Digital Vision GiGo DV-DTR1 USB PVR

RE: Digitising legacy VHS

Only if it has an analogue decoder, and being a box for Freeview (that's digital), it's unlikely.

I wonder if the USB port could be connected to a NAS for easy network access to the TV recordings?

Pint cos it's Friday :)

GiGo

What do you mean "there's no 'garbage in, garbage out' about it"?! It's freeview! Scratch that - it's TV! There's always garbage!

@ EddieD

No, I doubt it. Remember that it's a digital tuner, and your VCR will not be spitting out a signal on a digital multiplex, so the digital tuner will have nothing digital to tune into.

I suspect that...

... the poor playback performance from an external hard drive is due to lack of buffering which would obscure external drive access latency.

Still a neat product, though...

Reasonable article. :)

One comment though:

"The VHS socket gives newcomers to digital an option to continue recording onto their old VHS machine."

Actually the picture shows that the 2nd socket is labelled "VCR/DVD" - and don't forget that DVD-R recorders are now pretty reasonable, so I'm guessing that you could grab a programme to flash, move the key to use your PC to edit out the commercials, and then put it back in the GiGo and zap it onto DVD disk for later viewing.

I also can't help wondering if a 2.5" external USB disk (which uses laptop drives with a lower power draw) or the SSD-based units would work better than the external drive tested.

Price is a little high - if it was £15-20 cheaper then it'd be a serious alternative for those folks who are looking for a Freeview STB but want something a little more. Heck, I'd think of replacing my current Phillips box with this.

Oh, and not sure on the name - presumably "TV2Go" was taken. Or, given that it's got three flash sockets, maybe it could have been called the "GoGoGo". ;)

Detail missing

This product looks ideal. PVRs are great, but if your mate has recorded something and says it was fantastic that good and dandy but how do you get to see it (and hold the iPlayer response, Freeview is more than BBC) ? This solves that problem.

So, it looks good - looks simple enough that my mum could use it. Some details are missing :

1) Where can I buy one ?

2) When can I buy one ?

As as about "when" because you mentioned you tested a pre-production unit ! Hopefully these will be available well before XMAS.

BTW - I think they should bundle it with at least one flash drive so you know the unit works (and so if you buy a rubbish drive you can at least know it's your cheap drive that's the problem and not the box). I would have thought SD cards would have been more preferable, there's obviously some reason they chose USB (possibly licensing).

Step in the right direction

Well it's a step in the right direction.

I'd consider something like this when Freeview HD is released (can't see the point in buying another freeview box at the moment). Seems a bit steep though considering what it is, but I guess the PPC CPU might have something to do with this (aren't most Freeview boxes using basic low power DSP chips?).

I also agree that it could do with dual tuners.

By the way, with regards to digitising VHS tapes, your best bet is to probably get a cheapo DVD recorder. You can pick one up for about £50 online now that will record from RF or Scart to DVD from old analogue devices (apart from copy protected tapes, but then a lot of old films on VHS are dirt cheap on DVD nowadays anyway). My dad does this this his LG DVD recorder (his was a bit more pricey though at £100 but does include Freeview and HDMI output).

Personally though I just replace the VHS tapes with DVDs as any home videos I have are on DV tape anyway (so can be transferred to DVD on the PC, or via a DVD recorder).

Rob

just bought something similar

in a Alicante MediaWorld store. It was a no name (that I can remember) Generic Satellite Receiver, I have it DISEQC on Hotbird FTA + UK FreeSat, it includes a Digital Terrestrial Rx - whose channels (12 here in Italy) just get added to the Satellite list and a front USB socket for MPEG-2 Streamed recording. I dump to 16GB USB stick and 1 hour of VIVA music was around 1.2GB. My PC & Mac see the file as a Streamed Media, plays well with VLC. Cost 129 euro, around 110 quid.

I haven't played with the 'timed' recording modes, just pressed the basic PVR instant button on the remote - which takes about 5 secs to start. nice piece of kit!

Nice!

Whilst I'm usually massively dis-interested in El-RegHW reviewing piss poor Freeview boxes, this one seems to stand out quite nicely, especially wot with its IT angle!

This sounds like a genuinely useful piece of kit. Selecting to use USB pendrives was utter genious, they clearly recognised (or stumbled upon?) the fact that pendrives are coming down in cost all the time, today you can pick up a few perfectly acceptable 16Gb drives for one standard-pittance-unit (SPU), thereby adding great value!

Definitely need to work on USB HDD support though, prior to release. Also there's no way my old gran would ever be able to make out that confusing mess of an EPG page! Size of the font is not everything you know!

Only thing is - prior to when I bought my slingbox (with built in freeview) I used to use a PC with a hauppauge PVR card, only to find the support for MPEG2 video the card produced to be somewhat lacking (thanks Hauppauge for making me take up countless hours of my life on this problem!). I never did find a video editing program at the time that could edit the Hauppauge MPEG2 files except the shit they provided, and I never did manage to transcode any of my vids.

I sincerely hope this has changed, and I hope the file standard is properly obeyed this time so it'll be loaded in with any vid editing software.

.

...so does anybody have any suggestions for specific software titles to edit GiGo DV-DTR1 files with? I might consider shelling out.

Use it with microSDHC and USB reader to watch on Nokia N series? Plus Addresses

I'm keen on getting one too - so I can record progammes onto a microSDHC card plugged into a USB reader (acts just like a USB memory stick, USB mass storage class device). Take the card and put it in my Nokia N95 mobile phone and watch on the train to work.

I will need http://corecodec.com/ to produce an MPEG2 video player codec for their symbian video player software. I already use this software to play back MP2 audio recordings made on a microSD card inside a full size SD adapter in TheBug DAB (thebug.com) digital radio.

Link for the device http://www.digitalvisiontv.com/digital_tv_recorder.html

Expected to be available in September for about 70 pounds.

FAT32

FAT32 on a DVR? What a brilliant idea, especially given that the maxium file size 4 GB - so if you're recording a longer movie, forget about actually watching it! If you're any serious about getting a DVR, a MythTV box with a reasonably sized HD (formatted in XFS/JFS) with a couple of DVB tuners will yield much better results, and actually won't cost that much - my >5 years old Athlon XP 2600+ with 1 GB of RAM happily records four DVB streams while watching one (it could do eight from two multiplexes, but there's never that much to watch at any given time), and with proper deinterlacing it looks great even on a 1080p display.

Humax Foxsat thingy

Might be £300 Quid but it is HD afterall!

You might struggle to get that on a 4gb stick!

FAT32 workaround: >4Gb recordings split into several files, linked via playlist file?

If the PVR does use FAT32 then the 4gb limit could be overcome by the device creating a new file once the earlier had reached 4gb. A playlist file would also be created to link them together. We all know that playlist files are used to sequence audio and video on our favourite Windows/Mac/Linux players, so this technique also ought to be applicable in this dedicated set top box.

Excellent!

This would make a nice back-up pvr for my in-car dogcam setup!

http://www.dogcamsport.co.uk/mtb-bmx-bullet-cameras.htm