My Technomate TM Single Review

[Slammed Mind]

Hi Guys,

I needed to order a second box for a bedroom and wasnt really intersted in another Solo as my current Solo is painfully slow so I went ahead and ordered the TM Single from the forum sponsor. It cost me £164 thanks to the £5 discount offered by WOS to forum members.

I'd also like to point out that the service received from WOS was 1st class (Thanks Stef). Emails were replied to quickly, the box was well packaged and delivery time was super fast

Ok... Now to the good stuff

I've put this box through its paces over the past week and would like to give you a quick overview of my setup

Living room: Original Vu+ with 2TB HDD fitted
Bedroom 1 : Orignal Vu+ Solo
Bedroom 2: My New Technomate TM Single

All boxes are connected to the Internet via TP-Link Powerline plugs

The Solo was already networked to the 2TB HDD on my Duo so the first thing I did with the Technomate was do the same. Everything worked perfectly and I can now view all recordings on my Duo's HDD via my Technomate.

I also installed the remote channel stream converter on the Technomate to see if I could stream live HD TV from my Duo to the Technomate. Again......It worked beautifully (My Solo struggled when streaming HD from Duo to Solo but SD was fine)

I then tried to record some TV shows on the Technomate to the HDD in my DUO whilst recording 2 programmes on the DUO (3 Simultaneous recordings) and they all recorded and played back fine.

I installed a number of plugins including icefilms, 1channel, project valerie, YAMP and several other and they all work beautifully.

Another time I was pleasantly suprised at was the boot up time of the Technomate.... It boots up very quickly and leaves my Solo for dead in that respect. Its also much more responsive than my Solo and I dont get the spinning vix icon appearing all the time like I do with my Solo.

My Mother and I both agree that picture quality on the Technomate beats the Solo & Duo hands down (I also seen another review of this box by Marty and he also agrees with this) The picture quality is amazing and very crisp. Our 3 boxes are connected to 3 LG 42" LED TV's and all use the same brand HDMI cables)

I tested a variety of movie file formats including divx, avi, mp4 and they all played back pretty well. One thing I will say is that sometimes when I tried to fast forward or rewind a movie/recording and then play it again, the audio and video would sometimes be out of sync when I pressed play again. It sorts itself out after a few seconds though, no biggy.

The only thing I am not to keen on is the remote control of the Technomate, it feels a bit 'clunky' and not as slick as my Vu+ remote, but having said that it's probably just that I'm not used to it yet. Time will tell.

I have been a VU+ fanboy for the last few years but am delighted I bought this box

I think its absolutely superb and leaves my Solo for dust, it terms of picture quality, bootup time, and responsiveness as I mentioned above.

One thing I was concerned about when ordering this box was that it would take me a while to get used to it because I only ever used Vu+ with the Vix image installed. I requested WOS to flash my Technomate with VIx and the menu/Interface is identical to my Solo/Duo so there was nothing new for me to figure out which I was delighted about.

I was tinkering with the box when I first got it and corrupted the image so had to reflash Vix myself, its basically the exact same as flashing a VU+ box...

The box also represents great value for money IMO

Heres a great money saving tip for anyone in the Republic of Ireland who wants to buy a box from the forum sponsor:

WOS quoted me £19.99 (€23.70) for delivery of my box to Southern Ireland but I used parcel motel which is a service here in Ireland which provide you with a Northern Ireland address which means you can avail of the free UK delivery, then parcel motel deliver your parcel from Northern Ireland to Southern Ireland for a cost of €3.50. Straight away your saving over €20 on delivery of your Sat box

Overall I would rate the TM single 9/10.

I deducted 1 point because of the syncing issues and you forward/rewind movies but I read somewhere that Technomate are aware of this and are working on it

I really hope support continues to grow for this box because it's excellent

Hope someone found this review useful

Cheers

Alan