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December 2009

Sharp TUTV322H

Freesat Freeview euro tv skyThe best kit, The best programmes

2 What Satellite & Digital TV

n www.sharp.co.uk n £170 TesT freeview

found on all Top Up TV DTrs. There’s no favourites option but pressing OK brings up a main channel menu list.

The ePG displays data in full-screen for nine Freeview and Top Up TV channels at a time in a grid format. You can browse information day by day, schedule recording set reminders, create series links and bring up synopses. You can also search for shows or channels by name, date and time shown by typing using the remote buttons.

On-demand channels appear in a menu along the bottom of the ePG (accessed by pressing the Top Up TV button) represented by channel logos grouped by type. Selecting them takes you to a listing of what’s available.

You can record in standby and watch a show from the start while it’s recording. recorded and downloaded shows are accessed in the programme library, again organised by type and whether they are from Top Up TV.

On-demand shows are listed with how long you have left to watch them (typically over a seven-day period, but you can specify for how long you want to keep them).

For timeshifting the receiver keeps a constant cache of what you watch (extendable up to 60 minutes) so you can rewind and fast-forward on the fly. You can also timeshift while recording another channel and retroactively press record to commit what you’ve watched to the hard drive. recordings and timeshifted material can be fast-forwarded and rewound at up to 64x normal speed (with no sound drop-outs when resuming playback) and slowed down to a quarter speed and there’s a basic progress bar for navigation. There are no bookmarking or editing features.

Pictures look their best via the Scart connection, with little discernible pixellation on our 42in test TV. Audio is also clear-sounding through the phonos and digital audio output n Grant Rennell

Sharp TUTV322HSharp keeps the flag flying for terrestrial pay-TV with a Top Up TV DTR that’s also tempting for non-subscribers

For the past few years terrestrial pay-TV service Top Up TV has been heavily promoting Top Up TV Anytime – a subscription-based, on-demand

offering that requires a specialised PVr (or DTr – Digital Television recorder – as the company prefers it to be called) to watch.

Sharp’s latest Anytime DTrs come fitted with 320Gb and 500Gb (the 502H) drives as well as twin tuners for recording up two channels at once. both also act as Freeview recorders, offering features such as series link and accurate recording. Unlike most Freeview+ PVrs, they’re blessed with a 14-day programme guide for all channels, which is provided by Top Up TV but accessible regardless of whether you subscribe.

Like Sky Anytime, on-demand shows are downloaded to receivers overnight (both tuners must be free for this) and you only get shows from channels to which you subscribe. The TV Favourites package costs £10.99/month and Picturebox offers on-demand movies at £7/month.

Timeshifting and recordingUnlike Sky’s service, you can choose the channels from which you receive programmes (but not the programmes themselves) and because of this the amount of space taken up on your hard drive varies (as opposed to Sky+ boxes, which have half their drive reserved for on-demand shows).

As expected the 332’s feature set closely mirrors that of previous Anytime DTrs, so don’t expect multimedia playback or upscaling via HDmI.

The remote is the standard Anytime controller, much like Sky+’s excellent effort in terms of design and general button placement, and therefore hard to dislike.

The receiver’s slimline depth is offset by its large footprint, which could make it a tight fit on some shelves.

Its shiny black casing has a nice silvery front augmented by a row of operating buttons and a clear blue LeD display that shows the name and number of the channel you’re watching. Pulling down a flap on the right reveals a viewing card slot and a still-unused USb port.

On the rear sits two sets of UHF connectors suitable for piping the signal to analogue equipment, twin Scarts and optical and stereo phone line outputs for audio.

The software is also pretty much the same as that

verdictA reliable recorder, the 332’s best feature is its 14-day programme guide which, combined with series linking, gives you more flexibility than many Freeview PVRs. Even without a Top Up TV sub it’s worth having (especially the 500GB version, which costs just £30 more), though we would have liked to see a few more features such as upscaling included.

featuresFreeview+: YesFreeview HD: NoHard disc size: 320 Gb CAM: Seca mediaguardMHEG-5: Yes Teletext: Yes EPG support: 14-day Top Up TV/7-day DVb

UHF modulator tuning: None Card reader: None Software upgrade: OTA SD out: TV Scart (composite, S-video, rGb), Vcr Scart (composite)Audio out: S/PDIF optical digital audio output, coaxial digital audio outputData port: USb, rS232

ratingsPLUSn 14-day EPG n Dual recordingn Series linking

MinUSn No multimedia features n No exporting n No upscaling

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