DigiFusion FVRT145 Review

Overall Rating

Attractive intuitive software.
Easy to use remote control.
The number of timers is only limited by the amount of hard drive space left.

No repeat function for those programs you watch on a regular basis, and you have to scroll through hour by hour, opposed to being able to skip a day a time.

I've had the DigiFusion FVRT145 hard drive recorder for about 4 months now. The previous reviewer mentioned the ability to watch a program that is being recorded from the beginning, but my experience has been that when I select a program that is currently recording, it plays from the point it is at in the recording, and not from the beginning. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.

I've not heard the fan noise. Perhaps the room it's in is particularly noisy already, as it's in the living room, and I have an air purifier running.

There are two scart outputs at the back; one to the TV and the other for a second TV or VCR. I do use the LP facility, and I have had no problems with disappearing programmes personally, but I also find that doing the recording in LP or EP doesn't seem to take any less space than doing a recording in SP.

In it's favour, mostly for me and something which I didn't find in the other PVR's I have tried (and I did try a couple of others which I had problems with), is the number of recordings you can set up. We live in modern times, and these other units with the bog standard 8 timer settings is not really allowing for the demand of most consumers. I've set approximately 38 recordings in one week. That would be some of 30 minutes, some of 60 and some of 90. The number of things you can record is limited only by the remaining hard drive space. An amount of hard drive space is allocated when you set a recording.

As mentioned in the bad points, the most annoying thing for me is there is no ability to repeat recordings. This is probably due to the fact that it does have to allocate hard drive space for each timer, but it means for those series we like to record on a weekly or daily basis, you have to input them as often. So every Saturday, I have to sit there and go through the EPG, setting up the weeks recordings.

Also, again mentioned in the bad points, you can only scroll through hour by hour. It would have been useful to skip through a day at a time.

The software and EPG updates take place at 3am in the morning on average, so most people are tucked in bed. If you do happen to be awake like me sometimes, then you can cancel the upgrade and continue using the unit.

You can record subtitles with your programs and switch them on and off as required, but this uses up more hard drive space, and it can only be done for recordings in the SP mode.

The remote control is not too busy, and it is very intuitive to use. I do find that when using the fast forward feature during playback, sometimes if you stop suddenly at the point you want to continue viewing, it gets jumpy and sometimes goes slow, so you have to hit reverse for a couple of seconds and resume playback.

Overall, for a twin tuner PVR I felt it was excellent value for money, especially with an 80Gb hard drive.

Members' Comments oncallmefrank's Review

• callmefrank on 26th Jul 2006

  Sorry just a correction to make to my review, I said it had a 80gb hard drive, I should have put 40gb.... and the playback of current recording from beginning is achievable by pressing the scene back button.

• vincent0 on 11th Aug 2006

  Hello,
  I'm the other reviewer.
  Thanks for the information on the number of events that can be set and I agree with your comments.
  
  I've had a harddrive wipe just recently because I've been recording a few programmes in the EP setting (or my hard drive got too full). So it does happen. I suspect it's the combination of EP or LP and lack of drive space.
  
  You'll find that the lower quality recording settings like LP and EP record at SP initially, that is at the highest quality, and at some time in the next 24 hours it processes itself down to the lower quality and lower space requirement version. You'll notice that the picture quality is excellent when first recorded and if you come back a day later it has gone down for LP and EP recordings.
  
  There is a colour coding in the Library which indicates what is happening.
  
  For instance when an EP recording is made you'll notice the EP logo starts off pinkish which means it is processing or getting ready to. Eventually it goes greenish and that means the processing has finished.
  
  Got to run.
  Bye for now.