its not bad...
I have one of these and while it has a few teething problems its actually not bad.
Ive had several Sagem boxes in the past and this improves on them. Buying into the hype I bought my dad a Humax pvr9200t and I dont think thats better that my previous standard def Sagem - you have to wait for it to populate the guide each time you turn it on, and the remote is awful.
This rt190 has an excellent remote (feels nice too), the box looks good enough sat under the tv (despite the rubbish display), and its virtually silent. The picture is great, recordings look identical to the originals. The guide is ready when you turn it on, and doesn't show ads.
Sagem also provide several updates - my last box must have had around 4 - and by the end it was completely stable, never crashed, and all the known issues were fixed. You might think it should've been like that in the first place, but for some reason PVRs just aren't.... Humax took forever to release updates, and suffered from problem where your recordings would get wiped! Somehow though, Humax still seem to have a positive reputation.
The problems with the rt-190 are:
- The guide is painfully slow to navigate... it seems to load the progam info before allowing you to move on. Perhaps they need to learn about using a separate thread for the UI :) or at least not fetch the info until you have not moved for a while.
- The sound drops occasionally after pausing. You have to change channel or stop/play the recording to get it back.
- There a large volume difference between the standard and hi-def channels
- It occasionally wont turn on when its recording a program... the only way is a hard reset which obviously causes a gap in the recording. This has happened to me twice now.
- other minor things like no page indicator on the recording list, and "there is a notification on this program, do you want to record it" messages on hi-def programs... (the notification is that the sd program is broadcast in hd... )
They might seem like major issues but they will all get fixed in an update soon, so I'm happy enough. The remote, silence and looks of the box are all great, and after the updates I would highly recommend it.
Other hd pvr's are on the horizon though - the £330 box from Humax, and the potential one to rule them all, the £299 3view box.... both out soon.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
