In general I've picked on features where the boxes differ. Features like allowing the user to add padding to start/end of timers is common between the two boxes.

For me, the clear winner (on the currently available firmwares) is the Humax HDR-Fox T2. 3view certainly has potential & always has done on paper, but at present the software stability really lets it down. What do you think? Let us know on the forums.

UPDATED 22/Sep/10 with suggestions from the AVForums thread.

As I explained in a previous post, I've bought the Humax HDR-Fox T2 after experiencing problems with my 3view box. When I received the 3view box I did an unboxing video, look at the installation, and general settings/menus. I've done the same for the Humax box so that you can compare the two and see which you like the look of most. When I get a bit more time I'll go into more detail about what I like/dislike about each box.

3view

Humax HDR-Fox T2

One way I've kept up-to-date with what's going on with 3view is to set up a Yahoo Pipe to bring all these things together into a single RSS feed;

- Twitter (filtered on mentions of 3view)
- Google News (filtered on mentions of 3view)
- 3viewer Forums (latest posts)
- 3viewer News (latest news)
- 3-view Forums (latest posts)

Some of you might find this useful so here's a link to where you get can the RSS feed & use it for yourself.

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=c890cdec876540f57c833bdf0810f6b2

As some of you saw on the forums, my 3view box had a fair number of stability problems on Tuesday, resulting in me attempting to do a factory reset. It still isn't working (just doesn't boot) and is ready to be sent back. I've asked for a refund and bought the Humax HDR-T2 yesterday from very.co.uk (£299, with 10% discount, and 8% cashback).

It was a difficult decision to switch; I slept on it, and still came to the same conclusion. In it's current state, the software is too unstable for use in my living room.. my wife nearly chucked it out of the window, so I kinda had to give in & admit it's not for us at the moment. This site will continue to be maintained, especially the forums, but don't expect much on the News pages unless someone would like to volunteer to publish *independent* and relevant material. Contact me via direct message on the forums if you're interested.

What I will do (when/if I get the time) is publish some comparisons between the 2 boxes. I've also got an open invitation to 3view to send me a box to look at in a few months when the software has been stabilised.

Thanks,

Matt.

After finding the URLs the box is using for the software updates, going to the root of the website gives you a login page.

http://www.simplyglobaltv.com/

Entering your 3view login details will take you to a blank page. I wonder whether this will eventually give you access to things like your PVR timers and enable you to set up recordings remotely.

I've had some time to play with the box and see how it works in regard to what URLs it uses for software updates and that kind of thing. Most of the info is going up on the Wiki but here's a quick summary;

Software update XML

This is where the box goes to see if there are any available updates.

http://www.simplyglobaltv.com/Avtrex/updates/availableT2Updates.xml

The XML it pulls down contains things like the build number, plus the location of the download itself. Useful for those of you who want to update via a USB stick.

Example Software Update Binary Location

This is Friday's software update binary.. you can download this (243mb) update using a standard web browser.

http://www.simplyglobaltv.com/upgrades/simply8654T2/simply8654t2_trunk_32968-3view-10001_201009091715.bin

User Agent

The User Agent that the box identifies itself as (in regard to software updates) is

libgcj/3.4.3

Search Page

When you press 'Web' on the remote control, it'll take you to this page;

http://www.simplyglobaltv.com/TestFolder/testpage.html

As of Friday there's been a new firmware available for the 3view box that seems to fix a few of the teething troubles such as the 'No Signal' issue (see the 3viewer Bugs + Feature Requests forum for more info). Hopefully the box will be a lot more stable with this new update.

As well as being able to use Windows Media Player to access recordings, you can also use media centre apps like XBMC. It didn't take much to set this up and have all the recordings accessible from my PC.. interesting to see that there are no duplicate entries like we see in Windows Media Player, but one thing that's a pain is that subtitles are always appearing.. haven't yet worked out how to turn them off & whether it's an XBMC problem, or 3view problem [UPDATE - see below].

UPDATE: Looks like I just need to switch the subtitles off, since they default to On. This is from the XBMC wiki... "By default subtitles are turned on, and can be turned ON/OFF manually from the On Screen Display (OSD). There is no global ON/OFF setting for subtitles, as this setting is stored on a per-video basis, but you can quickly set the setting on all videos by manually changing it using the OSD, then hitting 'Set as default for all movies'. " --- I'll give this a try tonight.

Here's another video; this one's a lot longer.. not really as focussed as the other 2 as I wander around the menus & try out a few things. It's been working well for a few hours, timeshift does what it should, and setting up recordings is simple.

Like other people on the DigitalSpy forums, I did have an instance of the box suddenly saying 'No Signal' when I attempted to switch channels.. the only solution was to turn it off at the wall & back on again. There are certainly some areas where the stability of the software can be improved.

Recordings held on the 3view box can be accessed by PCs elsewhere on your network. It's painless to set up.. they'll just appear in Windows Media Player under the Other Libraries section. Media apps like Boxee and XBMC should be able to pick this up too. The only problem I see with it so far is how the hell to identify which program is which if you've recorded a series. Here's how it looks from a quick mess around;

There's no way to tell when the recordings were made, or any extra info like that [UPDATE - the column that shows the Recorded Data isn't shown by default.. you need to right-click on the column header, then Choose Columns, and add it in manually]. The length it's showing there is how long the program should be if it'd been a complete recording, but I recorded a bit & then stopped it. Media Player only shows the right time when I play it.

Maybe it works a bit better when I series link something rather than just hitting Record and cancelling record like I did with all of these. It's a promising feature, so hopefully it'll work a bit more intuitively when I start to use it properly [UPDATE - which it is now I see the Recorded Date & using XBMC removes the duplicates]

For reference my Samsung 8000 TV won't stream content from the 3view box, saying it doesn't support the video format.