HD PVR woes continue

I've been following this with keen interest.The HD signal is very desirable(I saw Mnet HD on a Sony KDL 40W4500,wow,what a picture),but I don't think HD PVR is a worthy investment yet because of all the bugs and only 1 HD channel.I would rather wait.
 
the "new" pvr sounds promising.....
 
I am also waiting, poor people just wanting a PVR now, they have no choice but to get the HD one, I am one of the lucky ones with the SD PVR. If NoChoice wasn't so corrupt we could hvae used a HD TiVo instead, then there would have been no problems.
 
Unfortunately the lack of a competitor to Multichoice has not helped either! Their call center like many others is pathetic
 
If this was the States, there would have been a class-action lawsuit opened against Multichoice to recall and refund all the units.

Those people don't just accept sub-par goods, especially if they paid such a lot of money for it.

Maybe we should take a page out of their book.
 
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...a source close to the company said that MultiChoice will first have to ‘get rid’ of the current Pace HD PVRs.
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nice way to say "we'll have to find more suckers to buy these useless boxes, coz we not bearing the cost..."
 
All posts on the DSTV forums are now also being moderated, and is not published before it was reviewed.

Seems DSTV is loosing this PVR/DVR game. Funny how Sky and TiVo etc make it look so easy.
 
An2wan said:
If this was the States, there would have been a class-action lawsuit opened against Multichoice to recall and refund all the units.

Those people don't stant for sub-par goods, especially if you paid such a lot of money for it.

Maybe we should take a page out of their book.
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Maybe we should start such a list on the Wiki - personally know at least 5 people who would participate.
 
I was an early adopter of the SD PVR, and MultiChoice never lived up to their promises of new features.

I managed to get onto the Beta field test trials, and experienced series programming for a while. It was great, but still had a few bugs. MultiChoice pulled the plug on development, and the SD PVR has basically the same feature set today as it did at launch: still no series recording or the ability to follow the recording when the start time changes. These were 2 of the most sort after features at launch.

Why then should there be any expectation that the HD PVR will ever get sorted? They'll eventually drop the Pacer software development, and tell people to buy the local UEC unit instead. Except the UEC HD PVR was due out before Christmas (last year). Then it was pushed out to May. Now it's been pushed out again; possibly as late as November!

HD is very desirable - why can't MultiChoice give us a device that just works?
 
BruceA said:
I was an early adopter of the SD PVR, and MultiChoice never lived up to their promises of new features.
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100% true. In speaking to them on the phone and logging calls there were so many promises for the SD PVR and they never delivered and now have very politley discontinued the units.

I am so glad I waited before the HD purchase and will clearly not upgrade until multichoice deliver and quality unit and not some cheap import to increase profits.

For 1 channel on HD anyway they can go screw themselves.
 
This is one of the reasons I haven't gone HD yet. Will wait for the new decoders or maybe see what ODM has to offer
 
And suddenly this weekend my HDPVR started freezing at random. Turning it on and off (with the remote) solved the problem. I think it may be an overheating issue so I have given it some more ventilation.

Biggest complaint is the random decision of the PVR not to record certain programs. Its OK with programs when they repeat, but other programs like "True Blood" where there isn't a repeat it is damn annoying.
 
From what I found in their forums, the newer pvr's were supposed to be released in March already. I guess the sales of the crap ones didn't go according to plan...
 
When DSTV started way back in the 90's, there were a flurry of different decoders that you could buy: Pace, Panasat, UEC, Samsung, etc. Back then Multichoice called them IRD's (Integrated Receiver & Decoder)

Back then the UEC decoders were the only ones that worked properly and were upgradable with newer features. Folks with Pace decoders were left in the dark, together with the Samsung decoder buyers. The Samsung we had eventually only received pictures and the audio channels - one couldn't even choose between languages.

Why Multichoice went with Pace again when launching their HD service is beyond me. UEC had brilliant decoders available, triple and quad tuners with massive hard drives.
 
CalmD said:
I've been following this with keen interest.The HD signal is very desirable(I saw Mnet HD on a Sony KDL 40W4500,wow,what a picture),but I don't think HD PVR is a worthy investment yet because of all the bugs and only 1 HD channel.I would rather wait.
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+1

One channel since Sep/Oct last year? It's pathetic. Won't consider it before there are more channels.
 
lcbxx said:
When DSTV started way back in the 90's, there were a flurry of different decoders that you could buy: Pace, Panasat, UEC, Samsung, etc. Back then Multichoice called them IRD's (Integrated Receiver & Decoder)

Back then the UEC decoders were the only ones that worked properly and were upgradable with newer features. Folks with Pace decoders were left in the dark, together with the Samsung decoder buyers. The Samsung we had eventually only received pictures and the audio channels - one couldn't even choose between languages.

Why Multichoice went with Pace again when launching their HD service is beyond me. UEC had brilliant decoders available, triple and quad tuners with massive hard drives.
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The new (and hopefully) improved HDPVR's will be UEC units. It's just a matter of when they'll ever be released...:rolleyes:
 
but don't people say the problem is not the hardware but rather the software. so even the uec decoders will face the same problems?
 
2 products to really stay away from is the Neotel offering and this HD-PVR - I have both and currently having endless issues. (These are pre-beta machines)
With the extra-view activation, every half hour there is blank screen with a synchronisation message to the primary decoder - this takes about 2mins to clear. Oh, and forget pausing live tv, after 5min or so it just switches off, recordings are cut somewhere in the middle - man, the list goes on and on...
 
The software issues with the HDPVR are entirely Multichoices fault.. it it makes NO difference what the underlying hardware is.. they'll all have the same issues. The UEC HDPVR may be slightly faster due to a slightly faster processor.. but it will be running the same software as the Pace HDPVR.
 
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