First impressions continued

First impressions continued, Despite the cosmetic damage these PVRs seem to do what is said on the tin so to speak. They do however run very warm. Guess that this is due to desktop hard disk drives being fitted and the chassis being little in height. How the manufacturers have fitted a 3.5" hard disk drive into the case is quite an achievement in fairness to them. Anyway fitting a 2.5" hard disk drive into the case should in theory reduce the operating temperature by a noticeable amount.

Anyway, trying not to deviate back to the cosmetic damage and hard disk drive caddy problem, putting these aside it's pleasing to find that the FVRT100 does indeed record on two tuners concurrently and seemingly flawlessly (although the units have been up and running for approximately 10-12 hours only so, the word 'flawlessly' needs to be used loosely). Not claiming to know a lot about PVRs by any means but have tried and tested two offerings from Medion/Tevion, an 80Gb and 160Gb Twin-Tuner PVR, and was not at all impressed with their functionality. Playback on the Digifusion FVRT100 is smooth, there are no jittery pictures (similar to streaming video on an internet connection that isn't quite quick enough) and no sync problems with the video and audio. Furthermore there is no requirement for the hard disk to take a few seconds to spin up prior to playing back a recording from the library.
The menus seem to be reasonably user friendly as well which is nice. Not sure what the previous firmware was like but over-all I'm liking the FVRT100 despite all of the problems experienced with the retailer who sold the units in the first place. There is no doubt that the 40Gb hard disk drive fills up very quickly and needs to be replaced with a larger capacity drive (preferably a 2.5" notebook PC hard disk drive that runs quiet, consumes little power and does not run hot).

Opening up a Digifusion FVRT100 PVR

Hi, Managed to open up two Digifusion FVRT100 Twin-Tuner PVRs bought via mail-order and, first impressions were not good. Not only were the units cosmetically damaged quite badly but the Maxtor 40Gb UATA133 Hard Disk Drive was rattling around in one of them because the hard disk caddy had not been fixed properly to the base of the PVR. In fact one cross-head screw was fitted to one of the three fixing holes where clearly since opening up another unit there should have been three T-10 screws. It's not surprising that, from what one of the forums are saying, such a large volume of these are being returned for refund to one of the retailers who are selling them.

Even though these are refurbished units and are not sold as 'grade-a' one's surely the manufacturers or repair company should be checking these prior to shipping them to distributors?. All of these RMA'd units cannot be giving customers a lot of confidence in the retailer selling them. This is a shame because, other than this, upon addressing the hard disk tray fixture problem the PVRs themselves seem to be quite well specified units for the money.

Anyway what's needed now is for the PVRs to soak-test to check whether they're working alright. Hopefully there are no more units requiring returning for replacement/refund. This is getting quite a frustrating experience and an expensive one as well.

Good luck.

O.K. , You've sourced your FVRT100, so, what's in the box?.

O.K. , You've sourced your FVRT100, so, what's in the box?.

Upon receipt of your Digifusion FVRT100 Twin-Tuner PVR, unlike what I'd normally do, not checking items immediately upon receipt you might want to open the box and make sure that everything that's meant to be in there is as it should be. Here's what you should find:

1 x Digifusion FVRT100 Twin-Tuner DVB-T Receiver (Size (H)4.7 cm (W)36 cm (D)24.2 cm)
1 x External Power Supply Unit - Preferably the 5A variety rather than 3A as these are known to be the cause of 'hold' problems from what I've gathered
1 x Remote Control
1 x Users Guide

One item that isn't supplied is a SCART lead however these are widely available from electrical stores such as Comet, Argos an so on. Providing all of these items have been supplied by the company that you've sourced your unit from the PVR is ready to be hooked up to your TV.

As a recommendation I'd say that it's probably a good idea to soak-test your PVR prior to pulling it apart and replacing the hard disk drive with a larger one, flashing firmware, adding a USB/IDE hard disk drive adapter and so on.. otherwise your hard efforts will have gone to waste.

Please visit this blog again as I'm planning on posting back here once the FVRT100 that I've bought from Microdirect has been soak-tested or otherwise run-in so to speak. Knowing my luck there are faults on the unit. Getting one through that wasn't badly damaged was a problem in itself and I've lost money in return postage but that's another story. Hopefully the experiences with customer services results in a reliable working unit.

Specification of FVRT100 and where to source from

Visitors to this blog who haven't bought the Digifusion FVRT100 that they'd like to pull-apart, upgrade and generelly tinker with might want to know what the specification of this particular PVR is and where one can be sourced from. Please find these details enclosed as follows:-

Specification:-

40GB IDE Hard Disk Drive
Digifusion remote control, manual and accessories
Full access to Freeview Channels
Seven day Programme Guide
Now and Next Electronic Programme Guide
Digital Text
DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting) Subtitles available
Auto Set-Up and New Channel Scanner
2 x SCART ( 21 PIN SCART )
1 x audio line-out ( RCA phono x 2 )
1 x serial ( 9 PIN D-Sub )
1 x RF input ( IEC connector )
1 x RF output ( IEC connector )

Details of where to buy:-

bestmemory.co.uk -Best Memory are selling the PVR-100 for £69.99 with free delivery, and, whilst I'm not implying that this source is any better than the other listed on this blog entry, the units from bestmemory.co.uk are 'grade-a' refurbished which should mean that they're in 'as-new' condition i.e. aren't badly damaged cosmetically.

microdirect.co.uk -Microdirect are selling the PVR-100 for £44.63 including delivery. Please note that Microdirect aren't marketing these as 'grade-a' refurbished therefore there is every likelihood that the product that you buy from them has some form of cosmetic damage. Some customers have been lucky others, including myself, have not. Customers reviews can be read here.

Prices quoted are correct as of 18:10 26th July 2007.

Hi, welcome to the first post of this blog.

Hi, welcome to the first post of this blog. The idea behind this blog is to record experiences of pulling-apart, upgrading and generally tinkering with a Digifusion FVRT100 Twin-Tuner DVB-T (Digital Video Broadcast) PVR (Personal Video Recorder) in an effort to both remind myself what was done to the unit and to hopefully help others in doing the same to theirs.

Information read from other excellent resources that are on the internet are referenced to here and full commendations are given to the original authors. This blog is not intended to superceed the guides already posted on the internet but to gather together the information that's been read and post it onto a blog together with my own experiences of pulling-apart, upgrading and generally tinkering with a Digifusion FVRT100.

One thing that needs to be said though as this is important and that is, pulling-apart your Digifusion FVRT100 PVR immediately voids the manufacturer's warranty. Please don't pull-apart your FVRT100 PVR unless you're aware of this and are happy to proceed with pulling-apart, upgrading and generally tinkering with your own FVRT100 PVR.

Good luck :-).