Good HDTV receiver with small defects

I had always used only the standard receiver C274 (without HDTV) Unitymedia, one gets the contract. But now I wanted on my HDTV also enjoy the HDTV resolution of public broadcasters and gave myself why the TT-micro C834.
Since the C834 from the same home comes as the C274 and largely features (except for the HDTV function) over the same functions as the old C274, the entire menu interface was equal to me familiar. The menus are very clear, intuitive and designed in plain language, as there is nothing to complain about. You can flexibly customize the menu color and the transparency of all impressions on their own desires. A little tip: the annoying background animation can be completely switched off in the settings menu so that you only have a single color, quiet and thus much clearer menu background.
Very practical is the Favorites feature that allows to save his favorite stations in order of preference, so you no longer have to constantly scroll through huge lists with hundreds of channels, most of which are encrypted or not a person needs. One disadvantage when scrolling through the favorite lists and other listings is compared to the old C274 Receiver that you no longer have the left / right button on the directional pad on the remote control 10 channels can scroll at a time forwards or backwards. In the old receivers it was so, that on the remote control each could just scroll a station up or down with the up / down arrow keys. And if you had pressed the right arrow key, you could come up with a single click 10 channels down and thus extremely fast scrolling roughly through the lists. This is no longer possible; Now when you press the right or left arrow key, the menu will change between the different favorite lists, instead of scrolling. A fast 10-scrolling is not possible anymore. Only way to scroll a little faster to keep the up / down keys permanently pressed (with a correspondingly negative impact on the durability of the FB batteries).

Another drawback or bug in the firmware hiding in the timer function, with which you can let start the receiver from the EPG to certain broadcasts automatically. In principle, this works, however, starts the timer playback always at full volume, ie volume = 100% of the volume setting (even if during the event schedule or immediately before the start of the timer, the volume, for example. 50% had ). Unfortunately, this is very annoying, because on top of that immediately after the start of the Times, all buttons on the remote are not blocked and you only have to press more buttons to stop the timer and then ever again can use the volume keys. Meanwhile fly a boxing around the ears, because you can not do anything about the 100% volume. This error should be resolved in a firmware update, the manufacturer quickly. In the old receivers of the manufacturer of this error did not occur, it is specific to this model only.

A recent shortage I must mention, namely that the receiver is not level, at least in my case and wobbles because the rubber pads are not all on the bottom the same. If you press on the rear left corner of the receiver, he wobbles considerably. But this is relatively unimportant to me and does not lead to the devaluation, because I do not intend to provide to the receiver a little above (you should of ventilation and heat reasons not to do anyway).

Otherwise, I'm with the receiver but very satisfied. My review may seem quite negative by listing the shortcomings discovered by me, but it outweigh ingsgesamt the positive aspects:

- The HDTV picture with ARD / ZDF and Arte is great and the SDTV picture in rem transmitters as well as in the past..

- The USB port promises useful functions when because if the long-awaited firmware update coming times, which is to expand the receiver to a recording to external hard drives. The update was announced 09/2010, now we have of October.

- HDTV cable for connection between receiver and TV included.

- The receiver automatically updates its firmware / software via the cable TV network.

- Already a rudimentary image viewer is included, which means you can plug in USB sticks and look at pictures. You can find something hidden in the Games menu.

- The EPG has been improved compared to previous models, you can now while in the EPG screen and the sound of the current station scrolls top left in a small mini window pursue.

- (!) Finally, care was taken out the power consumption in standby mode. In the old models of this manufacturer, the power consumption in standby mode was always the same as in the switched-mode, ie the only difference was that the LED changed from green to red, and power was consumed as much. Now, the power consumption in standby is less than 1 Watt. Very good!
During operation, the power consumption is the way at 11 watts, which I have measured with an ammeter. According to the manufacturer website it should be "less than 20 watts." The real value is thus only half as high as specified by the manufacturer, which you do not often experienced (often it is even higher).

That leaves only conclusion to be hoped that the great promised firmware update with the recording function is coming soon and the small errors with the timer function are still not resolved. Otherwise, a strong buy recommendation for anyone in the cable network would like to see HDTV and do not want to smile at the expensive Mietbox Unitymedia in which you permanently every month would have to pay an extra 5 to Unitymedia as rent for the receiver.