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Can anyone recommend the best (i.e. most reliable) way of recording live TV?
We have a Samsung (8000?) smart tv which is supposed to be able to record live TV using an external HDD.
However, the results are hit and miss, at best. When it does record, it usually misses the first 15 - 20 mins of whatever programme you want it to record; and more often than not it just doesn't record at all.
The only way to guarantee recording is to sit in front of the programme and press record - which rather defeats the object of the exercise.
We have/had a BT Freeview/Humax box but that was shonky as hell - used to overheat like mad and then break down. When they were still offering it, had a service engineer round who said it was our old TV with the outdated HDMI protocols - bought new TV, box was still crap. Now BT have given up offering a telly service anyway.
Would I just be better off getting another Humax type jobby and only using it when I want to record stuff (the Samsung telly is fine for everything else)?
And yes, I know a lot of TV is available on demand, but the players (iPlayer, All4 etc) are often very flakey - with All4 we usually have to try 'loading' up a programme 3 or 4 times, and each time it cycles through all the ads and then quits. My son watches kids' TV on the ITV one and it does the same thing. iPlayer will often just crap out mid-programme and then forget where you were. So whilst the catch up players have their place, they aren't infallible.
Oh, for the days of VHS...
How about a better smart tv function such as fire stick (cheap at the moment with Black Friday) or an Apple TV. We watch all our tv through an Apple TV (we don’t have an aerial) and all the apps are reliable
towpathman
Full Member
How about a better smart tv function such as fire stick (cheap at the moment with Black Friday) or an Apple TV. We watch all our tv through an Apple TV (we don’t have an aerial) and all the apps are reliable
The point ------------------->
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I feel your pain OP.
I do miss the usability of my old Sky box, though I don't miss paying for it.
The ITV player is hateful isn't it? I find the iPlayer and others work well enough though. You doin't have connectivity issues making it worse, do you?
We've got a Humax and a Panasonic. Both seem fine. Got the Humax from Facebook marketplace pretty cheaply. Recording has been reliable. You can even set a recording from your phone while away which is occasionally handy.
Just got one of these for my Mum, seems to work fine - although see BT Box comments further up the thread.
She can record stuff on it and use the catchup services too.
BT Youview+ Set Top Box (500Gb) Recorder with Twin HD Freeview and 7 Day Catch Up TV
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00YHD6GUY/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Jakester - you said that the problem with online services is that you thought they were flaky. In my experience, they aren’t.
As you are asking for other peoples advice and experiences, I thought I’d share them with you, as I thought it may be helpful to share that a different device may be better. You can pick up a fire stick for < £30 on Amazon at the moment, I would imagine a hdd recorder would be much more than this. Also, if you don’t like it, you can always send back to Amazon at no cost to you.
But if you want to be rude, then crack on.
The ITV player is hateful isn’t it? I find the iPlayer and others work well enough though. You doin’t have connectivity issues making it worse, do you?
Nope, everything else (Netflix/Prime etc) work fine. I suspect it's something to do with the implementation on Samsung as it's been fine on other things (Xbox etc).
I hadn't thought of 2nd hand - I'll take a look and see if there's anything around.
How does your TV connect to the outside world?
We have a Humax Freesat box. Can record live TV through the old Sky aerial cables (took a couple of minutes to swap over).
Same functionality as the Sky box without the bills.
Has been flawless for 10 years - not that anyone in the family really uses it now, all preferring to watch TV on a 4" screen FFS.
I occasionally turn on the Freesat box to listen to the radio and if I watch TV on the TV I do so via the phone casting to a Chromecast plugged into the TV.
Jakester – you said that the problem with online services is that you thought they were flaky. In my experience, they aren’t.
As you are asking for other peoples advice and experiences, I thought I’d share them with you, as I thought it may be helpful to share that a different device may be better. You can pick up a fire stick for < £30 on Amazon at the moment, I would imagine a hdd recorder would be much more than this. Also, if you don’t like it, you can always send back to Amazon at no cost to you.
But if you want to be rude, then crack on.
But in true STW style you didn't answer the question, you offered advice about something completely different.
Not all TV programmes are available 'on demand' - for example, there may be a film on TV that I want to record, but it's not on the TV channel's player because of licensing restrictions. Catch up doesn't work in that scenario.
Another example is things like HIGNFY - recently it's not been available on iPlayer until the next morning, but if I could have recorded it I'd have been able to watch it when I wanted to.
And if you think that's rude, then you've led a very sheltered life!
How does your TV connect to the outside world?
Aerial and ethernet cable directly into the router.
You can get an old Sky HD box off ebay for £30odd. Pretty sure you can record ITV/Chan4 etc without contract.
i was looking at one of these for occasional recording duties
https://oakcastle.co.uk/product/sb110/
seems to be sold out for the moment but I'm sure there are other cheap option.
FWIW we use a HUMAX HDR-FOX T2 with some custom firmware that is becoming increasingly redundant as the box is so old the useful stuff in the firmware like saving downloads fro iPlayer or YouTube is no longer relevant as neither of those apps now work. However it does let us convert recordings to Mp4 format, and stream etc. We've had it since 2014 and seems to be fine, still
I have the 8000 model too, didn’t notice any issues with recording. Might worth checking the TV clock, if it has one as I can’t recall. To be honest I gave up with it as there’s no need to record stuff now thanks to iPlayer and such.
At risk of antagonising, we also use an Apple TV and it's reliable enough for what we watch on the catch-up services that we stopped bothering with a recorder. I recognise all the reported issues with the apps, if we run them on our ageing TV then we get the same - all are fine on Apple TV. It's pretty good at remembering where you're up and new episodes across all the various apps too.
When we did have a recorder, it was one of the BT branded YouView boxes as above. You can buy them cheaply on ebay and they work fine as a recorder for Freeview without a subscription, it's easy enough to avoid the BT stuff you'd pay for.
You can get an old Sky HD box off ebay for £30odd. Pretty sure you can record ITV/Chan4 etc without contract.
Nope. Out of contract, a Sky box will do live telly, that's it, not even pause/rewind works.
Which is a shame, as we binned Sky and bought a Humax box as we only ever really watch the 'terrestrial' channels anyway, and the UX/UI is absolutely woeful compared to Sky.
Humax freeview box here. Reliable and the user interface is great (quick to record snippets or programmes, reverse to missed bits etc.)
Another vote for the BT Youview box here, we've had a couple over the last decade or so, other than a drive failure on the first one we've had no problems with reliability (only replaced the first one as I could not get a replacement drive to format correctly).
Weirdly it won't play nicely with our new, cheap, LG 4k telly, something in the on board scaling algorithm makes the picture look like garbage, it's definitely the telly as if I turn on scaling in the AV receiver it looks great again, unfortunately the receiver is also driving a projector which won't take a 4k signal so unless I take a chance on a 4k Youview box I've got to put up with it!
I would give a Humax box another go. They've always been good for me - as above I used to use a HUMAX HDR-FOX T2 with custom firmware which was brill.
I agree a recorder is essential even in the world on on-demand apps - life is way too short to have to sit through un-skippable ads.
I am not in position to offer any more than above, other than for the niche viewer of BBC programmes - If it's BBC then just use getiplayer https://www.squarepenguin.co.uk/. It is a great tool.
I used to ahve an old humax, worked well.
I ditched it when I got a chromecast. Now have one on every telly (all 2 of them).
they have them in B&M for £20!
seamlessly plays all catch up and controlled by app so no nightmare searching for what you want using a tv remote
Still have a Sony HD/DVD recorder here. It's about 90% full of crap that has never been watched again.
Can anyone recommend the best (i.e. most reliable) way of recording live TV?
The answer is Sky Q. It just works and these days works perfectly with all the various players and apps.
Yes you have to pay per month for it but then you don't have the upfront cost and you are paying for the best system out there.
We considered ditching Sky when our offers ended earlier this year but managed to get our package down to a price that made the hassle of sorting out a new system not worth it.
FWIW we use a HUMAX HDR-FOX T2 with some custom firmware that is becoming increasingly redundant as the box is so old the useful stuff in the firmware like saving downloads fro iPlayer or YouTube is no longer relevant as neither of those apps now work. However it does let us convert recordings to Mp4 format, and stream etc.
I've started using mine again since binning off Sky (yay) - best bit of the custom firmware is auto-detecting and removing the adverts..... brilliant!
I agree a recorder is essential even in the world on on-demand apps – life is way too short to have to sit through un-skippable ad
This very much.
The answer is Sky Q. It just works and these days works perfectly with all the various players and app
I couldn't think of anything worse TBH.... but then we didn't watch much Sky stuff anyway (and it can be got on NowTV if needed - which it hasn't in the last 6 months since we left Sky)
The point ——————->
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Asking for free advice, receiving free advice and then being pissy about said advice is poor form. On-demand solutions may not be the answer you seek, but you were the one who brought up the subject.
The answer is Sky Q. It just works and these days works perfectly with all the various players and apps.
I wish it didn't start recording so long before the start of a program. My old Freeview Humax box for years managed to nail starting/ending recording exactly with the program, I can't see why Sky can't manage it. Case in point - sat down to watch recording of Top Gear last night, hit play and immediately got screamed at by my wife as it popped up showing the end of the Strictly results show - spoilering it for her.
Realised another advantage of recording over apps (iPlayer anyway, not sure about others). Recording you get 5.1 sound if broadcast, app you get 2.0 at best.
Humax
I wish it didn’t start recording so long before the start of a program.
Can you not still change that in the settings?
Still using an old Topfield TF5800PVR with the custom MyStuff interface. Apart from no HD does everything I want, even looks good on our LG HDR telly, if a little soft focus. Can plug in USB and transfer to PC/Phone too, and play direct with VLC.
I don't know what I'll do when it dies, Humax / Youview seem OK and occasionally I read about modular network streaming Freeview tuners but it looks a bit complicated. I guess most folk stream now but Ads really grind my gears.
Case in point – sat down to watch recording of Top Gear last night, hit play and immediately got screamed at by my wife as it popped up showing the end of the Strictly results show – spoilering it for her.
The show was running over schedule, I know as I had to suffer it before Top Gear.
My old Freeview Humax box for years managed to nail starting/ending recording exactly with the program, I can’t see why Sky can’t manage it.
Back in analogue TV and VHS days, I had a video recorder that I think would watch for the little 'end of programme' square that popped up in the corner of the screen. Either that or it sniffed the metadata where they hid Teletext. Either way it was neat, it recorded the programme even if it moved rather than just start time ➡ end time, so bang on the money recording times.
It shouldn't be that difficult to have a similar system today? Even if the control signal isn't there any more (and why not?) then having a PVR with some sort of AI that knows what credits look like surely can't be a massive ask.
The show was running over schedule, I know as I had to suffer it before Top Gear.
Yeah, that's the thing - pretty old school Freeview boxes seemed to handle recording delayed programs very accurately.
Still using an old Topfield TF5800PVR
Wow, that is old school! I had one of those before my HUMAX HDR-FOX T2. The Humax is/was similar in the way that it had a good community of people producing custom firmware for it.
Asking for free advice, receiving free advice and then being pissy about said advice is poor form. On-demand solutions may not be the answer you seek, but you were the one who brought up the subject.
I'm sorry Cougar, I didn't realise that we had to pay for advice now? Shall I render STW my invoice for all the free advice I've offered over the years? At my current £350 p/h plus VAT rate that'll be quite a lot... Or is it only you who gets to decide what is and what isn't good advice?
Or perhaps you could point me in the direction of the consultancy I should be directing my questions to?
Hardly pissy either - more a case of the poster not reading the OP and answering a totally different question, hence the missing the point comment. Is it even advice if it's not directed at the question?
<edit> and in fact, if you read the OP it expressly discounts the things that response was directed at..🙄
If you're happy with really old tech, you can still find Elgato EyeTV tuners (e.g. on Ebay) that plug into a computer USB port. I still have one running on a 2007 MacBook Pro and it's fine for recording live TV. Not HD though, but otherwise OK. We'd usually use streaming services in preference though as they're easier.
I've used a variety of Humax Freeview recorders for years, even reccomended them to technophobe family members.
Never had an issue, always been spot on, easy to use and with decent GUIS (such as still being able to see the pciture when in the channel menu!).
I’m sorry Cougar, I didn’t realise that we had to pay for advice now?
It ain't me you should be apologising to. IMHO, etc.
Advice you don't like is still advice offered freely that people have taken time and effort to provide.
It ain’t me you should be apologising to. IMHO, etc.
Advice you don’t like is still advice offered freely that people have taken time and effort to provide.
How patronising. I wasn't apologising, as should have been self-evident, and there's no need to lecture me about how this forum works.
Perhaps you may like to wind your sanctimony dial back a few notches? Or maybe get one of those sanctimony plug-in streamers instead?
I'm not talking about the forum. I'm suggesting you don't be an arse when people are trying to help you.
Anyway, whatever, this is going well so I'm out. Good luck with your telly.
Ah, that legendary @Cougar charm, what a treat. Tell someone they're wrong and then leave.
Before you go, could you leave a list of what constitutes "Cougar's Approved Advice", just so we know for future reference?
Having a bad day?
Having a bad day?
Nope, just don't like being patronised when it's uncalled for.