Top Up TV DTR review

The Top Up TV service has been around since 2004, and offers additional subscription channels on Freeview that are usually available only to Sky and Virgin customers.

Now the company has ditched most of the live channels, providing the programming as TV-on-demand as part of its Anytime service, which requires this Top Up TV Digital TV Recorder (DTR).

The system works by storing programmes that are specially transmitted between 2am and 8am, and sorted into 19 channels including UK TV Gold, MTV and Nikelodeon. You can't watch these programs live; instead, they accumulate on the DTR's hard disk, and amount to around 90 hours of programming a week. The programmes are automatically replaced after one week, unless you specifically save them. A week's worth of recordings takes up a lot of disk space, leaving just 20 hours of free space for your own recordings. However, you can free up more space by de-activating the channels you don't watch. Picture quality from the on-demand programmes was very good, and they didn't appear to have been overly compressed.

Top Up TV remains a subscription service and costs £9.99 per month for the basic service and an optional £7 per month for the PictureBox movie service. When you buy the box, you have to pay a one-off connection fee of £30, which includes your first month's viewing. You can also subscribe to Sentanta Sports as a live channel for £11 per month. The channel will show 46 live Premiership matches next season.

The Top Up TV DTR is also a capable Freeview receiver. It has twin digital tuners, so you can watch one channel while recording another or record two channels at once. You can watch any recordings you've made or on-demand programmes while you're recording. The only drawback is that recording two channels between 2am and 8am means the on-demand programmes can't be downloaded. With little on at these times, though, it's unlikely you'd want to do this. Unlike Humax's Duovisio, you can't watch a third programme on the same multiplex while recording two others.

The Top Up TV DTR's interface feels similar to the straightforward Sky+ system. However, the timeline EPG isn't quite as easy to navigate as the Duovisio's and is a little sluggish. You can choose to record a whole series with a single button press, though, which the Duovisio won't let you do.

The rear of the box has all the connectors you'll need, including two SCART sockets in case you still feel the need to use a video recorder. There's a coaxial digital output as well, but this is of limited use as Freeview broadcasts are limited to stereo sound.

It's a good PVR at a very reasonable price, and it was hard to choose between this and our long-running favourite, the Duovisio. In the end, it's the slightly lower price and flexibility provided by the subscription card slot that makes this our new favourite PVR.