Dick Smith GH5944

Do not order from these incompetent people – Ordered an iPad. Received the wrong product. After many many emails failing to give me clear return instructions I have as finally able to return it, then it took two weeks to process a refund for a wrong item and even then I had to really fight and complain to Kogan and escalate the issue to get it. I requested a manager to respond to me FIVE… Read more

TIMES and asked for a phone number and my requests were completely ignored, still haven’t been acknowledged. They said they would reimburse me for the return postage fee - I’m still waiting for this, and they keep saying the refund “should be processed soon.” No certainty about product quality, incredibly incompetent customer service, poor back up from Kogan. Just honestly don’t bother!!!!!!!

Works as advertised – I bought this unit to replace a Jaycar unit that would not record a program that straddled midnight (firmware bug, since fixed I'm told). It does everything I want - record & play back, and tunes in ABC-Jazz :-) Two minor gripes: 1) Several seconds are lost when recording a successive program; probably unavoidable at the price. 2) That… Read more ·  3

stupid American date format MMDDYYYY means the files don't sort when crossing into the New Year, and is hard to grok.

If not for the above glitches I would've rated it "excellent".

Generally very good – These STBs are no longer available through Dick Smith, but may pop up elsewhere. My two latest DS GH5954 have performed well, but I hope they don't fail mysteriously after a couple of years as did the prior three or four pre-timeshift DS models I had. There may have been software updates available via USB which may have fixed one of the units, but… Read more ·  1

easier to buy a new unit, with time shift. One wonders whether inbuilt software obsolesence, similar to that in some inkjet printers that could prevent refilled cartridge use, could cause failure. I ensure the STBs are well ventilated as heat cycling long term can accelerate failure. The time shift is a great function although the operation is a bit quirky till one gets used to its various modes; even so it's relatively friendly, unlike the playback functionality of my Bauhn ATV-46FLEM TV, and its fiddly remote, which is so unfriendly that I only use it when I need to record two programs at once, and even then I transfer the USB stick to the DS unit for play back, using the "Movie" option. For when you can't find the remote, the DS STBs appear to have the same easy to use fascia buttons for volume, channel and standby as the GH5454 model. The pre-timeshift DS models would occasionally give write errors which trashed my USB portable drive and its hours of recordings, so nowadays I only use sticks, usually 16G, which I regularly scan for any errors. I have not had any stick trashed, yet. I transfer the stick files to and from my hard drive if I want archive; besides, sticks are convenient to move between bedroom and loungeroom viewing. One recurring problem is that both STBs will occasionally lose one or more channels, requiring rescanning (in which case any future programmed recording settings are lost) and/or lose the channel name e.g. ABC1 will disappear or become "UnknownCh001", but is otherwise usable. Another problem sometimes is that channels that were set to "Skip" become unskipped. Whether it's the STBs, or whether it's somehow the transmissions, these problems are manageable. Overall the units are very good, touch wood.

Keeps deleting last part of recorded movies – I didn't mind this STB when I first bought it about 7 months ago, I wasn't too keen on the program format in the guide, it's clunky and not easy to check what's on, you have to click through each channel one by one to see the programs, you don't get a whole page of all channels at once like other digital receivers. But I thought it was useable so… Read more

just put up with it. Another thing I noticed was that some of the colour buttons it tells you to use for certain functions don't match with what's on the remote, mostly is fine but one or two times there is no colour to match what's on screen and you have to take a chance and experiment to find the right button.

Worst of all though, is that once the USB gets sort of full, I found that movies I had saved on the USB started having the ends removed, at least the movies stopped playing towards the end and just went black and then went to the next program saved on the USB. I was pretty upset by this, I had recorded one movie which I wanted a friend to see, and saved it on the USB, but when he came over to visit and we started watching the movie, it dropped-out 3/4 of the way through and we couldn't watch the whole thing. It happened a second time also, and this time was worse as it was a movie which happened to have come on and I recorded, this movie I had been raving about to my friend for a couple of years and he had never seen it and it's really hard to find on DVD. It's one of my all time favourties and I wanted him to see it. We sat down to watch it all excited, and yet again, we got about 3/4 of the way through and it just stopped and would not play the end of it. The USB was getting full of daily Judge Judy's which I have set to record every day (the STB does not allow you to choose 5 weekdays only, it only has a daily option on all 7 days so you have to record the weekend timeslot as well) and a few times had stopped recording with a notice appearing "drive is full". It seems that when it gets to this stage it not only stops recording your program but also starts wiping what else you have on the USB drive. I am now planning to get another brand of STB as I'm no longer confident that if I have something saved on the USB that it will stay there.

not all that it is cracked up to be – the recording part of this set top box is great apart from you cant record with out the ads but I keep losing channels like ten ,one ,11 and abc3 and it is impossible to find the software upgrade anywhere

The stars are going out, one by one! – Further to my enthusiastic review twelve months ago of this set top box, I have to report that mine has recently become unable to tune to channel 44 (TVS) which it reports on-screen as "invalid signal". Since the digital TV set to which it is attached is still capable of receiving channel 44 I must report that "Dear Brutus, the fault lies not in… Read more

ourselves or in our aerial, but in our stars". Therefore, I give it only three stars.

It has another interesting little fault : sometimes a recorded programme on a USB drive cannot be read by my computer, but if the programme is first renamed through the STB all is well. I put this down to the symbol ? at the end of 'Who do you think you are?'. Just thought you might like to know.

Anastomosis Good, but exhibits a tuning fault after 12 months of continuous use.

Very satisfied – Amazing features for this price. I needed NTSC output for American TV which is very difficult to find on other STB manufacturers. This box does it all and is quite user friendly. Program guide design is better than many TV's I've seen recently. Setup was easy. I also notice it runs "cool". A previous STB ran so hot that in summer weather it would crash. This appears to be a very good product.

Dick Smith STB GH5944 – Have only bought this STB to get TV reception. It does what it should do. It was easy to set up and the picture is excellent. I'm not using it for recording programs, so I cannot provide feedback on that aspect. Includes everything you need, including batteries for the remote. easy to use, good picture