I've had this for a while now and its been ok but now the remote control won' t send the correct signals to the box eg I press up it goes down. I try to set a programme to record, I press down and it switches to Ch4. There are no buttons on the box itself so without the remote control the box is useless. I could buy another remote but this is one of the most annoying pieces of equipment I have ever used and will be glad to get rid of it and get something new, hence I'm here looking for something that gets good reviews. I wont be buying another Digifusion thats for sure.

I've been using this Digifusion digital recorder for a little more than two years and am, overall, impressed with it.

It has two receiver channels, so you can record two and watch a recorded programme simultaneously. But...
It has no editing facilities whatsoever.
The FVRT 145 manual is basically very poor. There is no index, you can't find how to do anything without trial-and-error, we don't have the time for this. If I want to record something, the manual should tell me HOW.

Ability to record 2 and watch a channel or playback.
Records backwards for 1/2 hour if you forget to record or have something else to do. Pity, but without the reliability issues this would be a cracking machine
P.S don't get a refurbished one from MicroDirect, I have had 4 faulty ones.

The DigiFusion FVRT145 will not find half the channels that my old freeveiw box found, only gets signal on one receiver, not both, the channels it does pick up are of poor quality.......need I go on, it's going back as soon as I can get it out of here.

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.

I am still getting use to my DigiFusion FVRT145 hard drive recorder, so I might change my mind about things later.

I've had it for less than a week, and so far, It has given a good impression.

Records off Freeview nice and easily, and there is no need to set an off or on time when recording, as it gets the information from the EPG (electronic programme guide. TV guide to you and me).
You use this EPG thingy to set the recording usually, ie, go and look at what's on TV now or next, or whatever (it's a 14 day EPG, and it loads the EPG at 3am each night off-air onto the hard drive, so you get an instant reply when you call it up, which is very good. Other units download the information when you ask for it, so they are slow, I hear) and highlight the programme you want, then press a button to set it to record. That's it! It'll start and finish on it's own. There is nothing else for you to do.

The downside is that sometimes, of course, the broadcast will not start bang on time, and it may be a minute or two early or late, in which case you'll miss a bit (what is that function thing, PDC? which gets around this? - it could do with that). You can get around this problem by manually padding out the recording. It does give you an option to make changes like start, finish and recording quality.

There is no mention of the number of recording events you are limited to, but as I'm in my honeymoon period I've been happily setting recordings left right and centre, and I haven't' hit a limit yet (it might be something like 128 times or some other computer significant number like 64?).

I've got a DVD recorder, and this in comparison, is easier to use and more convenient, but I think a lot of that is because the Freeview is integrated into the system, and it is so easy. Maybe I should have bought a Freeview DVD recorder with a hard drive to start off with. Oh yes, they were too expensive, and I didn't know.

1) You can record on two different channels at the same time, as it has two tuners. Plus, you can watch a recorded programme at the same time, and you can even go to the beginning of what you're still recording and watch that.

You can't plug it into two different TV's as it only outputs one tuner at a time.

It doesn't have an RF output, but although there is an RF loop through for it to catch the transmission, it doesn't add the signal to it like your video player does (some people like to pipe the signal around the house and this function would make it easier).

You can get around this by plugging it into a video player via the scart and that will output it out through the aerial cable.

2) You can pause or rewind live TV as it automatically records the TV programme you're watching temporarily. It only does this for 30 minutes, so if you have been watching a programme from the beginning for 30 minutes you could wind back to the beginning, but if it's been 45 minutes, you can only wind back 30 minutes, so you'll lose the first 15 minutes.

I've found the best use for me so far is to repeat what I've just missed seconds ago due to inattention.

3) This buffer is also useful if you've been watching a programme for a while and decide that you want to record it for whatever reason. It will look at it's buffer, look at the EPG, and then it tries to capture as much of the programme that it's missed. Neat!

Summary:

I like it! It is a bit idiosyncratic in the way that it works. Some would say very idiosyncratic.
It's one of those gadget categories that still needs to mature and get better like DVD recorders.

There is a reported problem with using quality settings other than SP, even once. It starts off as a fault that will delete ALL your stored recordings at some random time in the future (you can get around it by not using these settings or reformatting the drive).

The best thing is it's easy to just record off the TV listings and there's no problem with searching for which video or DVD you've recorded onto, or where the recording is on the tape.

What it needs is the LP / EP fault to be fixed (the picture quality is poor on these settings as is to be expected, but it is acceptable on my 21" TV for time shifting), then it would have 80 hours of recording instead of 40 hours.

There's so much to say, but overall I'm glad I've bought it, and I like it very much so far.

It complements my DVD recorder and video recorder. In fact, I'm certain I'll be using them less.

Another thing. The picture quality of the Freeview seems not to be as good as my Asda own brand or Echostar Freeview boxes; just ever so slightly.

The Asda unit went back as it started to lose channel 5 every time I wanted to record Star Trek a while ago, but it was only Star Trek!! Was it trying to tell me something? :)

I'll be back with more when I think of something else.