Just bought my Toppy today (Nice but it's no Tivo).

I can't find out how to just search for a programme. You'd think it 
would be in the manual, but it's not. I've installed the Mystuff TAP, 
and that also doesn't mention much about a basic search.

Weird.

Help always welcome.

On Mon, 27 Aug 2007 Steve Olive wrote:

>I can't find out how to just search for a programme. You'd think it
>would be in the manual, but it's not. I've installed the Mystuff TAP,
>and that also doesn't mention much about a basic search.

To the best of my knowledge it can't be done from the native interface.

To do a search in MyStuff you have to manually add a ControlTimer search
across all channels using the minimum number of unique characters and
telling it to Match At Start. Then check the timers list to see what
it's found.

It's not very elegant but it does the job. If you're looking for
something akin to the thing TiVo does with the list of all shows that
slowly shrinks as you add characters to the name, I'm afraid you won't
find it on the Topfield.

It's feasible that someone might have written a TAP to simulate that
function, but I doubt it. My limited knowledge of Topfield hardware
suggests the memory overhead of processing all those titles from the EPG
would be too great. Check out http://www.toppy.org.uk, though, because I
could be wrong.

In many ways going from a TiVo to a Topfield feels like several steps
backwards, but there are a few advantages. Personally I love these:

        1. The quality of any video extracted from the device is superb,
        limited in quality only by the compression used in the original
        transmission.

        2. Any radio shows recorded on the box can be transferred to PC
        very quickly over USB and need minimum conversion to be playable
        on CD or MP3 players. I record a lot of radio programmes for
        listening to later in the car. I used to use TiVo and TyTool for
        this but the Topfield is much more convenient.

        3. Because it's recording an efficiently compressed bitstream
        rather than doing MPEG compression on the fly, hard drive space
        requirements are much lower than TiVo for the same programme.
        Even with the basic 160GB drive I've yet to come close to
        filling the Toppy. My 2x80GB TiVo used to require regular
        pruning, especially at holiday time.

Welcome to the world of Topfield! At least you've got yourself off to a
good start by installing MyStuff. The stock Topfield UI is just too
painful for words if you're used to TiVo.

-- 
Kev
__________________________________________________________________________
                      "We take your bags and send them in all directions."
                                         Sign in Copenhagen airline office

Kevin Reilly wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Aug 2007 Steve Olive wrote:
> 
>> I can't find out how to just search for a programme. You'd think it
>> would be in the manual, but it's not. I've installed the Mystuff TAP,
>> and that also doesn't mention much about a basic search.
> 
> To the best of my knowledge it can't be done from the native interface.
> 
> To do a search in MyStuff you have to manually add a ControlTimer search
> across all channels using the minimum number of unique characters and
> telling it to Match At Start. Then check the timers list to see what
> it's found.
> 
> It's not very elegant but it does the job. If you're looking for
> something akin to the thing TiVo does with the list of all shows that
> slowly shrinks as you add characters to the name, I'm afraid you won't
> find it on the Topfield.
> 
> It's feasible that someone might have written a TAP to simulate that
> function, but I doubt it. My limited knowledge of Topfield hardware
> suggests the memory overhead of processing all those titles from the EPG
> would be too great. Check out http://www.toppy.org.uk, though, because I
> could be wrong.
> 
> In many ways going from a TiVo to a Topfield feels like several steps
> backwards, but there are a few advantages. Personally I love these:
> 
>         1. The quality of any video extracted from the device is superb,
>         limited in quality only by the compression used in the original
>         transmission.
> 
>         2. Any radio shows recorded on the box can be transferred to PC
>         very quickly over USB and need minimum conversion to be playable
>         on CD or MP3 players. I record a lot of radio programmes for
>         listening to later in the car. I used to use TiVo and TyTool for
>         this but the Topfield is much more convenient.
> 
>         3. Because it's recording an efficiently compressed bitstream
>         rather than doing MPEG compression on the fly, hard drive space
>         requirements are much lower than TiVo for the same programme.
>         Even with the basic 160GB drive I've yet to come close to
>         filling the Toppy. My 2x80GB TiVo used to require regular
>         pruning, especially at holiday time.
> 
> Welcome to the world of Topfield! At least you've got yourself off to a
> good start by installing MyStuff. The stock Topfield UI is just too
> painful for words if you're used to TiVo.
> 

Hum.

I would have thought that a basic search function was of major 
importance. Not impressed.

I have now worked out what you talk about above, and yes, It's 
cumbersome. The filtering options such as ignore +1 and exact match only 
are nice however.

With regard to your points above, I agree that the picture quality is 
excellent. The disc space thing was never an issue for me with a 
standard 45 Gig TiVo, and recording radio isn't a thing I do.

So it looks like TiVo is staying in the lounge, and the Toppy goes into 
the conservatory.

Maybe I'll grow to love Toppy like I love the 9 year old TiVo, but first 
impressions, whilst good, aren't great.

Steve Olive wrote:

> Maybe I'll grow to love Toppy like I love the 9 year old TiVo, but first 
> impressions, whilst good, aren't great.

When it comes to the time for me upgrading my TiVo, I'm going to upgrade 
myself to the States instead - and have the latest and greatest ;-)

-- 
Adrian C

On Mon, 27 Aug 2007 Steve Olive wrote:

[...]

>So it looks like TiVo is staying in the lounge, and the Toppy goes into
>the conservatory.
>
>Maybe I'll grow to love Toppy like I love the 9 year old TiVo, but
>first impressions, whilst good, aren't great.

Saying goodbye to TiVo was never going to be easy. In my case it came
down to a combination of cold hard cash and a long-standing TiVo problem
that I couldn't resolve.

I was using TiVo with Virgin Media cable and while it worked 95% of the
time it was still suffering the dreaded channel change problem that you
may or may not be aware of. Virgin offered me a great deal on their
'VIP' rated package including the V+ PVR which, while it has problems of
its own and isn't in the same league as TiVo, obviously wasn't prone to
recording the wrong programme 5% of the time (although this past week or
so it's been prone to doing all sorts of weird and annoying shit, but
that's something for another thread).

I didn't have the lifetime subscription to TiVo, so between the £25 per
month VIP discount and the £10 per month TiVo subscription saving I
effectively got 'free' use of a PVR for £35 pcm less outlay. A bit of a
no-brainer when you have to start counting the pennies.

The Topfield had already gone in upstairs, partly to feed a bedroom TV
but mainly as a backup in case the cable went out. (It was a godsend
last week!)

I do miss the TiVo interface, though. V+ does the job, and the missus
loves it because it's "easier to use than the TiVo" (go figure) but it's
not the same. There's currently a petition to try to get Virgin Media to
license the TiVo OS for their PVR. I must admit the combination would be
a killer, assuming the hardware is compatible. When it works the V+ is
technically great, but the UI is a bit of a dog.

As for the Topfield, I'm sure it'll grow on you. I suspect it'll all
depend on exactly how you were using the TiVo. If you were taking full
advantage of Advanced Wishlists, Suggestions, Genre searching etc. then
the Topfield is going to seem lacking. If, as I had, you'd fallen back
to using it as a glorified VCR with Season Passes then you'll get used
to the Topfield in no time.

Probably the one technical thing I really do miss is TiVoWeb. There are
ways of controlling a Topfield via the internet, but it's not nearly as
slick as having a web server built right into the PVR.

-- 
Kev
__________________________________________________________________________
                             "Gives you strong mouth and refreshing wind!"
                                              On a Japanese toothpaste box

On 27 Aug, 18:26, Kevin Reilly  wrote:
>
> It's not very elegant but it does the job. If you're looking for
> something akin to the thing TiVo does with the list of all shows that
> slowly shrinks as you add characters to the name, I'm afraid you won't
> find it on the Topfield.
>
> It's feasible that someone might have written a TAP to simulate that
> function, but I doubt it.

MEI Search is the TAP that does that; it works with a variety of
different sources of EPG data, including broadcast or downloaded, and
you can also browse by genre, set timers from the results, and so
forth.

It's a sort of predictive text entry, in that it will suggest words as
you press the number keys, based on the words that it's found in the
scan of the EPG data.

Nigel.

On Tue, 28 Aug 2007 Nigel Whitfield wrote:

>MEI Search is the TAP that does that; it works with a variety of
>different sources of EPG data, including broadcast or downloaded, and
>you can also browse by genre, set timers from the results, and so
>forth.
>
>It's a sort of predictive text entry, in that it will suggest words as
>you press the number keys, based on the words that it's found in the
>scan of the EPG data.

Thanks for that. See, I was right when I said I could be wrong :)

-- 
Kev
__________________________________________________________________________
                                                    "Great Dames for sale."
                                                   Classified advertisement