would my 86 year old mother be happy to use one

Robti

Member
Hi so my mothers old bt youview box is constantly crashing now and as its never been used for anything other than recording I wondered if I should get her one of these boxes or a new box ?
Thanks
 
Hi so my mothers old bt youview box is constantly crashing now and as its never been used for anything other than recording I wondered if I should get her one of these boxes or a new box ?
Which model of Youview box does she have? If it is a DTR-1000 or DTR-1010 then she might find a DTR-2000 or later easier to get to grips with and more reliable than the earlier models. A second hand HDR-FOX T2 wouldn't be a stupid choice but if all she is doing is recording and playing back then an HDR-2000T might be a reasonable choice.
 
Hi it looks like its a dtr-t2100 but must have got it right on roll out as im sure its years old, have had it apart to check for dust of fluff but it was clean, I will try a portable hard drive into her tv and see how she likes using that first then look at other models
 
How comfortable is she with setting up recordings?
Unless she is a computer user she won't benefit from most of the custom firmware benefits but using Remote Scheduling would allow you to set up the recordings for her
 
FWIW, the Humax HDR-FOX was judged the easiest to use (out of a sample of three) Freeview PVRs some time ago by The Gadget Show, and so far as I can make out from comments on the forum that remains the case (at least in the Humax stable). However, any PVR will require some training, so it is not clear to me that the relative ease of use (and available expertise) of a HDR-FOX outweighs that it will be necessary to buy second hand.

Again FWIW, I made life a little easier for my 87-year old "supported user" by adding a Harmony programmable remote so that all the functionality of the TV+PVR combination is dealt with on one handset (eg volume control always breaks through to control the TV without having to select mode). The Harmony has to be set up specifically, and there are only enough buttons for a subset of the functions available (but how often would she need the "VFORMAT" button?). To minimise confusion the TV is only a monitor for the PVR (and never used stand-alone) - but there are occasions when things get out of sync and I have to straighten her out.
 
Which model Harmony? I use a Harmony Ultimate as my main remote and allows you to set up two functions for each button using a short press or a long press. I have also added long press functionality to the colour keys to make it easy to sync things up again if it gets confused such as selecting the correct input on the TV and on the amp all with a single button press.
 
Only a basic one - Harmony 300 bought when they were on offer. Long and short presses would definitely confuse my user!
 
Thanks all I bought her a new humax dtrt 2000 just for the recording functions which she know how to and the price @£85 new
 
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