Cheap Freeview box with usb PVR & pause live TV

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mdav056

609 posts

Ultimate Geek

Subscriber

#114495 21-Feb-2013 13:55

People
I'm moving from a satellite house to an aerial house, and need help:

I have a TV, a Sony DVD and HDD recorder, and a Strong 4300 satellite decoder with a big HDD hanging off it. We use the last of these both to record, and importantly, to pause live TV.

It's the Strong I need to replace with a similar terrestrial unit. It has to have a usb PVR that will allow pausing TV (we've come to rely on this). It doesn't need a built-in HDD (but could have one if cheap--guess I could use my 500 gig usb hdd for something else).

Can anyone help me with some recommendations of currently-available equipment? Most of the stuff on Geekzone seems out of date.

Many thanks

gml

B1GGLZ

1961 posts

Uber Geek

#767152 21-Feb-2013 15:40

If you want something really reliable, easy to use and is quality as well, get a Panasonic Freeview Recorder. Does all you are asking. I've seen negative comments on pretty well all the others on Geekzone.

mattwnz

20182 posts

Uber Geek

#767155 21-Feb-2013 15:41

Possibly a cheap tivo off trademe? Great value for money.

wakaridnnz

226 posts

Master Geek

#767257 21-Feb-2013 19:07

DishTV T1020 Refurbished c/w 12 month warranty.

$65 free delivery

Info here

mdav056

609 posts

Ultimate Geek

Subscriber

#767343 21-Feb-2013 22:08

wakaridnnz: DishTV T1020 Refurbished c/w 12 month warranty.

$65 free delivery

Info here

That's perfect! Thanks, I ordered 2!

gml

wakaridnnz

226 posts

Master Geek

#767350 21-Feb-2013 22:24

mdav056:
wakaridnnz: DishTV T1020 Refurbished c/w 12 month warranty.

$65 free delivery

Info here

That's perfect! Thanks, I ordered 2!

Yeah I grabbed one too, can't go wrong at that price.

They were $75 a while ago but didn't come up for sale very often so I'm wrapped.

E3xtc

773 posts

Ultimate Geek

#770293 26-Feb-2013 09:52

Yeah the T1020 is not perfect, a number of people have gripes, but we have had one now for coming on 2 years, and it is fine for what we use it for. Especially at that price!

wakaridnnz

226 posts

Master Geek

#770436 26-Feb-2013 13:08

My T1020 arrived in 2 days and was all set up and good to go in 5 minutes, it took longer to remove the protective plastic wrap.

First impressions are great, the EPG is in full colour including channel logo's and the layout is very user friendly.

I did some research prior and apparently these units are a bit picky when it comes to USB thumb drives. I just threw in a SanDisk Cruzer Edge 8gb and wallah! approx 3 hours of live pause/recording - that's what the media manager says anyway.

So all'n all, very happy and $65 well spent.

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wakaridnnz

226 posts

Master Geek

#777049 8-Mar-2013 19:04

Thought I'd come back and give an update of my update for the folk considering purchasing one of these refurbished DishTV T1020 units.

It hasn't missed a beat so far, in fact it's performance is great.

As it turned out using a usb thumb drive isn't ideal. Apart from the obvious size limitation, the quality of the live-pause play back is not good. The recording of a complete program is better, but still not great.

What I ended up doing was buying a 80gb 2.5" hdd and enclosure off Trade Me, so for $35 the pvr features work perfectly.

The only thing that bugs me about this wee unit is the cm skip and cm back functions are set at 10 minutes and can't be user defined.

I emailed DishTV about it and they said it was a Freeview NZ condition that any commercial skipping be hogtied, way to poop in the swimming pool Freeview NZ!

It's a shame there isn't a custom firmware community out there for pvr's like there is for Android aye!