{"id":1753,"date":"2007-01-01T16:16:14","date_gmt":"2007-01-01T16:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/2007\/01\/comparing_pvrs\/"},"modified":"2007-01-01T16:16:14","modified_gmt":"2007-01-01T16:16:14","slug":"comparing_pvrs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/2007\/01\/comparing_pvrs\/","title":{"rendered":"Comparing PVRs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well &#8211; PVRs or DVRs &#8211; whatever the correct phrase is.<br \/>\n&#8220;Sky+ has changed my life!&#8221;<br \/>\nThis is a phrase you hear all too frequently. This must be a truly wonderous invention then?<br \/>\nWell, having now experienced it first hand, I must admit that it is really pretty good. But you know what? Some things are done better by my &pound;94.99 PVR (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.argos.co.uk\/static\/Product\/partNumber\/5320716.htm\">Now &pound;79.99<\/a>) &#8211; a Digifusion FVRT95.<br \/>\nWhat I&#8217;m not going to compare are channel options. Obviously this is pretty important, but I&#8217;m examining the technology here.<br \/>\n<em>Why Sky+ is better:<\/em><br \/>\n<UL><br \/>\n<LI>Well it&#8217;s got a dual tuner. So you can watch one thing and record another. Indeed, you can record two programmes and either watch one of them or playback a recording simultaneously.<br \/>\n<LI>Sky support. Aside from a dodgy box initially, I&#8217;ve not suffered any technical difficulties with my Sky+, but at least I know that the Sky R&#038;D department is busily working on bug fixes and improvements all the while. Access Devices who worked on the excellent software on my Digifusion have gone <a href=\"http:\/\/www.digitalspy.co.uk\/forums\/showthread.php?t=378843&#038;page=4\">bust<\/a> which may mean seeing no more upgrades for my device in the future.<br \/>\n<LI>Series link. I think that this might be coming with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pvruk.co.uk\/freeview_playback.cfm\">Freeview Playback<\/a>, but I&#8217;ve yet to see the definitive list of specifications.<br \/>\n<LI>Programme reminders that pop up during trailers to let you either remind you of a programme or set a recording for it.<br \/>\n<LI>Texting Sky+. Or setting your PVR via the web. Pretty useful; very cool.<br \/>\n<\/UL><br \/>\n<em>Why the Digifusion is better:<\/em><br \/>\n<UL><br \/>\n<LI>The programme guide is neater. A minimised screen of what you&#8217;re watching remains on the screen when you&#8217;re browsing either your recordings or the programme guide. Sky+ stops your viewing altogether if you want to do this. You also have to go into a setup option to turn off the muzak that accompanies the guide by default.<br \/>\n<LI>Skipping. Advertisers and commercial broadcasters hate this. Indeed I note that in the Freeview Playback <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freeview.co.uk\/marketing\/docs\/FreeviewGuidelines.pdf\">marketing logo guidelines (p17 of the PDF)<\/a>, companies are specifically from promoting &#8220;functionality that enable viewers to skip or fast forward through advertisements.&#8221; Wow. You certainly wouldn&#8217;t want anyone to know that you can fast forward the ads would you? (Don&#8217;t forget that ITV actually wanted speeds <a href=\"http:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/weblog\/archive\/001741.html\">limited<\/a> as part of the Freeview Playback spec.) Well Sky+ lets you go up to 30x when fast-forwarding. My Digifusion lets you go 48x, or even better, skip a preset number of minutes altogether. I have it set at 3 mins which means I can avoid seeing the ads completely.<br \/>\n<LI>Easier access to pre-recorded programmes. I&#8217;m really not sure why Sky+ doesn&#8217;t have a button to take me directly to the &#8220;Planner&#8221;. Instead I have to go to TV Guide and then press Green. On my Digifusion, I can get straight to this list in one button press.<br \/>\n<LI>Radio is on the programme guide. I&#8217;m really not sure why Sky+ doesn&#8217;t offer this. They&#8217;re given the programme details and they charge stations to be on the system. So why you can&#8217;t see anything apart from the current programme is beyond me. This also makes it harder to record radio programmes as it&#8217;s back to the old-style VCR manual timer-recording process.<br \/>\n<LI>Programme info for other channels without switching over. Sky+ insists that you either go to the programme guide or switch to the channel to see the info. My freeview box may only have Now &#038; Next without opening the guide (although I can still watch TV doing this) but I can read a description of other shows without leaving my current one.<br \/>\n<LI>Displaying programmes set to be recorded in the programme guide. Very simply, shows are highlighted in red if I hit &#8220;R&#8221; and similarly un-highlighted if I press the button again. For some reason Sky+ doesn&#8217;t offer this.<br \/>\n<\/UL><br \/>\nTo be honest, aside from missing a second tuner and obviously the channel choice, my Freeview box offers some serious improvements over Sky+. The graphics aren&#8217;t quite as neat, but they&#8217;re not bad. And I can think of a few extra changes I&#8217;d add &#8211; a series link facility, and the ability to specify how many minutes early to start a recording eg. 1 minute before the scheduled start.<br \/>\nBut it&#8217;s really pretty damned good.<br \/>\nHappy New Year by the way. I spent it watching Charlie Brooker&#8217;s excellent Screenwipe which included the best wrap up of UK TV I&#8217;ve seen or read this year (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.offthetelly.co.uk\/reviews\/year\/2006.htm\">OTT&#8217;s<\/a> isn&#8217;t bad, but I don&#8217;t agree with everything they say. Maybe I&#8217;ll write more on this another time).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well &#8211; PVRs or DVRs &#8211; whatever the correct phrase is. &#8220;Sky+ has changed my life!&#8221; This is a phrase you hear all too frequently. This must be a truly wonderous invention then? Well, having now experienced it first hand, I must admit that it is really pretty good. But you know what? Some things [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1753"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1753\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}