My Toppy

Well, I finally got a PVR – it’s a Topfield TF5800 (or Toppy) and it’s lovely.  Had a few teething problems, but they weren’t the Toppy’s fault – it was actually the old Sky box creating interference for it.  Now that’s sorted it’s working wonderfully.

It’s not quite as intuitive to use as Sky+ (I’ve used my parents’ Sky+ box and it’s dead simple).  That said, once you get how certain things work it’s great.

Some of my favourite features (in no particular order):

• Copying all my mp3s onto it and then using it as a jukebox.  It even displays any album art that iTunes has downloaded whilst the songs are playing.
• Copying recorded files off it and playing straight off in VLC. Copying took about 10 mins for an hour-long full-quality recording in turbo mode (that’s about 1.2Gb)
• Rewinding & pausing live TV.  Yes, you can rewind even if you’ve not set it to record – it automatically keeps the last 60mins of watched TV so you can do this.
• Current event recording.  If you’re half way through watching something (up to an hour) you can get it to include the already-watched portion in the recorded file.  Great if you’re watching a film and realise you want to keep it or if someone interrupts.
• Being able to upload software onto it to do nifty things that I like.

Some of the “shame” things:

• Shame I can’t connect it easily to my home network (it is possible, but involves spending another £50 or so and firmware hacking a routery type thing).
• The photo-viewing feature is amazingly slow… dunno if it’s the fault of the photos or the Toppy, but it was no use.
• Don’t particularly like the 2 included EPG formats, so I should look for a new one.  Also doesn’t seem to be a way to change the default EPG format… ah well.

All in all I love it and it’s great to have a new toy that both me and Lizzy enjoy 😀

Author: Alex

I am X3JA View all posts by Alex