Logik LPV2250

Just purchsed this baby to replace a defunct Pace Twinview (the Twinview had it's problems over the 4 years or so that I owned it but the final update from PACE did actually manage to iron most of these out).

My Twinview died a couple of days ago so I was looking for a replacement - I had always considered the Toppy as I was wary of fan noise from other (lesser) machines, had also considered the Inverto, but then I read What Hi-Fi's review of the TVOnics PVR. After a bit of research I found out that the Logik (which I obviously bought) was a re-branded TVOnics with a 250GB hard drive rather than the 160GB in the TVOnics (and the difference in price was only a couple of quid - you do the maths).

Got the Logik home today (I say home as it's Xmas I'm staying at my aunts house, but she was having problems with TV reception anyway - I think the Tuner lock on her 21" Mitshubishi has gone a bit haywire). So I decided to hook up the Logik and see how it fared ?

Have to say I am well impressed !! - the picture and sound quality are excellent (even on my aunts ageing TV). The Logik is NOT completely silent but after complaints about some Sony PVRs sounding like hovercraft about to take off the unit is almost silent anyway (the Logik is basically manufactured by Sony on behalf of TVONics - And then re-branded - don't ask why I have no idea).

The next big + is the speed of digital text (on all the other units I have owned Digital text has been next to useless as waiting 5 mins for the first page to load and then up to 2 mins for each subsequent page is a complete waste of time). The Logik is lighting quick (well 2-5 secs to load) and actually makes Digital Text useful for a change (I never knew there was so much useful info available on text !).

All the menus, EPG, setup etc. are all also lightning quick - the Twinview was no slouch in this repects except for the EPG which could take an age to load initially and then had numerous dropouts (e.g. channels with missing info). No such problems with the Logik - it loads instantly (and looks pretty good as well). The ONLY downside with the EPG is that is is limited to 9 channels on one screen (the Twinview only had 10 but then I only had 10 channel listed so it worked out). It is quite a chore to have to scroll down just to see the final channel. Also unlike the Twinview you can't select the amount of time to display on the EPG (you are stuck with 1 hours worth of viewing) - results in a lot of scrolling but as far as I know this is in line with most other manaufacturers EPG's (infact I think the Twinview is one of the few EPG, Toppy aside that lets you customise the amount of info displayed).

Havn't tested the recording abilities yet, but general concensus is that recorded programs are almost indistinguishable from the live broadcast (as was the case with the Twinview). You cannot change the compression ratio (same as Twinview again), but then who needs to with 125 hours to play with (2GB per hour seems about standard for near perfect replication).

The only thing missing from the Recordings Library is the live preview (Twinview) but I can't see myself actually missing this (it was a nice feature) but did cause some delay when navigating the library (I guess with 125 hours worth it may have caused more problems than it was worth).

Other standard abilities of the Logik include being able to pad recordings (I havn't checked to see how this works when recording two different channels which would overlap with the padding), but will post if there are any issues. This also brings us on to similtaneous recording of two different channels - The Logik does NOT have this functionality (nor is it advertised as such). The Twinview also lacked this ability so I can't say I will miss it. It would occasionally have been useful (and would be a nice feature), but as somebody said in one of the forum posts I read, programs are repeated so often on most freeview channels that it's not the killer function you may think. There are also a suprising lack of PVR's out there that have this ability (I believe the Toppy is one that does).

There has been some discussion re. the feasability of having Dual Record Ability, I'm no expert but I assume that it has something to do with the hard disk - if my understanding is correct (please feel free to correct me). Hardisks have seperate read and write arms (which is why they can read and write at the same time ?) but are incapable of writing to two different sectors at the same time (my understanding is that you can set Windows copying two different files and it appears to copy them simultanesouly but that this does not actually happen - it just writes chunks from each operation in sequence ?).

Going a bit of track here - so far after approx 3 hours use - would I recommend the Logik (or the TVOnics if you can stomach the smaller disk size) - a resounding Yes - I need to set it up at home (hooked up to my amp and HD TV) but so far I am more than impressed - 9/10.

Just a side note. the Logik does NOT have proper RCA adaptors (if has a 3.5mm Stereo jack which also doubles as a Toslink Optical connection), but I will most likely just use the stereo outputs from my TV to send sound to the amp (in my now defunt Twinview setup (which did have proper RCA connectors) the difference in sound quality between direct connection of the PVR and from the TV's output was NOT noticable). Although I may buy a 3.5mm jack to RCA convertor from Maplin (just to double check !).