SATECH: Then in that case perhaps you should be directing these questions to them.who you buy it from worries me not .
Um just to be clear this is a public forum where anyone is free to ask any question they feel interested in. Whilst we really do appreciate any input, please don't feel personally responsible for answering every question related to this particular piece of equipment.
Received the Ultraplus 700 today, had it connected up in less than 30 seconds via HDMI (576i), picture quality is good, channel changing is quick and the EPG compared to my old Hills receiver is excellent. EPG data for SBS one and two which came pretuned is also present, unlike with my Hills decoder. I haven't tried out the PVR functions yet, or MP3 or image viewer, but will do that soon.
semigeek: Received the Ultraplus 700 today, had it connected up in less than 30 seconds via HDMI (576i), picture quality is good, channel changing is quick and the EPG compared to my old Hills receiver is excellent. EPG data for SBS one and two which came pretuned is also present, unlike with my Hills decoder. I haven't tried out the PVR functions yet, or MP3 or image viewer, but will do that soon.
Briefly played around with recording this morning. Time manager recording seems quite easy, Open the EPG, choose what you want to record and then choose various options from there, such as daily, weekly, etc. One touch recording is just that, insert a recording medium and press record. I was using a 4GB flash drive, and recording time allocated varied from as low as 7mins to 44. I'm guessing this is something to do with the way the picture data is transmitted and decoded with the receiver. I tried connecting up my 1TB portable drive, but the decoder failed to recognise it. I'm presuming its because the file system is NTFS and not FAT32. Will back up and reformat the drive as FAT32 tomorrow and see if the decoder then recognises it.
Play back of the recorded programmes is easy, all you have to do is press a button which has the eject symbol on it (no idea why that symbol was used) this then brings up a list of recordings. If you record one programme manually and then stop and then record it again, the playlist names them as - programme name and programme -2 etc.
MP3 works fine, couldn't find any settings for this, but works well enough. All up, for the price, the Ultraplus seems a good buy.
I tried connecting up my 1TB portable drive, but the decoder failed to recognise it. I'm presuming its because the file system is NTFS and not FAT32. Will back up and reformat the drive as FAT32 tomorrow and see if the decoder then recognises it.
A straight USB drive is different to an external hard drive. A USB drive only gets power from the USB cable. An external hard drive has its own power supply. A USB drive like the 2.5 laptop hard drive units will be more likely to work without issues.
Does it allow a 'buffer' margin to be set before and after a recording in case it doesn't air on time?
If so, I'd be interested to know if, when timers are set to record two adjacent programs from the same service, the overlap region is present in both files. It should be, but this is one of the things the 980HD got wrong.
FAT32 will give you a 4GB file size limit, so long recordings may be split across files. That may not be such an issue with SD though.
What disc formats does the manual say are supported?
I made the mistake of formatting a 1TB disc with the 980HD - it used JFS (as near as I can tell), and I was unable to recover the files once I'd sent the unit back.
xarqi: Does it allow a 'buffer' margin to be set before and after a recording in case it doesn't air on time?
If so, I'd be interested to know if, when timers are set to record two adjacent programs from the same service, the overlap region is present in both files. It should be, but this is one of the things the 980HD got wrong.
FAT32 will give you a 4GB file size limit, so long recordings may be split across files. That may not be such an issue with SD though.
What disc formats does the manual say are supported?
I made the mistake of formatting a 1TB disc with the 980HD - it used JFS (as near as I can tell), and I was unable to recover the files once I'd sent the unit back.
You can set the timer manually for recordings to allow for a 'buffer' margin. This can be set up with recording from the EPG and then manually adjusted if required.
I haven't played around with recording like you have commented on in your second sentence,
All I can find as far as USB goes, is USB 2.0 Host support (5vDC, 500mA Max)
On the USB drive thing - I found that the 980HD was not (and may still not be) compatible with WD Elements drives, and the box would often hang on completion of a timed recording, essentially meaning daily restarts and missed recordings.
Now, I don't know if this means anything at all for the 700HDMI but keep it in mind. "USB 2.0 compatible" doesn't necessarily mean that it will work with every USB 2.0 compliant drive. If you strike trouble, you may need to buy a drive from the supplier that is alleged to work.
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