Green Room

i'm thinking of getting rid of Sky and getting Freeview and one of these combined set top box/digital recorder thingies. has anyone bought one and what do you think of it? i like the ability to watch two different channels on two seperate rooms but the blurb doesnt really explain how it manages this. the cheapest I could find one for was £187 from DigitaldirectUK.com.

IWatkins

I've had one for nearly a year now (got it the day it came out).

Love it.

Yes, it has two tuners on board so you can either watch one channel while recording another or you can watch one channel on one TV and another channel on another TV. The second TV will either require a very long SCART lead from the Pace box or much easier is to use a video sender thingy to send the output of the second tuner on the Pace box to the second TV.

I've never actually tried it, but there have been plenty of people who do do this.

I just use it with one TV and do a lot of pausing of live TV, time slipping and general recording. Video recorder hasn't been used in nearly a year.

Cheers

Ian

Green Room

thanks Ian, this is just what I want to hear. what about the software, I mean how does it work for recording? does it have some sort of on screen display and is it easy to use or do you have to manually tell it whan to record like a video recorder?

Green Room

one more question ian i also hear that it can do for bit-for-bit recordings that are identical to the original broadcast, is this something you can't do with existing DVD recorders or Tivos, which use analogue tuners and is it something worth having?

IWatkins

Recording can be done in a number of ways.

First, you have the usual manual entry of record times on screen much like a normal video recorder. In addition you can have these on continual repeat, i.e. BBC1, Tuesdays 1930-2000. This is actually much easier to use than it sounds. I can set up a program record event in about 20 seconds.

Then you can also select a program from the electronic program guide. Only problem with this at the moment is that Freeview are not broadcasting the EPG. The EPG (covering 7 days at first) is due for broadcast in the next few months (apparantly). This affects all systems, not just the Pace.

However, you can record from the Now and Next information each channel has. I.e. if the program shown in "Next" is the one you want, you just hit the record button.

Yes, the Pace records the actual digital data stream directly without decoding it. It only decodes it on playback hence you get a perfect recording with no loss of quality that you do with the Tivo. Of course, the downside is that you cannot lower the bit rate to save space.

Pace ships with a hard disk that can record approx. 10 hours (20GB 2.5 laptop sized disk). First thing I did was pop the cover and replaced with a 60GB disk which equates to approx. 30 hours record time (or radio only to something like 200+hours).

If you want to read more about the box, you can download the manual from Pace, link here (3Mb), it is a PDF document.

Cheers

Ian

Green Room

thanks for taking the time to reply in depth Ian, i think you have just swung it for me with the fact that you can replace the HD, I happen to have a 40 GIG laptop sitting doing nothing atm is it as easy as just swaping them out?

pity that the EPG isnt ready yet though. is it a definate that it will be up and running in the near future?

sorry about all the questions

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

Did you have any software probs with yours Ian?

My mate has one and it was full of bugs, didn't record and crashed half of the time. And the helpline kept promising updates which only just recently come available. Think it's OK now though

Floyd

iTrader: (9)

I got Sky+, £99. It works, no problems with PVR2 and 1 touch recording. Can't imagine watching TV without it now.

F

Green Room

hmm, i want do get rid of Sky though, i'm fed up paying £22 month for what is presently on offer i.e stuff i watched on Sky years ago repeated ad infinitum. my present digi box is also slightly foobared (or so Sky tells me, it regualry drops all the BBC and ITV chans) and Sky offered to charge me £65 to send an engineer out to confirm what I already know. this means i will have to by a digi box anyway so the Pace seems a logical choice.

IWatkins

Green Room,
The EPG is coming, that is all I really know. I know they have been recently trailing it in Wales so I'm guessing the next few months. But I've managed to live without it

Updating the hard disk is a doddle, see my thread here over on AVForums about updating it. Also have a look through the thread to see if anybody has had any problems with the hard disk you have.

Ali,
Yes, early on there were all sorts of problems, mainly caused by the introduction of the MHEG/Teletext system. But since the last over-the-air update back in September (IIRC) I've had no problems at all.

Cheers

Ian

Jye

Intresting reading here for all you Pace users.


http://forum.digitalspy.co.uk/board/...5&pagenumber=1

Green Room

cheers

boomer

I also have a "twin", and it does still hang (requires a plug-pull to fix), and occasionally misses a recording.

However, like IWatkins, i haven't used my video in nearly a year!!!!

Menu driven TV is something that you get used to n'all.

I like the twin - even though i paid the original GBP350 for it

Go for it

mb

chrisowe

Like Iwatkins I was an early adopter of the Pace twin and all its problems of missing recordings, but since the last software update the problems seem to have been sorted out. Hardly ever use the video now.
One of the great features is being able to start watching a recording from the beginning while it is still recording (if you know what I mean). Hopefully they will be able to update the software so you can record two programmes at once like the Sky+ box which I think is essentially the same.