Thanks guys for the quick reply.
What you're saying makes good sense. I've thought about this a lot over the weekend, and your reply pretty much backs up my own conclusion.
Good point about the cost increase. Duo2 will command a premium price, and I'm already facing a fairly large capital spend to get the dishes installed on my house (I've been using Freeview terrestrial thus far) never mind the Ultimo and a 2TB disk.
I'd value your thoughts on a related matter though -
WAF (wife acceptance factor) is v.important for me ;-) The Toppy was great, she learned the EPG and timer setups no problem. How's the Ultimo when it comes to WAF? Tricky and fiddly, or easy to drive the basic features?
I use the VIX image on mine and it is 1000% WAF, I have three boxes and it helps the image is same across the range - its so easy my 4 year can navigate it, though when she has the remote the channel gets stuck on Nick junior
Auto Timers - do any of the distros (
Black Hole etc) automatically scan the EPG for patterns (like "
*Spanish*" to discover any programme whose name (or description) matches, and sets up a timer?
Yes, multiple settings and I have literally tons of them and can set it to exact or partial description / title, record all or only unique instances
Padding - I would expect the VU+ software to allow auto padding of recordings (including padding any timers which are automatically set by an EPG scan) ?
Yes you can
Cheers!