Toppy vs Icecrypt
My dear old Toppy is getting a bit old and worn. It is nearly 5 and has been a pretty good PVR for most of the time that I have had it. It’s psu capacitors are getting to the end of their life as the hard drive is running hotter and hotter. Before it is toasted completely I decided it would be sensible to find a suitable replacement.
This was more difficult than I realised. A player which advertised record two and watch a third channel with a dual tuner system seemed to be more rare than I thought. A few reviews later and some bargain hunting I decided upon the Icecrypt 2400T. This is an HD model with dual tuner and 1TB disk. It has both analogue audio out and digital. Some model specifications I had read seemed to not mention RCA phonos. The Tivo I had for a short while didn’t have any at all (it went straight back).
I was tempted by the Humax 9300 but it was £150 and SD only. The HD version with the same sized disk as the Icecrypt was much more expensive. I had also read about people complaining about the Humax missing recordings which put me right off it. I’m not bothered about media playing or iplayer or any other guff. If it can’t record reliably and consistently it isn’t any good to me!
Record two, watch third, HD, large disk and Freeview+ support were on my requirements list. The biggest annoyance with the toppy is having to pad recordings manually to deal with the useless broadcasters that are unable to keep to time. I regularly have to add several minutes onto lots of recordings as the BBC just runs so late in the evening. With the Topfield you can add freeview+ support but this hasn’t been done well and actually leads to more missed recordings. There are also TAPS you can add which improve functionality and offer nicer interfaces. I didn’t bother with any as apart from being slightly clunky the toppy generally worked.
The Icecrypt didn’t make a fantastic first impression. It is very similar to the Toppy but some of the interface keys are different so you think you need one button for one thing but it does something else entirely. Also some of the quirks with the Icecrypt are mistakes that were ironed out on the Toppy many years ago eg not remembering where you were in a watched program, not being able to use the program guide while watching a recorded program and a few other EPG quirks. It was deja vu.
I set up some series records and noticed one irritating factor. With series records you will have every different series of a program if it is currently on another channel. You have to go and delete it out of the list later. This bugged me as at the time I was watching something. Chose to record a series that had an instance that was starting right now so the Icecrypt changed channel from what I was watching to something I didn’t actually want to record anyway! I also notice that when you are in the guide and a recording starts you are binned out of the guide. Most irritating when you are spending time setting up recordings.
Watching a recording is more convoluted as all the recorded programs are organised by folders rather than just being in a chronological list. You have to go into library, then into that program folder then you can play a program. I started watching something and pressed the jump button thinking that skipped adverts. Nope. Skipped back to the beginning of the program. FF is also a bit jerky when you stop it. RW isn’t which is quite strange. Again that is something that I remember being an issue with the early Toppy firmware. I opened the program guide because I remembered another program I wanted to record. I was binned out of what I was watching. Very poor. Had to go back into the program and FF yet again to where I was. By this point I was wondering whether I had made a serious mistake with buying it as it was now about the third attempt to watch something.
The EPG display is a bit pants. The long column list is ok and you can use the next day button to roll round another 24 hours. There are some quirks with displaying some times for some reason. Setting a recording is fairly easy. Go into the guide and press the record button while highlighting the program you want and there is an overlay to choose single, series or reminder. Series record sometimes brings up an annoying recommendation function sometime where it prompts you whether you want to record something else as well. For some reason the recommendation was something I had already set to record. There doesn’t seem to be an option to switch it off. Recording is different with freeview+ so you don’t do manual padding or anything else. You just have to trust the broadcasters to signal the start of the programs properly. I have no idea what happens when something over runs and you have another two recordings starting. With a manual timer you’d just miss the end of one but see the beginning of the other. Theoretically you can record all channels on a single MUX even with just one tuner so you could cope with such an overlap by recording 3 at once if programmes were only spread across two MUXES. Whether this is done is another matter.
One area the Icecrypt is very good is the picture quality. Even on SD it looks better than the Toppy. Also when you set an item to record when you’re on an SD channel if there is an HD version of it will prompt you to see if you want the HD version instead. This is neatly done.
It wakes up happily from standby to record things and returns to standby. This is good too. The keyword search is also useful to find things you think might be on but can’t find. With the poor EPG layout then this is a great help. Series record also works ok with radio too so you can record radio programs just as easily as TV ones. It is also clever about duplicate channels. Those from another region are fainter grey and at the end of the list so you don’t end up with multiples in your main list getting in the way. You also only need the one aerial lead rather than two. The toppy had two aerial ins. You could use a loop cable but this generally lead to having a second tuner with a weak signal.
Shame the Icecrypt doesn’t have PIP. But generally I only really used it to make sure I wasn’t going to miss the end of something so I’m hoping I won’t need it any more.
