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Thomson DTI 6300
by twinkypoo
So, at first sights this box seems to give you everything you could want from an expensive TV subscription for a one off payment, it can record two channels at once, has the facility to pause and rewind live TV as it is broadcast, and save programs for later viewing. As well as allowing you to watch all of the many freeview channels in ... good quality. On top of this it has the facility for top-up TV to be enabled, however I have never used this service and therefore cannot comment on the reliability of it.
Firstly, I bought this box a while back, a few years in fact, at that time the features available were quite admirable, and I was excited to have such abilities without a subscription HOWEVER there are many, many faults with this device. The pausing and rewinding facility are completely unreliable, in fact I don't think I have ever used it successfully. On many occasions after having paused live tv it jumps straight to the live broadcast when I choose to resume. This completely defeats the objective of course, on other occasions it have completely confused the system and I had to turn the box off and then on again to force it into 'forgetting' the whole pause/resume cycle that I had started.
With regard to recording one channel whilst watching another this facility does work well, very well in fact, it's very useful for those days where every channel seems to be playing something you are dying to see, you can just record the one and watch the other (or indeed record them both and watch them both back later) once again the pause, rewind and fast forward facilities are the let down for the box, as even with recorded programs they are faulty and can completely mess up your experience, or on occasions just not work at all.
As you can see from photos of the product, it is perfectly pleasing on the eye and very sleek. The remote works well, it's not chunky and it doesn't have too many buttons to get confused with (at least I don't think so).
Regarding the digital switch over which seems to have made certain freeview boxes fail entirely, throwing channels to random numbers or not getting them at all, in my area (the south) the start of this switch over hasn't caused problems and the box still works, with all the correct channels on the correct number, with EPG information working for all of them.
Overall, I only advise you get this box if it is on a VERY special price, and only for use as a freeview box rather than for it's advertised rewind and pause facilities, because they are simply useless.
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Thomson DTI 6300
by AppleSawce
I would like to start by saying I acquired this digital box as a gift; and since my previous digibox couldn't record or pause or anything fancy I decided to change to this one and give it a go without second glance, it simply had more features and i'd assume cost a lot more so it would have to be better, right?
I was against ... paying for the Pay-TV services, and so I never "topped up" to watch shows that weren't free, if I was going to be paying to watch TV i'd get Sky. However the channels that I did get for free had great signal and worked great once i got the arial sorted.
The recording function was always a bit risky and never really reliable, sure the red light came on (to try to indicate it was attempting to record something) but I would then go to see that nothing had been recorded. I never got to the bottom of it. The series record option only let to further disappointment, it seemed only clever enough to record the same time, and not when the program actually started to the end, instead if it started later than the one previously i'd catch it from halfway through, then lots of adverts on the end, very disappointing.
I found out quickly I was unable to delete any of my recorded programs, whenever I tried to delete a few old episodes of anything it would freeze up and require restarting, i fixed this problem by googling for the special repair codes and wiping the whole thing clean.
Usually when running the digibox has a green light but the red light is bearable when on standby, only way to get rid of this light is to remove all power going to it.
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Thomson DTI 6300
by mh19pink
** My Experience **
I bought this box from Argos for around £80 a couple of years ago. It worked fine for the first couple of months and then a number of problems started to occur.
Firstly, when you were watching a recorded programme from the library and you fast forwarded a bit of it, for example at the ad break, ... it would sporadically take you back to the start of the programme and you would have to start fast forwarding all over again. The box just decided by itself when it was going to do this and it was very irritating.
The second fault was that it would just decide not to record some programmes for some reason, even though you had programmed it to record them.
The third fault was that it started to freeze at certain moments. Very very annoying when you are in the middle of watching something! We took it back to Argos as it was still within warranty and luckily they did not have the same model in stock and gave us a brand new Freeview box of a completely different make which works perfectly! Do not buy this product - it is faulty from the start.
** Technical Details **
Make: Thomson
Model: DTI 6300
Features: Top-up TV, digital TV recorder, watch all Freeview channels, record, pause and rewind live TV, twin tuner allows you to record 2 channels, record 180 hours of programmes onto the memory of the box, 14 day electronic programme guide included, 250GB hard disk drive, two SCART sockets, top-up TV viewing card slot
** Price **
This product is available to buy from most high street stores for £80-£100. I bought my box from Argos for around £80.
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