Gigo USB Digital Freeview Recorder

Review by I. Chapman for Gigo USB Digital Freeview Recorder
Rating:
I bought two of these for my mum who never wants to delete anything she records.

It will work with an external USB Hard disk so long as it has its own power and doesn’t have a ‘power saver’ sleep mode. (ie most Western Digital HDs won’t work). A hard disk with sleep mode will be fine to record things if you’re there to press the button. But if you leave it to record something more than 15 mins in the future it will go into sleep mode and it will fail to record.

I used the Verbatim 47513 1.5Tb drive which works fine and gives about 850 hours of storage for £90 (Dec 2009). I am a little bit worried about how long it will last being switched on 24 hours a day though.

Downsides:

It only has a single tuner, so to get the effect of a twin tuner I bought two and have one switched on and one switched off. Press the power button on the remote to switch between the two. All the cables you need to do this are included. It’s not ideal but it just about works.

Every now and again it fails to recognise the drives and needs to have the power cable removed and replaced to reset it. My Sagem PVR also locks up like this occasionally – I don’t think it’s that uncommon.

It only has one week of programmes in the guide, not two.

It does not have the ‘series link’ function.

You can pause live TV and then rewind it, but you cannot rewind a channel you are just watching. Given the virtually unlimited recording space, you can just press record every time you change channel, but it’s a pain if you like channel surfing.

There is no way of sorting the recorded programmes into folders, so I imagine once it is up to 850 hours it will be difficult to find the programme you want, although you can sort them either alphabetically or chronologically.

Hopefully they (or others) will one day build a proper twin-tuner Freeview+ PVR in this style. Until then, this is the best approximation.

Review by Richard A. McCleery for Gigo USB Digital Freeview Recorder
Rating:
Terrific value tuner with multi free channel TV capability and some unique record features at this price point, but flawed! I bought as a budget option to use with an analogue TV after my region went through digital switchover recently. I had prior experience of Freeview via a budget tuner (no record) so also considered more expensive recorders with built-in hard drives and/or DVD recorders. Having now lived with this unit for 2 weeks and gone through a love-hate cycle whilst learning it’s idiosyncrasies, I eventually deciding to keep it. I recommend it to those who have some idea about setting things up, or need to download video files for use elsewhere, but suggest avoiding if you want to “install and leave alone”. It would be 5 stars if the firmware was “rock solid” reliable and it had a twin tuner, but since it’s cheaper than just about any other recorder allowing one to re-use existing drives then it merits 4 stars.

The almost unique feature of this box is it’s ability to download mpeg video files to separate drives via any one of 3 USB ports. This means you can play/ edit on separate devices, TV’s computers, laptops etc if you have the necessary USB interfaces and/or software. If this is of no interest then consider getting one of the common Freeview recorders with a twin tuner and built-in hard drive.

The manual is quite clear with 38 pages (5 for troubleshooting), but there is also a quick set-up guide for the impatient. There is an unhelpful help line (premium rate) to guide the confused. The on-screen menu system is pretty similar to most Freeview boxes, with help and guidance which is reasonably logical so getting set-up should be OK for most users.

The Freeview tuner part is pretty simple, reliable and works effectively. It’s only a single tuner though so if you want to record and watch a 2nd broadcast channel at the same time then you can’t unless your TV has it’s own separate tuner or you use a 2nd Freeview tuner box. You can record whilst watching a previously recording – even if you are only using one drive.

When the recorder works OK (as in the attached drives are all recognised – see below) then record and playback functionality is pretty good. The 8 day menu option is a reliable and easy way to set future recordings. You can copy between drives but the operation is slow (way slower than transferring video files to/from a computer). I am using a 16 Gb fast USB stick (ideal for this box) and a re-cycled 250Gb external drive. I have tested OK using a 3rd drive, but I don’t need that capability. I like both the advantage of using a flash drive (low power, fast transfer to PC plus silent running) and high storage capacity of a 2nd conventional hard drive. I was able to re-format (needs to be FAT32) and use an old, surplus 250Gb hard drive in an external drive case. This is only powered on when specifically needed (saves on energy, noise and prolongs drive life). Almost all initial recordings are made to my USB stick then transferred to another drive.

Regularly one or more drives isn’t recognised on switch-on. Typically it’s the hard disk but can be the USB stick (nb both are 100% working and seen OK by other PCs). The solution is (awkwardly) to reach around to the back of the box and unplug the 5v power lead for a few seconds then re-connect!! I understand this sort of problem isn’t that uncommon but it almost had me return the unit.

When installing, after successful initial channel scan, I found that none of the drives were seen properly after formatting (all worked OK on a PC). This meant recording and normal use was impossible since all 3 attached drives were stalled and reported as initialising. This wasn’t covered in the troubleshooting guide, so I tried various ideas – plugging/ unplugging, re-formatting etc and eventually phoned (premium rate call) for help. Dwain, the phone service rep who answered, needed either training or sacking and left me wishing I hadn’t wasted my time. Dwain was polite but out of his depth, unhelpful and clearly at a loss to explain the issue or offer advice other than “it sounds like it’s a faulty box – you will need to return it to the vendor – not us”!! In frustration I tried re-setting to factory default (you need to enter code 8500) and reinstalling. This time the drives were recognised, but it may have just been the ongoing intermittent need to unplug the power lead (switching off via remote isn’t OK as it’s an electronic switch and box is still powered). It sounds problematic but is a quick10 second fix when you know of this idiosyncratic problem.

For me what makes this box compelling is the ability to download and transfer to other devices or edit (eg trim commercials from files). I can view content on my PC, in a separate window, whilst reviewing other stuff or travel with it on a laptop. With some playback software (eg the excellent and free VCL media player) one can also run at a faster rate. By experiment I have found I can routinely watch/ listen to a 30 minute file in about 20 minutes – speech tone sounds high pitched, but is usually discernable. Twice real time playback is difficult, but not impossible, to follow. Clearly this does nothing to enhance the creative interpretation of movies or beautiful cinematography but can be useful where it’s documentary or news material.

Overall, if you have some idea about what you are doing, or have a spare drive lying around then it’s a neat bargain which opens the door to opportunities well beyond your average hard disk recorder. It’s even better if you have a spare high capacity USB stick – if not then consider buying one as an upgrade to save thrashing your HD.

Review by Helpfull for Gigo USB Digital Freeview Recorder
Rating:
Potentially a very good piece of equipment let down by very poor software. It is very easy to cause the unit to lock up. One effect of this is that it will not recognise any device plugged in (so it will not record/playback anything). The only way to rectify the problem is to actually remove power then restore, putting it into standby is useless.

When working it works extemely well, but for a company of grundig’s reputation? the software is 3rd rate.

(p.s If you want to transfer/convert/edit recorded programs they are recorded in MPEG2-TS format)