Jul 07, 2007 05:22 PM
6256 Views
Ok. The title of review is lifted from the movie "Speed". when Anthony Hopkins complements Keanu Reeves on his nerves and smarts.
So is this product the way to go?. I have been using it for 2 months now, and I believe so.
I had used a PC TV tuner card earlier, and was quite satisfied with the experience. I always wanted something easy to use, with a remote rather than a PC keyboard. I purchased this hard disk recorder from bsbaazar.com after reading their ads in BS(Business Standard, not bullshit!). I have been waiting for a DVD or hard disk recorder and this one is the first to come within reasonable price range. Kudos to Phillips for that. My impression of them being stodgy and crappy has now changed. Of course Sony product is also available if you want to pay in stratosphere some 35K+ or so. I got this one for 17K.
I came to mouthshut hoping someone would have written a review on how to connect this with tata sky. I have used it with normal analog cable, and works perfectly. But could not get it to work with tata sky and left it at that. So hopefully someone will write a review later and enlighten us all.
Let's review this baby:
How to connect: Simple. Follow the instructions in manual. Connect Input Cable signal to Phillips cable Input, and Phillips cable Output to TV cable input. Connect composite(3 wires) output from Phillips to TV. This will show phillips output on AV1 or AV2.
Setup. Click Setup on remote. The tuner will take 3-5 mintues and it will tune all the channels. You will be able to have the normal TV channel anyway as earlier cable, and AV1 or AV2 channel will show you tuned channels from Phillips recorder.
What you can do:
Record through timer. This is quite useful to record programs on schedule everyday or every week. Or even some one-off special program. So you don't worry about missing or staying at home for that.
Time shift buffer. This is a real feature missing in DVD recorders, and why I would alwyas recommend going for a hard disk recorder than just DVD recorder. This allows you to go back upto 6 hours of TV. So I can just leave the TV on on my favourite business channel, knowing that as long as I come back to watch it within 6 hours it will still be there.
Pause, Rewind, Forward. Apart from recorded program, you can do all these on the time shift buffer. Just move over the advt and the other useless programming, watch 2 hours of programming in 1/2 hour. Now don't watch the movie'Speed' in 1/2 hour. I mean for news and business news.
Recording from time shift buffer. This is again a great feature. If you find something useful in time shift buffer you want to save for future watching, or maybe you don't have time right now to watch it, then just record it to disk from particular start time to stop time within the buffer. It sounds difficult but this is another of the winner feature. You will be able to appreciate it when you use it.
Save from disk to DVD. Works fine. Is somewhat faster than normal DVD RW burn in PC.
Record direct to DVD. Haven't tried it.
7. Record program and simultaneously watch recorded program from disk. Another killer feature. I did not realize this was possible by reading specs of product, because they don't write about things in ways people might use them. This allows you to make it do double duty.
Now some rankllings:
The remote. The thing is that you cannot keep a button pressed to move quickly in recorded programs menu or timer menu. So you have to click it 10 times to scroll 10 items down the list. This should be a must in later release. I can't believe we can be so high tech but also so low tech.
If you are setting a timer recording, and if time slot clashes with another, you have to cancel it, first delete previous timer, and then set new timer again!. I mean I have used another PC tuner product which give the option to override the previous timer setting with new one.
If above features were also there, I would have rated it Excellent. For now, it is rated Very Good.
