By: D. Benn

D. Benn — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:36:02 +0000

Firstly, didn’t buy my unit from Amazon, but from the clearance warehouse of a high street store, and at a bargain price. But as I use Amazon a lot and noticed it here, thought I’d leave a review. Straight off, I have to say my machine has performed with about 80% satisfaction. If you read other reviews especially on digital tv / av forums you’ll see thats excellent for this unit. I don’t know if there were build issues or software bugs early on, or just somedays the factory took long lunch breaks, but some units are very unreliable, but I’d add a caveat to that, see ‘negatives’ below.

Going on my experience, here are the positives. Installation is very simple. Up and running in minutes. Picture quality is excellent on my TV, but note the HDMI upscaling. The remote is the usual lump of buttons, but easy enough to get around. It is a twin tuner, so you can watch one channel while recording another. This also allows a picture-in-picture feature. EPG is excellent and usually quite responsive, and setting a timer is as simple as hiliteing the EPG entry and pressing the record button. Timers can be managed and recordings are accessed through a easy to use Library function. It has a top-up card slot and a USB port, so in theory you can copy off recordings, but I haven’t tried that yet. Finally my unit is very quiet. Other reviewers say theirs can be loud.

The negatives are few but frustrating. The very odd thing, reported by everyone, is the first few days of operation are very poor. My unit was no different. I recorded hours of rubbish I’d never watch, and the unit skipped on playback, lost chunks of sound and looked very poor. I stuck with it, and it improved dramatically. So perhaps some reviewers who returned their machines did so in the first few days.

I was still getting a bit of skipping on recordings and did manage to make more improvements. I replaced the arial connector. And I noticed that when I was watching another channel while recording, using the remote to change channel or bring up the Guide caused glitches. Recordings made when I am away are much better.

However recording quality is still not 100% reliable, and I think in part thats down to Freeview signal strength. This despite the fact that my house is high up and the transmitter is plainly in view. And the unit has ‘frozen’ three times. It will start a recording, but continues on after the end of the program. It does not respond to the remote, or the front panel. You can try holding the front panel power switch down for 10 seconds, or – what I always hate – pull the plug. One last thing, this is a Freeview box and records only those channels. You cannot hook it up to a cable or satellite box.

I’ve read a lot of reviews of other kit and I don’t think there is a ‘perfect’ PVR out yet. For the money I paid I’m pretty happy, and I’m nowhere near filling the 160Gb drive yet!
Rating: 3 / 5

Comments on: Wharfedale LP160DTRHDMI 160GB Twin Tuner HDD Freeview Recorder with 1080 HDMI Upscaling

By: D. Benn