Replacing a Topfield PVR

[loshears]

Hi,

I am looking to replace a Topfield PVR that is now in need of a HDD replacement and was thinking that it is now time to upgrade the box. I am looking to spend < £300 including HDD and any additional tuners. I would like to have a pair of terrestrial tuners to allow for multiple recordings and the ability to be able to copy recordings from the box.

There is a satellite dish installed on the house but I've never had a device connected to it so not sure whether I would benefit from having a satellite tuner in addition to pick up some freesat channels. With this configuration would I be able to watch Freeview and record a freesat channel at the same time?

I have had a look on the WOS site and there is quite a range of devices but trying to work out which would be the right device is tricky.

Thanks for any advice in advance.

[abu baniaz]

Number of tuners does not equal number of channels you can view/record from.
Number of tuners equals number of frequencies/muxes/transponders you can view/record from.

With two terrestrial tuners, you can simultaneously view/record from any two two muxes available to you. As an example, all the channel from Com 5 and all the channels from PSB2.

The satellite tuner will allow you to simultaneously record/view from one other transponder on satellite.

Be warned, there are some functions that Topfield users are accustomed to that are not available on Enigma2. No doubt, those who have migrated will elaborate.

[birdman]

Be warned, there are some functions that Topfield users are accustomed to that are not available on Enigma2. No doubt, those who have migrated will elaborate.

All that I can think of is that there are no Series timers (and hence no Power ones) and you can't auto-file.
I've never found this an issue. I can set up AutoTimers to find everything I want, and for each one I just need to specify which directory it should record to.

[loshears]

Thanks birdman, if I can set up AutoTimers to capture a series of recordings then that would be great. I assume that it doesn't matter which box you go for in terms of functionality as most of the options I would be looking for would be software based through OpenVix? So all / most of the boxes would allow the transfer of recordings to a PC.

[birdman]

I assume that it doesn't matter which box you go for in terms of functionality as most of the options I would be looking for would be software based through OpenVix? So all / most of the boxes would allow the transfer of recordings to a PC.

In terms of a recording they are all the same - prrovided you have enough free tuners (but it's mux-based, so the HD versions of BBC ONE, BBC TWO, ITV, C4 and Channel 5 are all on the same Freeview mux, hence you could record them all simultaneously using one tuner).
The recordings are just files on a Linux system - so you can copy them as you wish.

[adm]

Thanks birdman, if I can set up AutoTimers to capture a series of recordings then that would be great. I assume that it doesn't matter which box you go for in terms of functionality as most of the options I would be looking for would be software based through OpenVix? So all / most of the boxes would allow the transfer of recordings to a PC.

For your budget you should be able to get a box with 2 terrestrial tuners + 1 satellite tuner and perhaps 1 spare slot, a 1Tbyte hard disk and a faster processor. You would connect your box to your home network for transfer of data/recordings to your PC.

I have a 4 tuner box and record both terrestrial and satellite at the same time, usually using auto-timers to identify programs in a series.

Things missing from a Toppy/Mystuff
i) Proper series linking but I find that the auto-timer search has enough configurable parameters to pick up all programs in series (and from series in the future)
ii) no interactive red button services but you can scan for the red button channels and add them to your channel list (with a EPG)

[loshears]

I've had a look through WOS to see what I could find to match the recommendations from adm. Would either the Xtrend ET8500 or GiGaBlue HD be a good match for what I was looking for?