’m going to have to ring up the CC comapny and give them an ear full.)
So, what’s it like in use? Well, other then the menu system being ugly and a little slow and illogical at times, the machine works fine. I must admit that the DVB-T receivers are hugely better than they were in the first generation OnDigital boxes, they actually work without having to swap attenuators on the aerial line.
It also has a VERY nice output from normal DVDs. My normal test DVD is “Space Cowboys” as the opening sequence in black and white pushes the D/A convertor to the limit as in the sequence there is a graduated sky shot going from dark to light which on most DVD players generates luminance banding, I could hardly see any artifacts with this player.
On the whole, then, if Panasonic had thought about the firmware and user interface more then this would get top marks, but it’s not a deal breaker and it works.
Yay to panasonic, I have always had good equipment from them and trust the company to have good stuff. it does. 😀
I like the idea of going digital, though not have money to do digital radio just now, nor is there the need.
However, I have a fear about electrics though, because there might be a power down time, and not having a local back up generator just for my home, I would always at least have one phone that does not depend on electricity to run (landline with cord to handset). as most of our telephone lines are underground, it should be fairly well protected from the weather. If electricity is down telephone systems aren’t I still have a life line. It is pure paranoia i know, it can also fail… nothing is totally fail safe. But this has gone off in a totally random tangent now. I’ll stop ranting on your LJ.
Hehe, don’t worry about the ranting. 🙂
As for phone lines being under the ground, actually they are slightly worse when it comes to lightning strikes due to the induced current in the moisture. The best thing you can do is get a spark-gap line protector for the phone. As for phones in general, yeah, I have one non-DECT wired in phone and one DECT phone for roaming around the house. Though if you want to have your roaming phone work during a power outage, do as the phone company does, install a UPS! 🙂
As for digital radio, that, actually, is not as good as analogue FM currently. It doesn’t work as well when on the move, the bit-rates are low and most of the channels are mono, i.e. just like Medium Wave. It’s sort of like going back to the 1960s in analogue terms.