TV Drive Initial Thoughts

[Ecom]

OK, got my TVDrive yesterday, so here is my initial impression after I nights use. Having just got a new HDTV my main reason for getting TVDrive is for the HDTV output that TVDrive offers. So after setup I went straight to the HD programs that telewest offer. Looked at the Blue Planet, and although OK I was expecting more from the HD. Next went to Pride, and great this is what I paid for, great quality pictures and vibrant colours. Looks like the majority of the HD programs are up scaled and not true HD.

Next tried a couple of recording settings, which were fantastically easy to program, child's play really, just hope they works because they are on Saturday.

I did record a couple of short programs however later, and again really easy to set and watch. One great feature is I was watching a recording I made, which extended into a second recording I'd set, no problem the program I was watching carried on, whilst the recording just started with no problems.

The unit automatically records up to 90 minutes of the current program you are watching, which is great for what they call "delayTV", this means you can stop, rewind up to 90 minutes, fastforward etc up to the current position in the program. You can also easily send recorded programs to VCR or DVD.

On the downside, the picture quality on SD (Standard Definition) TV via the HDMI cable is very poor, the picture looks washed out with dull colours. I have a DTV tuner built into the TV and when you switch between the two, you can really see the difference, so I will be making a call to the support team on this.

One further problem is that currently the whole system is down, which my wife is really getting on my case about, because she thought it was a waste of money anyway, so I have real egg on my face at present.

Is it worth the upgrade, purely for the HD benefit, at present no because of the lack of content, but for the ability to record 2 separate programs and watch a third, a big yes.

[Simon George]

Originally Posted by Ecom

On the downside, the picture quality on SD (Standard Definition) TV via the HDMI cable is very poor, the picture looks washed out with dull colours. I have a DTV tuner built into the TV and when you switch between the two, you can really see the difference, so I will be making a call to the support team on this.

My TV drive was installed two days ago and I hve been very impressed just how good SD TV looks through HDMI. I also have a HDMI DVD upscalar which produces a very similar looking picture indeed to TV Drive via HDMI.

The HDMI colour issue is one that I have noticed originally on the DVD, now repeated on TV Drive. However I think you will find that actually what is happening is that on HDMI you are getting a truer representation of the original image than on "normal" alternatives.

After a couple of days looking at HDMI pictures, try then flicking back to the internal tuner - the internal tuner colours will suddenly look artificially strong.

A point to note is that you will need to calibrate your TV especially contrast, brightness, gamma and sharpness for HDMI and normal TV separately. If you can look at HD pictures, than your TV will almost certainly be able to cope with different settings for different inputs.

Another point is that when you see TV broadcast - especially lower quality ones, (e.g news inserts recorded on tape) HDMI exposes their flaws quite harshly, and the contrast between "good" and "bad" is more visible than on your DTT tuner is cabable of displaying.

On the interface and programming, TV Drive is quite primitive compared Tivo, and there is a massive amount of improvement that can be made here. The worst feature I have noted so far is the search facility which is amazingly slow.

I tried looking for shows by genre and by alphabetical within genre and each screen took ~30 seconds to load and worse, if you went back to a screen you had previously viewed it reloaded all over again!

The TV guide is quicker to search through, but the Tivo layout allows a great deal more information to appear on screen which in itself speeds up the whole process.

There is no ability to record series across channels, or by general criteria (E.g. my Tivo can record any "Columbo" on any channel from just one recording instruction.)

There is no ability (as far as I can tell) to distinguish new from repeat in the series recording criteria.

Finally there is no ability to manually search for a title directly - which is an enormous drag combined with the page loading issue mentioned above.

It looks as if the programme guide and database are not kept on the Hard Disk of the box, but loaded page by page from Telewest - this is a pity because although the information is always up to date that way, since the hard drive is there it may as well be used to mirror the EPG in full - it would make a mimimal impact on its overall storage capacity

Still the SD picture quality improvement alone was worth the change and the cost.

[jdh2805]

It's a real pity that the UK TV Drive doesn't use some or all of the software which comes with the same Scientific Atlanta PVR STB in New York. There the series recording options allow any channel or just a selected channel, any time or a specific time, all showings or first run only, and you can set the priority for storing recorded programs.

The EPG is excellent with a much better 4 part screen which expands the "Info" section to show program rating, actors, director and a detailed synopsis.

Also the VOD programming (similar to Teleport) is much better since each broadcast group (HBO, Starz, Cinemax, TMC, BBC America, etc.) has its own "channel" and you can stay in one group whilst switching between programs unlike Teleport where, at the end of a program, you revert to the main menu.