ping

The Sagem PVR 6280T has left the building

It has been replaced by a Humax PVR-9200T. The Sagem box had a number of peculiarities that have never been fixed by Sagem even though it has had a couple OTA (Over The Air) upgrades. When I got close to its 1-year anniversary I had actually decided to see what Tesco would say if I tried to return it under warranty, but buying and moving house at the same time meant that I never got around to it. Its worst peculiarity happened if you were viewing a recording and a new timed recording kicked in. It would briefly switch to the channel on which the recording was about to take place, stay there for a few seconds and then return to what you had been watching all along. But even though its peculiarities were really annoying at times, its ultimate downfall in this household was the size of its hard disk. The fact that we don’t actually se that much TV means that the hard disk was usually more than 75% full because of recordings we wanted to see sometime.

The Humax has a 160 GB hard disk, so it should in theory make life easier for us. It is of course a possibility that all that happens is that it will take us longer to get to the 75% mark and then we will be back where we started. If that happens, I plan on using the USB plug and take some of the recordings of it.

So what is there to like or dislike about the Humax device compared to the Sagem box (some of these features are not unique to the Humax, but they are features the Sagem didn’t have):

• If something I want to record is part of a series, and I choose to record, it asks if I want the whole series or just that particular program.
• Rather just having the ability to choose to record from the EPG or via date-and-time programming, there is a “Find” option where I can search by name or part of the name or I can choose a genre such as “Movies” or “Education” and scroll through the resulting list. After I discovered that, I haven’t used the EPG list at all.
• I like and dislike the remote. It is much bigger than the remote for the Sagem, and most of the buttons are much better laid out. On the Sagem I frequently pressed the wrong button. Unfortunately, some of the potentially useful buttons are under a sliding panel which doesn’t seem that sturdy, and I just don’t use them because they are under that panel.
• The Humax can make two recordings simultaneously. Even though the Sagem box has twin tuners, it can’t make more than one recording at a time.
• If I choose to record something which conflicts with something else I’ve already set to record, the Humax will show me the conflicting recordings, and I can choose to replace or leave alone. On the Sagem, it would just ignore you.
• The EPG take ages to fill with data compared to the Sagem. I knew about this from comments on the internet, so it wasn’t a surprise. The other features of the Humax outweigh this downfall, but it really does take a surprisingly long time to fill up.
• Getting to the list of available recordings was actually better on the Sagem. One click on the “List” button would bring, well, the list of recordings up where you could see all details of the recordings such as date and time the recording was made, from which channel etc. Highlighting one of the recordings and clicking “Ok” would start the playback. The closest thing to this simplicity on the Humax involves pressing one of the buttons hidden underneath the sliding panel, and the list that pops up is not very detailed in information. If you want the detailed information, you have to press “Menu” and then choose “Recordings” to get to a list with information similar to that displayed on the Sagem. When you then select a recording, it starts playing right away, but the menu interface is still on the screen as well, so you have to push the “Exit” button on the remote to get the menu interface away.
• There is an 8 GB partition on the hard disk which is reserved for JPEG pictures and/or MP3 audio files. Whether you use it or not, it is there and taking up exactly 8 GB of space. If you do use it, for many people 8 GB would turn out to not be enough, and for those who don’t use it, it is just wasting space.

At the time of writing, the cheapest place to get the Humax is at Dixons where you can get it for £159.94 (incl. shipping). They are frequently sold out at Dixons, so you’ll have to watch their website every now and then to check whether they are back in stock. Or you can buy my used Sagem box on eBay…