back to article Technisat HDFS Freesat HD receiver

Among the various HD Freesat receivers emerging this year is Technisat’s HDFS, that its German manufacturer has the claim to fame of being the first such device to be able to access the BBC's iPlayer service wirelessly. However, the devil is in the detail. Technisat HDFS Technisat's HDFS touts wireless iPlayer features, but …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No excuse for not having ethernet

    Why save a couple of Euros and gimp the unit by not providing a wired ethernet adaptor? Someone made the wrong decision during the design reviews.

    1. Dark Horse

      no Ethernet?

      What's the LAN port on the second photo used for, then?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Look closely

        You'll see that the back panel does indeed have an ethernet cut-out but inside it is a USB port. Indicates some serious cost-cutting is going on IMHO.

  2. Christian Berger

    I'm sorry

    On behalf of all Germans I would like to sincerely apologize for this product. We try to keep such things from happening, but from time to time, Management just takes over. Again I'm sorry that this device won't record onto network shares, or USB mass storage devices, or does anything one is used from a satellite reciever.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    freesat iplater and wireless?

    Ok, so I get Iplayer over wireless - but what does this mean:

    It's USP as the only device which can deliver BBC iPlayer via Freesat over a wireless connection

    It delivers Iplayer via wireless IP over the internet - not over freesat and then does freesat as well, ok one box - but I've been watching iplayer over wireless plugged into my tv from my wii or my meidacentre for years... the mediacentre also does freeview and pvr as well .. hmm not so a U if a SP

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wrong! wrong! Wrong!

    I've got one of these boxes and it records perfectly well to an external usb hard drive. Can pause live tv. Works well.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Channel 4HD on Freesat?

    Can't find it on my Freesat HD receiver, BBC HD and ITV HD only at the moment.

  6. Lawrence Dudley

    Hmm

    My PS3 plays iPlayer over 802.11g just fine!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Grenade

      Hmm

      My XBox 360 plays SkyPlayer and iPlayer over 802.11n just fine too...!

      ;-)

  7. simonckenyon

    channel 4 hd - freesat?

    did not know that c4 was free to air

  8. Tim Brown 1
    Badgers

    Channel 4 HD isn't available on Freesat

    Small correciton to the article, Channel 4 HD is not available on Freesat only as Free to View if you have a Sky HD box and card. It is broadcast encrypted.

    Hopefully it will become available on Freesat at some point, but as far as I'm aware no plans have so far been announced.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    stable?

    Why no comments on the stability of this device?

    Mine crashes if its left on for any more than a couple of hours if the Ethernet cable is plugged in.

    Absolute rubbish stability.

  10. StooMonster

    Video geek question

    Does it out SD as 576i and HD as 1080i (as per Humax Freesat HD box) or is it hateful like Sky and force the use of its internal video processing for SD material?

    1. Craig Chambers
      WTF?

      Sky HD has an option to set the output

      A cursory glance at forums, or even at the menu of your 'hateful' Sky HD box would reveal that you can tell it to output the native signal. Mine is configured to do just that so that SD stuff is received by the TV as 576i and HD is in 1080i.

  11. Craig Chambers
    FAIL

    Sent mine back

    This box is marketed as being so much more than a tuner (recorder, media player etc.). the only problem is that the implementation of all of the additional features has a real beta quality feel to it.

    As the article states, format support is pretty limited for media playback.

    It supports MPEG2 video only and as the average film is > 4GB in MPEG2 (i.e. ripped from your DVDs) and

    1) they won't fit on FAT32 formatted media i.e. your USB drive (due to FAT32's 4GB file size limit)

    2) for some reason Technisat enabled CIFS with the SAMBA legacy 4GB limit to file size

    So it's pretty useless at playing *your movies* as stated in their glossy What Hi-Fi advert 8 months ago.

    The recordings it makes are all encrypted, and even though the device offers to let you save recordings on a USB stick/drive onto your local network, the files take an age to transfer, and are not playable by anything else. This restriction includes the HDFS itself, which forces you to transfer them back locally (another glacial transfer) before you can play them.

    Maplin had no quibbles in giving me a refund after 4 months of promised fixes and improvements from Technisat.

  12. Robert E A Harvey
    Unhappy

    'ow much Gggrrranville?

    My local radio shop, no longer even a tiger member, has a 26" panasonic 720p TV, , with 360g hard disk, dual freeview HD tuner, and DAB radio for only 5 quid more than that. It's got an ethernet port, but that seems not to do nothing not yet.

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