No Drivers for WIN XP PRO x64!

Be warned:
- There are NO drivers for Win XP Pro x64 (64 bit)
- Support is less than helpful:
- No refund offered -"drivers under dev" (no delivery time estimated)
- No workarounds offered (How about dual boot with Win XP Pro?)
Check out others' opinions from their own website forum before buying

Focusses on the important features

Once you get one of these devices your DVD recorder will be consigned to the subs bench. It's a piece of cake to schedule a recording from the interactive TV guide, and then you can access your recordings directly - again from a menu.

You can skip adverts / boring sections at a wide range of skip speeds - still seeing clips of the picture as you do so.

You can then delete whichever recordings you want to, keeping those you want to watchg again - the 80GB disk gives the space you need.

The twin Top-Up TV tuner capability means there is no need to pay Sky's huge fees for Sky Plus.

The first version of the software was a bit dodgy, but it was updated"over the air" and is now much improved. You will have the odd issue - but the fact you can schedule and view recordings so easily makes all the difference.

5 stars!

I recently purchased the Humax PVR8000T Set Up Box for a Bargin price of £[...] and so far it does not disapoint. The TV quiality is exellent, despite the fact i have an indoor arial. The recording feature is quick, easy to pick up and very reliable. A User-friendly 7 day guide allows you to record at the touch of a button. There is of course the pause and rewind live TV feature as well, which is ideal for tea or toilet breaks. So far i have found no problems what so ever. Its doing eveything it say it does without fail.
Some previous reveiws have brought up the issue of noise. I, personally have not come across this problem. The only time it makes noise, is when you first turn it on, but that quickly goes so i put that down to loading.
Apart from that, nothing.

For only £[...] this is a fantastic product that only really falls short at the number of tuners. (it only has a single tuner, so you cannot watch a different channel than the one recording, but that costs)
I would strongly recommend this product to anyone on a budget or evan just looking for a VCR replacement.
It wont disapoint.
5 stars!

Almost but not quite

never have I been so disappointed as I am with this product. Why? Well technically its excellent does what it says on the package - DivX HD downloads play a dream, links to my 407 Cubestation NAS a dream - so why the disappointment? Simple Technology by NASA interface software by ToysR Us - its completely naff. How can acompany make something this good with such a poor UI - e.g. On screen menu left 75% screen filled with [pointless] logo - meanwhile items in menu on right [important] drop off screen so only half readable. Its pants with a capital P A N T and S

The Price

Like Mr. Griffiths I also bought one several years ago and it was under £100.

More bugs than you could shake a stick at...

This is one of the more expensive freeview players and so I was expecting it to be markedly better than its cheaper rivals. This, unfortunately, is not the case. There are two major ongoing technical issues that I have experienced with this box and I now know that these are very common faults as they are frequently posted on online forums.

The first issue is that about every 3-4 days the box will freeze and the only way to get it back in working order is to switch it off and on again at the mains plug. The second issue is that after only a few hours of being connected to mains power the TV programme information disappears. The only way to get the programme information back is to switch the box off and on again at the mains, which is handy because you have to do that a few times a week when the box freezes anyway. As I understand it Humax are aware of these issues and are `working to resolve them' with a software download, but I've had this box for nearly a year now and a fix is still nowhere in sight.

I can honestly say this was a very poor purchase decision on my part. Cheaper boxes can do pretty much everything this one does, but without the ongoing (and apparently irresolvable) technical faults. If you are still not convinced then I implore you to do some further research looking through web forums and you will see that I am only one of a great many people who experience these issues.

Daewoo DSD9503T with the latest Firmware version ' 3.2 '

You may be puzzled why some people in the review area ' love it ' while others ' hate it '

I am a retired University Lecturer in Computer Science and I repair all my friends Computers so I know exactly how these machines work.

Its all down to the Firmware and many people who hate it I suspect have the older Firmware .

I bought a Daewoo DSD9503T and it has the latest version which is ' 3.2 '

I live in London and have a strong signal from Crystal Palace.

Its a far thinner unit than I was expecting - which allows me to give it enough airspace without having to rearrange all my other machines.

Note a lot of problems can be traced back to units not having enough airspace - the DSD9503T does not have a Fan on the Hard Drive and with the correct airspace it does not need it and it runs cool and very very quiet.

The picture quality is ' Outstanding ' and it was so easy to use that I bought a second one.

Believe me you cant tell if its a recording or a direct Broadcast { its that Good }

The biggest advantage is being able to record a whole Channel { or two } and then delete what you don't want. While playing its possible to speed it up to * 24 times so you can whiz though a lot in a short period of time.


Pro's and Con's

It does have a few quirks -

{ quirk 1 } the remote control is very cramped so its not a R/C that you can use in the dark .

{ quirk 2 } With PIP on it cant handle widescreen Auto but switching to nonauto widescreen sorts it out.

{ quirk 3 } if you are recording One Freeview source PIP does not work when in fact there is no reason for PIP not to work.

Good Points

{ 1 } So far the Hard disk is silent { and running very Cool } - it does not spin up until I record or play back something { and even then you cant hear it } and the Recording quality is excellent.{ you could never tell it was a Recording { its equivalent to 15 MB's to 20 MB's per second so very high quality }

To give you a Comparison if you buy a DVD lets say the new WALL-E DVD the average will be around 7 MB's { it may vary between 5 and 10 MB's } so the Daewoo is double the quality of a DVD - no wonder they have such a great picture.

{ 2 } now as far as I am aware only the BBC and Channel Four has this function - its a digital PDC { Programme Delivery Control } so lets say something should start at 8 pm it can detect if the program is running late or early so you never miss anything - also it has a ' offset ' so on the other channels it will start early and end late by a few minuets { unless two program times clash of course }

{ 3 } its possible to move the PIP area ' left-right-top-bottom '

{ 4 } The front panel displays the Channel number its tuned to - very handy when you have as many Freeview sources as I do .

{ 5 } Timer and Record very easy to set - its all just clicking on the EPG so there is no actual times being typed in.

{ 6 } When playing a Recording PIP still works { not all units allow this }

{ 7 } when you are recording two Freeview Channels its possible to play a past recording ' at the same time '

{ 8 } It uses ' Chase play ' - lets say you have set newsnight to be recorded but you arrive back before it ends - While its still being record you can press play and watch the start { but it will still keep on recording the whole program }

{ 9 } A very big Plus point - the Recording store lists recordings by Program name { and time/date } and they are easy to play or delete + it stores the EPG info as well so even if its something you recorded a year ago - there is still the EPG entry to view.

{ 10 } it does appear that it can accept a larger Hard Drive as it has the software on a chip so bang in a bigger drive and it will format correctly { note only consider doing this ' if you know exactly what you are doing ' + you will invalidate your guarantee so don't try if you are not 100 % confident }

Noisey freeview

I bought two receivers, both made such an annoying noise when in use. I tried them on different TVs in different rooms in the house without success.

It was easy to set them up and use, and the picure was really good, but the annoying noise was just too much to cope with.

Reboot, reboot, reboot..

This is truly a piece of junk. Compelled to buy the box for the Setanta Sports subscription, it has been a salutary lesson in being too hasty and not doing my research. The reality is the Sagem machine is totally unstable and cannot remain upright for more than a few hours before it reboots itself. When it goes through its death spasms, the picture first freezes for anything up to 30 seconds, then the audio goes, then I get a green screen before I hear an internal click and it brings itself back to life. Strangely, it has decided (no configuration that I can see) to always reboot to the Sky Sports News channel, regardless of what I was watching before. Obviously if I am recording on my DVD-R something important I have my heart in my mouth all the time hoping against a reboot.

Other problems include no EPG (or at least non that I have found) and a counter-intuitive button press system for channel change.

All in all, complete and utter rubbish. Spend your hard-earned elsewhere.

Avoid the twin tuner GHDD1785 too!

I bought the slightly pricier GHDD1785DVBT (from elsewhere) as it had twin digital tuners for a very reasonable price. Plus points - an attactive and compact unit with easy to use menus and EPG, the picture quality is great and hardly ever any picture interference. On the negative side, and most annoyingly, even on standby it regularly switches channels on the TV (eg when watching DVDs). The sound freezes up or becomes unsynchronised when watching and recording simultaneously. Apparently some of the the infrared remote commands seem to use the same frequency as some of my other non-Goodmans equipment. I returned and replaced the box at the retailer but the faults appear to be design or engineering flaws, so this baby is going back as soon as I can watch all the backlog of recorded programs.

don't work

Purchased this item to put on Vista Business laptop (new high spec from Dell) when it arrived it did not have the external aerial connector nor would it load onto my machine. I contacted the help line and we managed to install the software. They said they would send the external aerial connector by post. Two days later it arrived so I set it up ready for scan. Using a digital aerial which already transmits digital to computers and tv's in the house. After several lengthy scans managed to get some channels but not watchable, kept stopping and starting plus the sound was very jerky. Spent far to much time trying to get it to work and in the end couldn't. There would be little to no chance with the little antenna that comes with it an external aerial would be a must in most areas but for some reason it did not work for me.