Scart Freeview, Digital HD TV Receiver Recorder Tuner Set Top Box, USB Memory Recorder, Hinged for LCD TVs by Digi-fun

At this price point you might not expect too much of this product, but it's worth persevering with it.It arrived earlier than anticipated, and the queries I had were dealt with very fast, including one reply on a Sunday morning. Impressive, and for me, a company worth doing business with.As to the item - it's neatly packaged, and you get the device, a power supply, a remote control (with no batteries, so two AAA required from your own resources) a little IR receiver, a USB extender cable, and little gadget with a USB plug at one end and a socket for an SD card at the other, and a manual, of sorts. Pretty impressive for less than twenty quid!As a Freeview receiver, it really was a case of plug it in, turn it, let it find the channels, watch the TV. The channel ordering isn't immediately ideal, if you care, but can be fiddled with if desired. It doesn't respond to the remote very fast, or change channels/pop up the EPG (yes there is one) very quickly, but it's acceptable. Picture quality is ok too - not going to set the world on fire but perfectly watchable, and no issues wth lip sync or ghosting. No nasties.The strength of this unit though, and my reason for purchase, is the ability to record onto an external USB device, which is hard to find at this price point. As long as your USB device is formatted FAT32 it's fine, and if it is not and you are prepared to allow it to, the unit will format it for you.Recording can be done in three ways. You can just press "Rec" on the remote when watching a programme and it records. Or you can pull up the EPG, navigate to a programme somewhere in the next seven days, press Record and it "makes a booking" - yep, it records. You can also display your "bookings" and delete them if you make a mistake. Finally, if you are old school, or want some finer control, you can set up a timed recording on a set channel at whatever times you want, so you can add ten minutes or whatever if you think there might be an overrrun.The manual states that the unit will shut down after a couple of hours if you don't press the remote. I thought at first that meant it wouldn't record something in the middle of the night, but it worked fine.So, what do you get when you record? Simple enough - it creates a dated and sensibly, named after the channel folder on your USB device, and in there you get files. Easy eh? Not quite.By default it seems to produce files in .dvr format, which is used by lots of digital recorders. However, not all .dvr files are the same, and the manufacturer has some leeway in exactly how they are produced, including making them unplayable on any other device. At first I thought my plans to archive recordings to my PC had come unstuck here, especially as I had no software that would play or convert the files.A question to the supplier was answered swiftly and they recommended a bit of software called KM Player. However, I didn't go down that route as I found a better way.Tucked away in the settings, where incidentally you can alter such things as the aspect ratio, there is a recording setting which can be toggled from the default TS (transport stream) to PS (program stream), If you do that (and I understand there may be issues with ps stream, but they've not happened to any of my recordings yet) then you get files in mpeg2 format, named 000.mp2, 001.mp2 etc, and these can be played just fine.Your only final gotcha here is that the recording might be split into multiple sequential files, and you then either need to use some software to join them into one, or,as I do, use XBMC, which will "stack" files like this automatically and treat them as one recording for you. Other players may do that, too, I don't know.The end result when played back on a PC looks fine, and certainly better than it looks on the TV in the first place.Of course, if you are planning on recording from the unit and playing back directly on the unit too, none of that need worry you. Make a recording, play it back, no fiddling required. Job done.For me, this is a backup system. I have a Virgin+ box and most of our recording is done on that, but on the occasion we want to archive something it's a fiddle, as we have to send the output to a DVD recorder, then rip the DVD to the PC, then encode it...using this unit as a kind of of "backup" recorder for anything we know we want to archive that's on Freeview works well for us.So, for my money, a great little product from a good seller. It does what I want, and for the money, does it well. If it lasts a year and breaks, well what do you want for twenty quid? Recommended.

It`s always a bit of a gamble buying inexpensive tv gadgets and at just under £22 (as of 12th July 2022) including postage, this little bit of kit is certainly on low price side of things. Once setup and tuned in you get very good quality picture and sound through an HDMI connection (I haven`t used the SCART facility. It won`t carry HD signals anyway). You can record through the USB socket to an external hard drive (or a USB stick, I believe, but I haven`t tried that yet). The hard drive will need its own power supply, I suspect. The USB socket is unlikely to be able to supply sufficient current. The receiver sets up its own folder on your hard drive (as PVR) and records to a file with the extension .TSV using the broadcast transmission stream.Unlike many top brand TV sets this stream is NOT encoded so that it will only play on your particular tv. You can transfer the hard drive to another device like a computer for playback.You need a good signal to get good reception. Preferably an outside aerial. If you have difficulty picking up the correct transmitter for your area using the automatic tuning there is a manual tuning option. If you can find out which channels serve your location (try Wikipedia for information, or the Freeview website) it helps to be able to exclude unwanted weaker transmissions. The remote control is a rather flimsy and cheap device as you probably would expect with this low-cost kit but it seems to work okay. Just don`t misplace it as there are no buttons you can use on the receiver itself.

I wanted to record TV programmes that were on after my bedtime or in the middle of the night! After finally deciding that this wasn't going to happen through my VCR/DVD recorder (I did try the digifun as a digital tuner, to no effect) I decided to just to use it as an additional freeview with the added recording functions.I wanted to have both my freeview box (as I like the functions on this) to watch, whilst this little gadget recorded programmes for me that were either on at the same time or on during the night. So I plugged the freeview box into one socket on the tv, and this into the other. Simple to switch between the two using the tv remote (from scart 1 to scart 2). Not wanting to use a signal splitter, I attached the tv(roof) aerial to the freeview box, then a co-ax cable from the freeview RF out to the RF in on the Digifun box. And hey presto! Freeview through the freeview box and freeview through the Digifun box. So now I can record on Digifun whilst watching Freeview on the FV box.The scart sockets on my tv are very close together and the digifun has quite a wide outer shell, however I squashed them in and they both work ok. I have ordered a scart coupler so that there will be a bit more space, might work.The digifun is soon tuned in and the programmes come up in number order and are named, so you get Channel 1: BBC1 and so forth, you don't have to remember which number is which station. To record instantly, just press the red record button (with USB stick attached) and away you go. Timed recordings are nearly as simple. Just press the EPG button to bring up the listings, find the one you want to record on the timer program and highlight it, then press the red button to book. You can switch off the tv, but leave the freeview and the digifun box on, not on standby. Any interruption to the signal or switching off the boxes will result in your timed recording orders being lost.I used a 16meg usb memory stick to record. The digifun box (the first time I used it) flashed up a warning about the write speed being too slow. However, the resulting recording was excellent - no gaps, blank bits, pixellation or anything. And no loss of picture quality or sound either. It records at a rate of approx 1 meg per hour, so approx 15 hours of recording time.The only thing I have to do now if I want to play something on VHS or DVD through my old player is to switch the scart cables. Oh and if you want to transfer what you have recorded to a dvd, plug the usb stick into a port on your computer and use a program like AVS Video converter to convert the TS files into video format and burn to a dvd disk!All in all, an excellent recording facility/freeview box which is very small, works well and is very versatile. Thumbs up from me. :)