Beyonwiz DP-S1 PVR finally comes of age, but TiVo looms large

Adam Turner
Tuesday, 15 January 2008 06:08

Your IT - Entertainment

The Beyonwiz DP-S1 personal video recorder was an unfinished masterpiece when released last year but, after a series of firmware upgrades, it's finally delivering on those early promises.

Previous firmware releases have seen Beywoniz enable promised features such as the ability to copy recordings to USB devices and to other PCs across your home network. You can now also record television and watch a DVD at the same time.

The latest firmware release (version 01.05.192) addresses one of the DP-S1's biggest remaining flaws, the inability to add "padding" to recording times in case the program starts early or finishes late. Without this feature, a PVR is all but useless in Australia because the networks deliberately start programs late to discourage viewers from changing channels (as they'll have missed the start of what's on the other channel, they're more likely to stay put). It's not uncommon for Australia's commercial networks to fall 20 minutes or more behind schedule in the late evening.

The DP-S1 now lets users set a global padding margin of up to 120 minutes both before and after a program's start time, which is then automatically applied to every scheduled recording. This is fantastic, especially considering Microsoft's Vista Media Centre Edition only offers a ridiculous four minutes of pre and post padding. The DP-S1 also lets you set the priority should pre and post padding clash with other recordings, something which can be an issue with an MCE box. This is particularly useful when recording consecutive programs on the same channel.

The DP-S1's latest firmware also addresses a number of other issues, for example chasing playback no longer stops when you catch up to the live broadcast, instead it returns to live TV. Amazingly there is still no Picture in Picture mode and still no warning against changing channels whilst timeshifting (which deletes what's in the buffer). Admittedly Vista MCE doesn't offer these features either.

While the DP-S1 now has a few advantages over Vista MCE when it comes to padding management, it still wouldn't replace the Vista MCE box in my lounge room. For starters, the DP-S1 still lacks the ability to automatically record a television series by searching the EPG for a program title - again a vital feature in Australia where networks regularly shuffle their schedules.

The Beyonwiz DP-S1's biggest remaining flaw would have to be the lack of intelligent disk space management. You can't set the DP-S1 to only keep the last x episodes of a series - handy if you want to always keep the last week's worth of Bob the Builder to entertain the kids in an emergency. It also can't automatically begin deleting recordings when the hard drive fills up. Vista MCE offers these features, making it a truly set-and-forget application. Unless you're vigilant with deleting recordings, you'll soon find the DP-S1 fails to record your favourite shows because the hard drive is full.

Of course with all this talk of the Beyonwiz and Vista MCE, we're ignoring the 800 pound gorilla in the corner - TiVo. The iconic US personal video recorder is finally set to be released this year in Australia, before the Beijing Olympics in September. It will be based on the high-end series 3 version containing dual high-definition TV tuners. TiVo's Australian distributors confirmed last year that ad-skipping will be disabled, but it's yet to be seen what other modifications will be made.

It's highly likely the Australian TiVo will combine the padding management of the DP-S1 with the disk space management of Vista MCE to produce an extremely good PVR (ad-skipping aside). If you've been waiting for Beyonwiz to knock the DP-S1's firmware into shape, now is probably the time to make your move. Still, if you've held out on buying a Beyonwiz for this long, it might be worth holding out a little longer to see what the Australian TiVo has to offer before handing over your money.

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