Under Development

Posted on 8 Jun 2009 at 15:34

 

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While Mrs R struggles to get her fix of Grey's Anatomy, David Robinson finds that breaking up is not so hard to do when it comes to useless bits of technology.

In some relationships there comes a time when you simply can't take any more. There is so much aggravation that you get fed up to the back teeth (if you have them. At my age I count myself lucky to have any teeth at all.) You reluctantly come to the conclusion that the only answer is a divorce. And, just like when you're waiting for a bus, you go ages without one and then two come along at once.

Divorce number one concerns - no, not Mrs R - but our video hard disk recorder. Like many households, we find that whatever we really want to watch on TV is broadcast at an inconvenient time or, even more likely, there's nothing but rubbish on for hours and then two half-decent programmes are on at the same time. For years, the answer has been the old VHS video recorder. This works fine for simple situations, but is hopeless if you're going away for two weeks and can't possibly miss a single episode of Grey's Anatomy, ER, Bones or Midsomer Murders. Mind you, so many people have been bumped off in the latter programme I'm surprised there's anyone left at all. Soon they'll be down to the last resident and will have to rename it Midsomer Hara-Kiri.

The obvious modern answer is a hard disk video recorder, where you can save a whole series. There's a wide choice, so which one to buy? Number one son, Gary, had bought a Thomson DTI6300-16 and spoke highly of it. The web revealed an impressive specification, including the ability to record up to 80 hours of Freeview broadcasts. At just £80 from Tesco it seemed a bargain and, as you know, I like a bargain.

Pay and display

However, we found that the DTI6300-16 comes equipped with software that constantly herds you towards an irritating paid-for service called Top Up TV. Pay for it? Not likely! Following the instructions we disabled the Top Up TV stuff, which thereafter confused the operating system software considerably, so that it would record a 30-minute programme on an empty hard disk then refuse to record any more on the grounds that the disk was (supposedly) full. A call to the support line ended with us downloading a software update and reformatting the hard disk. Again. And again. Ad infinitum.

Even worse was its method of dealing with any glitch in the digital signal. If that happened part-way through a programme and we tried to fast-forward, it would lock up completely. The only way out was to delete every recorded programme on the disk. Repeated episodes of Mrs R and half a Grey's Anatomy was not pleasant.

Inaction stations

Tesco's support thought we had a bad unit and, after six months of suffering a miffed missus, I talked the company into replacing it. Actually, the process involved a refund and a new order. Tesco's software can't do replacements.

The new unit was better but still exhibited similar traits, albeit less frequently. The final straw came when it powered up but was totally unresponsive. Apparently an automated software update had been delivered via the digital aerial, and the unit had failed to restart properly. We were given a series of arcane button presses that were supposed to bring it to life following a power-down. They didn't work; it remained utterly comatose.

The man suggested another swap. My answer, among other words, included "bargepole".

You can read about the woes of other users of the DTI6300-16 who have had similar experiences at the Digital Spy forums (http://tinyurl.com/thomsonpvr). I wish I'd found that site before buying.