PVR options for Virgin Removal

Avoid

Avoid

Avoid

Associate
Joined
6 Jan 2011
Posts
5
Ok, will try to keep it short... too late.

Virgin / Sky, packages, are BS prices. You get some TV for the kids, and it's apparently cheaper with a phone cause, well, conning swines will con.

So they want like £65 for 100meg broadband, Freeview TV (but there is a tivo and v+box in the house) and phone.
100meg + amazon (prime) fire tv + now tv (entertainment package) £50 a month. or less.

So the woman wants to be able to pause and rewind tv, catch up on soaps.
I want to know, if a PVR would be the way to go, Freeview, HDD, etc. Or an ITX system, nettop? Does someone have something weird and wonderful out there, that just works?

Currently a big fan of Amazon fire TV / plex combo. Maybe there are other things that people could suggest though.

Thanks in advance. :D
 
I currently use a WMC and Emby combo put previously used to use Freeview PVRs from Humax (dual turner etc). Couldn't fault them to be honest and parents and in-laws still use current HD versions.

Freeview plus a Prime or Netflix subscription should make a decent low cost solution (assuming you don't need a sports package).
 
Well, I preferably would like to keep Virgin. But that depends on how they take my Rant on Tuesday. They want to charge £5 a month for the Tivo box to dish out Freeview... and 11.50 for the secondary v+ box that shes had with them forever in the bedroom...
£16.50 a month , for freeview channels. I moaned they threw in some more channels for free. As they start to build a brand new 12 month package...

So, I say, I ring Tuesday, tell them to stick their TV and phone, up their butts, and give me 100 meg for 30.25 a month ( which is £5 less than advertised ) or I null and void the contract due to the huge list of complaints I have against them.

I got her an Amazon Fire TV box, can have plex set up with various extra channels. BBC iplayer is on that, and some other things. It had freeview apps on there, but one I paid for no longer works, refuses to connect at all. So bit crap really. Plus no Pause / Rewind / Record option.

I did think Nettop PC, or even an itx build with a tv tuner. Or maybe a WDTV but wasnt sure if that would do what I wanted. Dual tuner HD Freeview PVR box like the Humax sounds like the way forward though.
 
I use a slightly older Humax HDR Fox-T2 pvr and love it.

Also, there are some very clever people who have created custom firmware which add lots of nice functionality such as remote scheduling, automatic ad detection and removal etc.

Sadly they've not managed to do the same with the newer Humax boxes.
 
The humax loses the start and end of live programs a lot because it isn't intelligent enough to extend the recording like sky and virgin are. Also it has simply failed to start recording a few times.
 
Humax dtr-2000t HD pver here for the last couple of years. Brilliant. The EPG is miles better than Virgin's even now. Not sure how it compares to Sky but when we ditched Sky 2 years ago the Humax's UI was much better there as well. As for missing he beginning ans end of programmes you can set a buffer at start and end in the Settings. Though to be honest I haven't actually noticed it missing the beginning or end of a programme.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom