Home > Consumer Reviews > TopField TF5800 160gb hard drive PVR with freeview

I have now owned this unit for over 18 months, and am very pleased with it.
Very easy to use once you know what all the buttons do, and only one button press to set up a timer recording (a few more presses if you want to extend the recording time, brings up its own little window).
2 channels can be recorded at the same time, and a third can be watch (if on the same mux).
There is a very good forum site (toppy.org.uk) that will answer most (if not all) of any problems you might be unfortunate to get, and that site will also introduce you to things called 'TAPS' which are used to personalise your unit to make it even better.
And with the USB attachment (and a small patch) you can use Digiguide to set up a weeks programs to record, then via a USB lead and a single desktop button press have all the timers (I sometimes have over 40 timers) on your Topfield unit in under 2 minutes.
Picture quality is excellent, including channel 5, and the ability to pause live TV is another bonus (not possible if already recording from both tuners) although the feature I like is being able to watch something while it is recording, a good example of this was the Australian GP last year, I woke up an hour after the program started, set the play from the start of the recording, manage to skip some of the boring bits and the adverts, watch the race (and replayed some of the incidents) and by the time the race had finished I was only 2 minutes behind the actual recording.
Watching a recorded program does not have to be in recorded order (unlike VCR) so you can watch yesterdays recording or last weeks recording in any order.
Price may be a little higher than other models (shop around) but the extra cost is well worth it.
ps. my VCR has not been used for recording since I have had this unit.

If you are a techno whizz you simply can not beat this gadget as it's configurability is limitless (see toppy.org.uk for the most comprehensive forum covering every aspect of this PVR). You can even have this PVR use a wireless router in order to have access to your recording archive wirelessly! WARNING: However, if you are the kind of person who is not prepared for a bit of adventurous experimentation and want EVERYTHING the way you expect out-of-the-box then this is NOT for you. It is a complex machine which needs to be adapted and fine-tuned to your needs using the Topfield Application Programs (or TAPs) which are produced by computer wizzards. In order to utilise this functionality you need to connect a PC (or MAC) to the machine via a USB cable (ideally a laptop).

This is a great alternative to a Sky+ box for all us Freeview viewers. We've had ours a year and a half and it's performed superbly, especially since an over-the-air firmware update a few months back. With no fan the disk heads make the only noise from it. It takes a little bit of learning but then you wonder how you managed before. It's great too, the way it automatically resizes the picture (we've got a 26" LCD widescreen) so you don't get distorted fat little figures waddling around. I turned off the pause feature (thrashes the disc just in case you might miss something) but we often record two things at once and frequently watch what's still recording - you can then pause when you like or whizz through the adverts. We rarely see an advert and tend to record most things we watch now. If you're thinking about a PVR don't even consider any that cannot record two programmes at once and let you watch something else at the same time, eg something you recorded earlier or else one of the programmes being recorded.

I have been meaning to send some favourite films to the PC to make DVDs but haven't got round to it yet. And I haven't felt the need to download any of the 'TAP' extensions - it's pretty good out of the box.