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Telewest Videorecorder TV Drive
by grahamt
We have been Cable TV customers for around 12 years, having originally signed up with Cabletel when they came round our streets digging up the pavements and burying cable conduits in preparation for installing the optical fibre to supply services to their customers. Initially the service provided by Cabletel was good but it dropped off ... badly up until the time it was taken over by :ntl. Service improved for a while but then dropped to an all-time low.
Over this period we didn't have many problems with the actual equipment. The Pace TV set-top box had to be replaced twice but that was about it until the merged :ntl and Telewest morphed into Virgin Media. Although the service under Virgin Media showed immediate and substantial improvement, the set-top box then failed twice more. It was about this time that I acquired a Sagem PVR62160T Freeview Recorder that I have reviewed here, and so became introduced to the wonders of TV programme time-shifting and tapeless recording.
With a final Pace set-top box failure and replacement, in discussion with a very helpful Virgin Media engineer, it became obvious that I should start taking a look at the possibility of upgrading to Virgin Media's equivalent of the Freeview TV Recorder. Virgin was not ordering any more new Pace boxes so any replacements would only be reconditioned and repaired ones. My experiences already showed me that these boxes were becoming less and less reliable.
Firstly, just to let you know, the Telewest TV Drive is identical to the Virgin Media V+ box. The only difference is branding. Obviously Telewest is no more and so a new name had to be provided. The machines are still made by the same company - Scientific Atlanta.
How much it will cost you to upgrade will depend upon which Virgin Media TV package you already have. If you have the largest one (VM calls it XL) then there is no additional monthly charge, just an installation cost. At the time I started looking the installation cost was £150 but I noticed whilst mooching around the VM website one day that it was on special offer at half-price - £75. That was good enough for me; I ordered one. It took a few weeks before an appointment to install it could be made.
The V+ box is effectively simply a plug-in replacement for the Pace box, or it is in our case. We do not yet have an LCD or Plasma flat-screen HD (High Definition) TV. Ours is still an old JVC 28" Widescreen CRT TV which means that it essentially only accepts SCART and aerial inputs. Replacing the Pace in our setup took only a matter of minutes. Setting it up took a bit longer but not a lot, about 10 minutes.
The front of the box has an LCD panel in the middle that indicates what is going on on the box, such as current channel number. There are also two red lights that go on when the additional tuners are recording a programme. On either side are buttons that duplicate some of the functions of the remote control.
The only connections on the back of the box that we are using are the two SCART sockets, one that goes directly to the TV and the other to the video recorder. We still only have a standard video recorder although when we replace the TV, I plan to get a video/DVD recorder combi unit. We still have loads of old videos of our kids when they were young and that were taken on various holidays. I want to transfer them to DVD and so a DVD recorder, to also retain programmes recorded on the V+ box that we might want to keep, would be a good idea.
However, the box also has an HDMI socket for HD output to an HD supporting TV, at 768 or 1080 resolution. There is also standard coax output sockets for stereo sound and an optical output socket for feeding full surround sound to a home theatre system, which we have, a JVC. Currently though, the sound to this is fed from stereo output sockets on the back of our existing TV so that the sound changes with the programme change. That's the way we will probably keep it even with the a new TV as most now have optical sound output sockets. There is also an Ethernet socket but unfortunately this does not enable you to stream programmes from the box across a computer network; it's there to enable the V+ box to double as a Broadband modem.
The major feature of the V+ box is that it is unique in having three tuners. Many have two; the Sagem Freeview that we also have has two. Many only have one. The big, big benefit of having three tuners is that you can record two different programmes at the same time whilst watching a third in "real-time". I find that TV programmes are very much like buses; you can go for hours with nothing worth watching and then three come along at the same time that you really must see. In fact, together with the Sagem I could, in theory, record four programmes at the same time and then be watching a fifth, assuming that two of them were Freeview channels!
So, how do you use the V+ box? Well, with the remote of course but, immediately you notice that there is a real annoyance here. The V+ box is very slow to react to the press of buttons on the remote. Generally you know where you want to go and would want quickly to navigate there. The V+ box blocks fast button pushes. Generally you will find that you need to pause for about a second between button pushes before the V+ box will respond. This is probably the most frustrating thing about the V+ box.
However, the major button on the remote that you will want to use will be the one that presents on the screen the TV programme guide. Confusingly, this is a light blue button marked "Home". Pressing this brings up on the screen the familiar Virgin Media menu, in most respects just like the one that you get with the Pace set-top box, and working the same way. The top selection in the menu is "TV Guide" and selecting this with the "OK" button right in the middle of the control takes you to the list where you can choose to restrict the programmes displayed to such as "Movies", "Music", "Your Favourites" and so on.
Selecting your type of programme you then get the normal programme display with the different channels top to bottom and the time slots side to side and a window in the top right-hand corner showing the current programme being shown. What is different compared with the Pace display is at the top, next to the preview window is a horizontal red bar that shows how much recording time is still available on the 160Gig hard drive, for more recordings. Initially there will be about 80 hours for SD (Standard Definition) programmes although HD programmes will take up far more space and so give you less recording time.
Of course, you can still do what you can do with the Pace box, choose a programme you want to see at some time yet to come and then press the "OK" button in order to get the box to remind you when it starts or even switch to it automatically. The additional thing you can do with the V+ box is use the extra set of buttons at the top of the remote to set the programme to record.
When you set a recording the box is even smart enough in some instances to recognise that this programme is one of a series and ask you if you want to record them all. Even if it can't work that out for itself, the yellow button enables you with one press to ensure that they are all captured when they occur. This is brilliant and makes sure that you can't forget.
Of course, once you've recorded programmes you will want to play them back and this is where the other unique button on the remote comes into play, the one marked with a red "V+". Pressing this takes you into the recordings menu and here you can select existing recordings, make new ones either from the TV Guide or manually, or review recordings you have set but which have not yet been made.
Existing recordings can be reviewed by date, in alphabetical order or by series. Viewing a programme is as simple as selecting it and pressing the "Play/Pause" button on the remote. If you have already part-viewed the programme then it will offer you the chance to carry on from where you left off or else to start again from the beginning.
Of course, you don't have to view a programme; you can choose to transfer the programme to another medium such as video tape or DVD via a DVD recorder. Here the V+ box has one more trick up it's sleeve but unfortunately it's not to be able to copy a programme directly from the hard drive to another medium such as DVD. Normally in order to re-record a programme you have to play it back in real-time and record it from the signal that is sent to the TV. The V+ box, however, enables you to select a programme or a list of programmes to re-record and then start the recording, playing them back only on the SCART socket connected to the recorder. On the SCART socket connected to the TV you can continue watching whatever else you want.
As you compile a list of programmes to re-record the V+ tells you the total run time so that you can ensure that you have a long enough tape or DVD to hold all of the content. The only thing you can't do is edit the programmes to eliminate waste recorded time, such as adverts. There are no facilities on the V+ box to do this. If this is what you want to do then you still have no choice but to view the recording and pause the recorder when you want to skip over bits that you don't want.
One thing that the V+ box doesn't offer is Picture within Picture but to all other intents the box does everything that anyone could ask of a TV recorder and more. The picture and sound quality are very good although I can't yet testify to the quality of the HD programming but I have no reason to believe that it would be anything other than as good.
I can definitely recommend the V+ box. Since we acquired it the only purpose to which I have put the video recorder is to transfer to tape programmes that my daughter has asked me to record for her, to view on the TV in her room. I have yet to use up even half of the capacity of the hard drive although I am fairly diligent to delete programmes I don't want to keep permanently, as soon as I have seen them.
I have checked the Virgin Media website today and the V+ box is still on offer at half-price installation. What are you waiting for?
Read the complete review |
