What Hi-Fi? Verdict
A superb solution for its price – if TechniSat ever produces a twin-tuner PVR version, Humax would have serious competition
Pros
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High-quality picture and sound
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excellent feature set
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stylish build
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good usability
Cons
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It's only a single-tuner design
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The TechniSat HDFS is a single-tuner set-top box, rather than a fully fledged PVR. Nevertheless, it's a lot cheaper than its PVR rivals – not that it appears low-rent in any way.
Build quality is good, and the TechniSat's fascia-mounted display is a welcome addition, making it both classier to look at and easier to live with than the Sagem DTR94250S and Goodmans GFSDTR500HD. It's a shame the remote control isn't quite so impressive to behold, although it works well enough.
The HDFS is also impressively flexible. Unusually, it includes two USB sockets, one on the front, one on the rear, plus an SD/MS/MMC card reader and Compact Flash reader: all are able to support replay of a variety of digital media file formats, so it's easy to display movies, music and pictures on your TV.
We also like the TechniSat's scaler-bypass feature: like the Humax, you can set it to output video in its native form.
The HDFS is a fine receiver. True, for only £70 more, you can buy the Sagem DTR94250S and enjoy out-of-the-box twin-tuner PVR capability, but the TechniSat's a slicker, more appealing product in many other ways. If the Humax is out of reach for you, we reckon this is clearly the next best alternative.
