Re: Tesco Techwood AEDTR80S7 Freeview PVR

In message <gff5vl$1tep$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, David <david.park@xxxxxxxxx> writes
Looks like these branded for Tesco to sell, are they sold under other names/model by others?
I'm looking for Reviews on it.
They very cheap wanting to know if rubbish.

A bit over a year ago we bought what I suspect is a very similar model called the Technika AEDTR160S7 with a 160 GB disc. It's quite easy to use, and hasn't lost any programmes, and seems to have reasonable RF sensitivity (we are in a fringe area), so on the whole it's ok.

However there are a couple of annoying bugs:

The electronic programme guide is ok for TV channels, but for radio ones the station name is displaced by two lines, so that what looks like Radio3 programmes come out on the line marked Radio5 Live, and so on all the way down.

Sometimes recordings supposed to last for much shorter times such as 30 minutes come out as 2 hours 34 minutes. I thought this might be a failure of the local transmitter to send the correct end-of-programme code, but I've seen the fault on all channels. Another clue that it's a firmware fault is that sometimes the top programme in the timer list spontaneously changes from whatever it was supposed to be to this odd time, even before the recording has started, so other routine is obviously over-writing a bit of memory used by the timer table. The time isn't a power of 2 number of minutes or seconds so I've no idea why it sets this particular duration, but it's annoying as it wastes disc space unless you notice the over-run at the time and force it to stop recording.

I've tried contacting the Tesco helpline but they claim nobody else has reported these faults, so there was no firmware update, and the only option would have been to return the unit as defective and get a replacement. Of course by the time I reported the problem I had quite a number of programs recorded and it would have been time-consuming to save them elsewhere, so I didn't take up the offer.

In principle the unit is supposed to be able to acquire a firmware update from the TV station, but in a year it has never done that.

So - they are cheap, and I guess you get what you pay for.

--
Clive Page
.

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