Personal video recorders – digital TV receivers with a built-in hard disc drive – have been around for almost four years, but the first models had a single tuner and were of limited use, while hard disc drives hadn’t become cheap enough to give a useful amount of storage.

Sky Plus brought the first twin-tuner sat-PVR to the world, and with it the ability to watch one channel while you record another, or even record two channels at once (and we had to wait a couple of years for that!). Multi-sat enthusiasts had to wait until last year for Humax’s PVR-8000, a slick and easy-to-use twin-tuner receiver with a healthy 80GB hard
disc drive. The twin-tuner proposition was later refined by Topfield’s TF-5000 PVR; now the Finepass FSR-5000 TDR could make an even bigger impact.

As a satellite receiver, the FSR-5000 TDR has an impressive specification, with twin tuners, two common interface slots, DiSEqC 1.2 and USALS smart motorised mount control. This PVR can record two channels at once (even scrambled channels), and time-shift, even within an ongoing recording. On paper, at least, it’s as close to Sky Plus as you’ll get on a multi-sat receiver, and in some ways it’s better because you can also load up photos and MP3 audio files from a PC.

What’s really unusual is that the twin tuners are totally independent, with their own channel lists and capable of driving two motorised or multi-feed dishes; you can record one channel and watch another channel on any other satellite.
At first glance, the FSR-5000 TDR is unas-suming; a normal-sized silver-grey case with a bevelled front, a four-digit LED display, four chrome control buttons in a cross to the right. On the left, another four buttons in a straight line labelled power, EPG, Menu and OK. The remote handset is pretty large on account of extra buttons for the PVR portion but, like the Sky Plus remote, it’s a good, chunky design with easy-to-use buttons.

Handan has signalled its intention to be more than a fly-by-night brand by hiring a transponder on Astra which broadcasts the latest software update. You can also upgrade the software from www.finepass.com using a
serial or USB link to your PC. The USB link can also be used to transfer files to and from the FSR-5000 TDR. Our sample was supplied with a 40GB hard disc – small by today’s standards.

The menus have a unique and very attractive layout: a pair of animated circles show the upper and lower menu options simultaneously, pressing up/down selects the sub-menu option, and pressing right/left selects your main menu option.

SETUP
A simple setup wizard will have the FSR-5000TDR working soon after it’s turned on. The tuners can be either separate, in which case each LNB has to set up independently, or looped through using the supplied patch cable to link the output
of tuner 1 to the input of tuner 2. This means the LNB on has to be configured once. The tuners have to be set up separately whether you have a dual-output LNB, a multi-feed dish with several LNBs, or two dishes.

Each tuner can control up to four LNBs using DiSEqC, and you can have standard Ku-band, C-band, and user-defined LNBs. You can then select the satellites for each tuner, from a comprehensive worldwide list. With a fixed dish, you then go straight to searching for channels, for all your chosen satellites, or just the current location.

Motorised setup with simple DiSEqC motor is just a case of driving the dish until you find the satellite, then storing it and running a search. You can change test transponders on the same screen, and move continuously, or in small steps to fine tune. If you’ve got a USALS mount you should just need to put it in the reference position, input your latitude and longitude, and it should do the rest.

In every case you can select whether you want to search for free channels or scrambled channels as well. Then you choose to search a single transponder, the whole satellite, or use a network search to find new transponders. The tuner isn’t very sensitive, returning a noticeably lower strength and quality for a given signal than our reference Manhattan Starlight 6800 receiver.

The search is reasonably fast, displaying a progress banner, a list of found channels and a count of the number of channels found on the current transponder. After searching, you can browse through the found transponders before saving the results.

NAVIGATION
The FSR-5000 TDR has a 6,000-channel memory capacity, and with two tuners you could get confused, because as we noted earlier, each has its own channel list. Fortunately, the receiver can automatically compare and update the lists, or you can copy one tuner’s list to the other. If you’re using a twin-output LNB this saves time because you
only have to tune the LNB once, then you just copy the channels over to tuner 2.

Channel organisation has to be the simplest software we’ve seen since Echonav. In fact, it’s similar in many ways, which is no surprise given the two companies’ long association. The coloured function buttons are used to select between TV and radio lists, eight favourite channel lists, which satellite is listed, and how the channels are grouped. The latter option is very helpful, allowing you to list channels by satellite, transponder frequency, network, free or scrambled, PIN lock, and alphabetically.

Channels can be edited on the fly, so at any point you can call up the channel list and press the edit button to place a channel on one of the favourites lists, lock it, move it in the master list, delete it, rename it, or apply a volume offset (useful for Italian horoscope channels, which always seem very loud).

In addition, you can edit a channel’s PIDs (useful for radio), add new channels using PIDs, add, edit or delete transponders, and even edit, delete or add satellites, complete with a test transponder to help you then find
a new satellite.

The EPG shows a two-hour view, and you can fast-forward through as many days of programming as the channel provides (which is often none-at-all or just now-and-next).

RECORDING
A satellite receiver is only part of the FSR-5000 TDR’s role, and it’s also a very capable personal video recorder that really approaches being a complete home media server. It can record video, and it can play back both photos and MP3
audio files. In fact, you may find that anything less than 120GB isn’t enough for this PVR.

You can record from live TV or radio instantly as you watch, and pressing Record a second time allows you to set a time limit. Recordings can also be set using a manual timer, or by highlighting an event in the EPG. There’s no limit on the number of scheduled recordings, and they can be up to 999 minutes long, which at more than 16 hours exceeds what even a 120GB disc can hold. You can also lock them so that the channel can’t be changed while you’re recording,
and you can record on both tuners simultaneously.

The PVR button provides a list of recordings, and you can change their names to something more useful, you can sort them by name, date or size, and you can lock them (if you’ve been watching adult channels) or delete old files. If you’ve been recording from encrypted channels, then these can be descrambled so you can watch them without the viewing card (and copy them for posterity).

In playback, you can fast-forward or rewind at up to eight times normal speed, slow-motion at half, quarter and one-eighth speed, and jump forward or back in 15-second chunks. You can also place up to 10 index markers in recordings to help find your way round later. You can also mark a section of a video to play in a loop.

If you’re using a single-output LNB with the tuners looped through, instead of dual-output LNB, then you’re limited to the
channels you can watch on the second tuner while recording on the first. They have to be in the same polarity and (for Ku-band channels) the same frequency band. The receiver locks out channels of the wrong polarity, but not the wrong band.

The FSR-5000 TDR can also pause live TV, although this facility doesn’t run automatically like Sky Plus, and when you’re time-shifting you can’t change channels or access the channel list, operation menus or PVR menu. However, you can time-shift for up to 90 minutes, you can save the time-shift cache permanently, and you can time-shift while you’re recording.

The photo viewer and MP3 jukebox use a similar interface, with 3GB set aside (enough for roughly 4,000 JPEG images), and favourites lists for up to 500 images. With images, you can play a slide show and zoom in or out up to double the original size. The MP3 store adapts the controls to offer fast-forward and rewind, 10-second jumps, last or next song,
pause and section repeat. Copying files to and from a PC is quite easy, so you could edit videos on your PC and copy them back for later viewing.

PERFORMANCE AND FEATURES
We weren’t disappointed by image quality in either live TV or playback, although we’re usually disappointed by what most channels consider to be acceptable video quality. However, there are sharp edges and rich colours to be found, and the decoder resists pixellation, with especially good results from the RGB Scart.

There’s a choice of aspect ratios: full-screen, centred or letter-box for 4:3 TVs, or a full widescreen, and the image brightness can be adjusted to suit your surroundings. Audio quality is also good and this is maintained on recordings.

The digital audio output is very clean and you’ll find occasional Dolby Digital to enjoy free-to-air on Pro Sieben, and elsewhere on a few pay-channels if you’ve got the right CAM. Picture quality remains very good during slow-motion and fast-forward, so you can see what you’re doing, although it sometimes pixellates briefly when you change modes.

Many channels still broadcast old-fashioned teletext, which you can watch using the FSR-5000 TDR’s built-in viewer, or using your TV’s viewer. There are also PIN locks for channels, the installation menus, and for the whole receiver so that only you can operate it.

The Finepass FSR-5000 TDR is the most comprehensive personal video recorder we’ve yet seen; it offers a huge range of functions and yet remains easy to use. Its flexibility makes it ideal for feed-hunters to programme their own transponder lists and who don’t want to miss a thing, or for the casual viewer who wants to get the most out of European satellite TV. It’s also impressive value for money with so many features built in.

Published July 2004, What Satellite & Digital TV