I used to subscribe to Sky, then to Sky+. You soon get very used to the superb interface, and the real convenience of instant pause, playback, and record.
But, and there’s a big BUT, you have to pay a subscription each and every month. With all the movies and sport you can pay over £50 per month. So, with a view to reduce household costs, about 3 years ago I decided to ditch Sky, and move over to Freeview. I decided that the majority of channels that I wanted to watch were on the terrestrial service anyway. What I didn’t want to lose though was the ability to record onto a hard drive – it’s simple, quick, and doesn’t depend on recordable media, such as tape or DVD. It was then I discovered the Topfield TF5800.
Topfield TF5800
At the time – nearly 3 years ago, I paid £260 for the 250gb version from Turbosat in Hayes. (online availability at the time was an issue). I can tell you , that after a little “tweaking”, that this PVR is simply superb.
OK, before I talk about the tweaks, let me tell you what it can do out of the box. 250gb is enough for nearly 150 hours of TV. The twin tuner set up means you can record TWO programs while watching a completely different one. Picture quality is fantastic. Noise level is minimal, and connectivity is by scart socket. There is also a USB socket for PC connection or transfer of TV data to a PC/Mac. The EPG is basic, and actual recording of programs is very limited.
The EPG before tweaks
Where the real fun begins is when you find out, that you can enhance the way you record and find programs, using an Toppy APplication (TAP) called MyStuff. This and many others are available from www.toppy.org.uk.
Mystuff is downloadable as a single file. You simply connect the Toppy to a Laptop using USB (after installing drivers). This auto installs everything you need, including logos for all the freeview channels.
MyStuff EPG
Your list of recorded programmes
All this makes life a great deal easier, and of course works well in the WAF stakes. WAF? = Wife Acceptance Factor. The MyStuff tap, can do searches for all programme names across all channels. Not quite series link, but good enough. It can also create folders to store TV that has been recorded. I have labelled mine after members of the family, so we can find them easily. The images above show how it all looks,but even this can all be changed to an infinite number of different colour combinations.
I also transfer programs across to my Mac where I can edit out the adverts, and then pop them onto DVD. The main program I use is mpegstreamclip by squared 5 . This is available for both Windows and OSX.
The Topfield TF5800 250gb now costs £199 (and looks nicer), and there is an updated TF5810 model with HDMI output for upscaling plus a larger 500gb hard drive for £280.
