Evesham iplayer - the Freeview PVR you've dreamt about!

[autopilot]

the networking ability and usb options look pretty good....

few questions tho,

does it have dual tuners?
can it do season pass type settings like tivo/topfields by searching metadata for show info rather than just recording at the same time every week?

also a more general question, with recording freeview hd when it arrives (sadly i dont live the in the trial area) how many gb per hour does it use?

id be interesting in its media centre abilities too. perhaps a comparison with the god of media centres that is xbmc

Read the fecking article already.

[fathazza]

Read the fecking article already.

i did, hence the questions....

[Bob Crabtree]

the networking ability and usb options look pretty good....

few questions tho, does it have dual tuners?

No - just one. I'd have preferred two but not many PVRs can record two programmes at once so, assuming you have a Freeview TV, you're not seriously worse off.

can it do season pass type settings like tivo/topfields by searching metadata for show info rather than just recording at the same time every week?

I've got one here but won't be looking at it until the weekend - I'll report back.

also a more general question, with recording freeview hd when it arrives (sadly i dont live the in the trial area) how many gb per hour does it use?

Well, it's an 80GB drive and said to have 70 hours' recording capability, so I make that 1.142857GByte per hour.

id be interesting in its media centre abilities too. perhaps a comparison with the god of media centres that is xbmc

Have to say that, superficially, this side of things did look very good - but it's not until you sit down with it and have a good fiddle that the detail is clear.

[fathazza]

thanks for the reply bob, looking forwards to your feelings on the machine...

dual tuners would have been good, but i can cope without, it can be quite useful tho when you are out and want to record two programmes at the same time. pesky tv channels always putting the good stuff on in the 9 o'clock slot

with regards to my question about how much hdd space it used per hour, i meant how much (if any) freeview hd uses more space than freeview sd. i ask this because hd-dvd and blurary use 5-10x the amount of space that dvd does and was wondering if there was a similar correlation between freeview and freeview hd?

[Bob Crabtree]

thanks for the reply bob, looking forwards to your feelings on the machine...

dual tuners would have been good, but i can cope without, it can be quite useful tho when you are out and want to record two programmes at the same time. pesky tv channels always putting the good stuff on in the 9 o'clock slot

with regards to my question about how much hdd space it used per hour, i meant how much (if any) freeview hd uses more space than freeview sd. i ask this because hd-dvd and blurary use 5-10x the amount of space that dvd does and was wondering if there was a similar correlation between freeview and freeview hd?

Not sure how many Freeview PVRs can actually record two programmes at once - not many, I think (though Humax's top model can, I know).

As for Freeview HD - never having had a chance to be on the Freeview HD trial (there were only about 500 trialists - most of them Beeb people and companies in the industry, such as Netgem), I can't give any specific answer.

However, it's a certainty that an HD Freeview recording will take up a good deal more HDD space than an SD Freeview recording - afterall, the reason why HD Freeview had to be trialled in such a limited way was because of bandwidth issues; the HD broadcasts are more greedy for the available bandwidth, meaning fewer HD channels than SD can be broadcast within the same available spectrum.

[dangel]

No - just one. I'd have preferred two but not many PVRs can record two programmes at once so, assuming you have a Freeview TV, you're not seriously worse off.

I'd consider that function _vital_ having been a Sky+ user tbh.

[5lab]

i agree with the sentiment about the pointlesness of upscaling - hdtvs do this very well, and a large chunk of the RnD costs are in the upscaling chipsets and algorithms. i've got an upscaling dvd player (toshiba jobbie, NOT bought for its upscaling capabilities) and it looks no different in upscale mode than it does in a lower res..

[Bob Crabtree]

i agree with the sentiment about the pointlesness of upscaling - hdtvs do this very well, and a large chunk of the RnD costs are in the upscaling chipsets and algorithms. i've got an upscaling dvd player (toshiba jobbie, NOT bought for its upscaling capabilities) and it looks no different in upscale mode than it does in a lower res..

I'll certainly be interested to compare the upscaling quality of the Evesham iplayer and the set I'll be using to test it with.

But I'm not sure who it is you're agreeing with.

I also don't know whether the upscaling is equally good on different HD TV sets.

Do you know that for sure or does anyone else here know that?

[Bob Crabtree]

I'd consider that function _vital_ having been a Sky+ user tbh.

I'd be VERY curious to know how others feel about that - and it would be useful if those who comment tell us what PVR kit it is they've used.

[5lab]

I'll certainly be interested to compare the upscaling quality of the Evesham iplayer and the set I'll be using to test it with.

But I'm not sure who it is you're agreeing with.

I also don't know whether the upscaling is equally good on different HD TV sets.

Do you know that for sure or does anyone else here know that?

i'm agreeing with bluecube

different hd sets have vastly different scaling capabilities - its probably one of the main differences between a lidl/woolworths set and a samsung. the thing is, its very rare for a hd set to have an exact hd resolution - ie 1280x720 (1080p is more commenly exact, but then, who actually owns a set that can do that at the moment.. (yeah, i know they exist)). upscaling loses quality as well - however well its done, an upscaled picture won't look as good as one which is exactly the right number of pixels. if you've got a 1366x768 tv (very common resolution) and your player upscales, your tv is having to upscale again, thus double the losses. imagine ripping a cd to 128kbps - if you did it in one go, the quality would be better than if you first ripped it to 192kbps..

[yamangman]

Looking forward to the review Bob. I am definately interested in getting some in-depth info on its formats and networking abilities in particular.

[dangel]

I'd be VERY curious to know how others feel about that - and it would be useful if those who comment tell us what PVR kit it is they've used.

I guess for me it's because it's what I'm used to - when looking round for a freeview PVR I really wanted something that would record two programmes at once, whilst playing back a third prerecorded one. This is what Sky+ does and it's that flexibility that makes it useful (albeit far to pricey) as often you find there's two things you'd like to record on at the same time AND you want to timeshift watching them. It's that key mixture than moves you away from watching live TV and also allows you to avoid all the ads.

Dual tuner freeview PVRs are pretty common place now (albeit not all allow playback whilst recording two channels). Imagine if Sky HD couldn't do all that Sky+ could BUT gave you HD - how big a seller would it be?

If topfield build on their current PVR by merely adding HD capability THEN we'll have the perfect PVR - this one looks half baked to me..

[chrestomanci]

Not sure how many Freeview PVRs can actually record two programmes at once - not many, I think (though Humax's top model can, I know).

I have a Topfield one and it can record two at once while watching a recording. It can also record two and watch a third live programe if the live program is on the same mux as one of the recordings.

I would also consider dual recording a vital feature. With the amount of good stuff on at 9pm these days, quad recording would be better still.

As for Freeview HD - never having had a chance to be on the Freeview HD trial (there were only about 500 trialists - most of them Beeb people and companies in the industry, such as Netgem), I can't give any specific answer.

However, it's a certainty that an HD Freeview recording will take up a good deal more HDD space than an SD Freeview recording - afterall, the reason why HD Freeview had to be trialled in such a limited way was because of bandwidth issues; the HD broadcasts are more greedy for the available bandwidth, meaning fewer HD channels than SD can be broadcast within the same available spectrum.

I did some work for Sky on their HD project. They where planning for HD content to take up to a maximum of 4x as much space on the hard drive as SD content, but that was a maximum and not the norm. I vaguely recall as spec that had a worst case senario of 2 25Mbit/sec HD programes being recorded, while a third 25 Mbit/s program was being played back, so the hard drive and I/O subsystem would need to sustain 75 Mbit/s data transfer without glitching.

The other thing is that the bit rate depends a lot on the amount of compresson the broadcaster uses. I have noticed with programs I record that stuff on BBC 1 comes out at about 2 Gb/hour, where as freeview only comercal stations such as E4 it is more like 600 Mb/hour.

All Freeview SD content uses the mpeg-2 codec, but the HD spec used by sky (and allmost certainly freeview HD) allows for mpeg-4 or H264 codecs as well.

Anyone who has viewed DVDs (mpeg-2) that have been ripped and transcoded to XviD or DivX (both mpeg-4) will know that you can easly get a 4 fold compresson without loss of quality by using a better codec.

[dangel]

With the amount of good stuff on at 9pm these days, quad recording would be better still.

Quad lol - that'd be amazing. I've certainly need 3 tuners at times using Sky+ and just had to bin the idea of recording the third program..

[chrestomanci]

"Oooh!", goes the chorus (with some mandatory but half-hearted "boos" because FAT32 restrict file sizes to a 4GB maximum).

BBC 1 transmitions are about 2Gb/hour.

So if you want to record anything longer than 2 hours from BBC 1, and put it on a USB hard drive you are stuck.

Evesham realy need to think this through some more.

"And", says Evesham "with an easy firmware upgrade, you'll will be able to watch off-air HD if and when the current Freeview HD trial turns into a full service (which we think it will). Check out this set - it's showing the Freeview HD trial and lets you see how good it is".

Whould Evesham care to open the source of the firmware (and provide an SDK and proper hardware docs), so that users can continue to get updates once Evesham loose interest or go bust?

Thought not.

[chrestomanci]

Quad lol - that'd be amazing. I've certainly need 3 tuners at times using Sky+ and just had to bin the idea of recording the third program..

Romour has it that Sky have asked Pace to work on such a box. The idea is that it will have two independent displays, that can be routed to two different TVs and watched independently. That way you can have one TV in the living room and a second in the bedroom, both watching and recording different content, without the cost of a seccond full Sky+ box, and the inconvinece of having your recordings on the wrong box.