Now for the negative points:
1. External USB Hard Drive
According to the manual, all commercially available USB media can be used. That's not entirely accurate. If the hard drive is not already formatted as FAT or NTFS, the device displays fantasy values for capacity and then the hard disk can not be formatted. A USB device which has been so previously used on a non-Windows system, usually uses a different file system (ext3 (Linux) or HFS (Mac)) and must be previously formatted on PC.
I have tried 2 different 2.5 "hard drives without a separate power supply. The one starts not even be in the other despite FAT or NTFS formatting fantasy values for the capacity display and thus can not be used.
A USB drive with its own power supply (3.5 ", 500GB), however, runs reliably.
If the device is switched off, the USB port is also shut down. The hard drive is not sent into hibernation, thus possibly remains switched on. My HDD switches off via relays so that it is OK for me.
2. User management / OSD
Although it is a fully HD-compatible device, the OSD will appear as you would expect from SD devices. For this it is very colorful, which is not exactly promotes clarity. However, the navigation is quite OK.
3. The programming of recordings
Recordings are usually programmed from the EPG. And when the trouble starts:
The recording is programmed with the exact times of the EPG. The unit switches itself accordingly at the beginning of the mission, and therefore lacks the first one or two minutes. So you have to adjust the start time and duration for each recording manually. A global variable lead time and lag time would greatly help the user here.
For each program the timer is first in the "channel change" mode and you have to change it to "REC". Another unnecessary nuisance. So you forget to switch this, the program is recorded.
In timer the duration of the recording will be indicated for each shot, but not the actual end time. Not very useful.
If the starting point of the recording brought forward, so that the beginning of the program is recorded, the recording will appear with the title of the previous mission. I will therefore take the "word on Sunday" and then find the record entitled "Musikantenstadel" again.
As far as I have seen, the number of timers is limited to 8 anscheinand !?
A programming of series from the title of the program, in which the program will be recorded regardless of the time of broadcast, unfortunately also lacks.
4. shift function
Although an attached USB hard drive runs continuously, is thus not moved when not in use in the idle state, there is no permanent shift. For permanent timeshift could in the current program, for example simple without any further preparations rewind a few minutes, depending on the size of the timeshift buffer.
Conclusion:
A nice device, but the recording programming is absolutely impractical. Since I'll rarely record something, I take it only once so now and also hope improved firmware.
