Topfield TF7100HDPVRt

Topfield – Continuous freezing,not worth the money spent.going into the rubbish.crap crap crap crap for so crap and most unreliable piece of crap I ever wasted money on crap. going in the bloody bin. Show details

pvr 5000 masterpiece, was fantastic, have a problem and can't get topfield to answer 'phone, 1hour t – I really like my 5000 , has been fantastic, has a freezing problem which I had hoped could be fixed or at least discussed. can't talk to anyone, waited on first time 1hour and voice then said office was empty, ditto 2nd time1.5 hours, service number. if it is fixable or not, just need to know. at this point would not touch another topfield.

RUBBISH – Have had two topfields, wouldn't even think about this brand ever again. They over heat and needs to be switch off all the time...Absolutely a waste of good money

Terrible – The product has everything I need and want from a PVR. Only problem is most the time it doesn't work. It started off ok, but after a few months the problems became apparent. If the signal isn't perfect, everytime it has a problem the unit freezes when you're watching it. So if I record a program and the signal at the time has a little issue,… Read more

and I then go to watch it, it freezes at that spot. The only way to unfreeze is to switch it off, so if you're recording something else at that time, it stops recording. Sometimes I have to turn it on and off and even unplug multiple times to get it to work again. With 1 week left on the warranty it died completely. They replaced the HDD and upgraded the firmware and I eventually got it back and it did work again for about 2 months, then died completely again. As my warranty was over I pulled the HDD out and stuck it in my PC, formatted it and stuck it back in and it worked again. Basically I am sick of missing programs because the signal has a tiny glitch in the middle of it and want to replace it with something better. Easy to use, great features Very unreliable, freezes lots

Won't buy another Topfield PVR – Unfortunately I agree with the negative comments about this device It was difficult to set up The user guide is poorly written and useless The picture constantly freezes and breaks up into coloured patterns I haven't had it repaired and I probably wont bother given the comments about the repair centre The flexibility of recording more… Read more

than one program and watching a recorded program while another is being recorded It was expensive and the picture regularly breaks up and freezes

Great machine can record 4 programs at once no probs at all – Have had mine for nearly a year now and no probs. Will record 4 programs at a time good as gold. We use a standby eliminator and the machine still retains its settings. When we got it remote was faulty (2 buttons didnt work) We were sent a new one without argument via Express. Have more trouble with the TV programs running late when… Read more

using the guide to record than anything else.

Would recommend one of these despite others seeming problems.

Lights too bright,(Read the manual) Remote buttons badly placed, get used to it not that hard.

I can set it to record and play using only my thumb when holding the remote Easy to use once familiar with it. good recording capacity. ability to record several programs at once Haven't had any problems after getting remote replaced

Terrible – Don't buy a Topfield whatever you do. This is a poor product with poor support. I bought this product in February 09 had it for one month, then it went to their 'service' department for three months. Returned in June and it stuffed again in November. It looks nice and when it is working the features are easy to use I am experiencing the same… Read more

problems everyone else has reporting including the unit constantly freezing and losing HDMI sync. I really wish I could just get my money back as this has been in for service more than I have been using it. To add to the trauma the service department (and I losely use the term 'service') are appaulingly incompetent and rude to boot.

Terrible – The manufactures have a lot of work to do to restore consumer confidence in their products. All these units fall a long way short of what could be considered “a consumer’s reasonable expectation of serviceability” The TF7000 and 7100 HDPVRt from Topfield are a good concept and that is where it ends unfortunately. I purchased a TF7000 in 2007 and… Read more

it's firmware program functions deteriorated over a period of weeks requiring regular reinstallation and reprogramming until finally it died. It was returned under warranty but the same faults returned all but immediately and now it is out of warranty and useless.

I purchased a Beyonwiz dp-p2 12 months ago and It did not work from new, nor did any at the store when we returned it - must have been a bad batch they said. Purchased a Topfield TF7100 in Mar 2009 and it has also been back under warranty for repair and now it has died again.

Excellent – Good value for money as it does what you want it to and the picture and sound quality is first class. The remote is good but I feel it could be a bit better designed ergonomically and the button size could be bigger, but it works fine. Terrific product, twin tuners so you can record 2 programmes at the same time not had any problems with mine so… Read more

far, I don't use ice TV as the Topfield loads programmes when you select this function. Easy to use, easy to delete watched programmes, silent in use. So far there is nothing to dislike. Apart from the size of the remote control buttons, especially the most used ones, which could be bigger and better placed.

Terrible – Overall it would be great if not for the freezing, synch problems, gliching, program loss, and death of the disk. The firmware upgrades helped a little but not much. I am not a technophile and I found it easy to use. As other reviews say - it loses its programming when turned off and freezes. Now the hard disk has failed and its out of… Read more

warranty.Have an extended warranty from Dick Smith but after 5 phone calls only just received claim no.Have been told we have to drive it to Rosebery for service (we live in the Hills District) so $60 in tolls later we are unlikely to have satisfaction. Will keep you advised.

OK – We bought this for my wife to easily record tv programmes - we also got ICE TV. With the two of them it easy to record anything, in fact too mush. We needed to buy an external hard drive as well as the small amount of memory on this machine wasn't enough. We've marked this as a three star as it continually needs to be reset as it drops it's… Read more

recordings off, which makes it very unreliable. When the power is switched off during a recording (which yo may have to do when it jams, or the electricity goes off), then it takes about an hour to repair itself (during this time you can't change channels or anything). Ease of recording Initial programming is difficult for the average user and the programs drop for no apparant reason. Also takes about an hour to "file repair" when the power goes off.

Terrible – I had one of these for 3 months when it completely failed (would no longer start up). Up until then I was impressed by the excellent picture quality but dismayed but the series of minor problems that would regularly occur. Failed timers, loss of HDMI sync with TV causing a "green screen", having to correct errors on its HDD. After the failure I… Read more

became aware that I had not purchased a one off lemon as many others have had reliability issues with this model. I realise that the 7100 does have some happy users out there but I suspect that they will also have a major failure in the near future. Avoid this model. Excellent picture quality. Poor reliability

Terrible – I had purchased cheap PVRs off the net before with varying degrees of success so I thought I'd buy what was regarded as a quality product this time around. How wrong I was. It didn't take long before it was locking up and needing to be re-initialised with the consequent loss of programs I had recorded. It got worse as time went on and it became… Read more

obvious it wasn't going to get better. The best thing I did was to take it back to JB. It was a total lemon. It looked very well designed and had some great features. (I was lead to believe) The unit proved to be very unreliable and it was returned for repair twice in under 12 months. It seemed to get progressively worse as time went on and eventually totally locked up while trying to format the hard drive. I took it back to JB as it was getting close to running out of warranty. They were very helpful and swapped for a new model. This one still has problems.

Bad – Not robust enough. I thought i would choose an "out of the box" solution, to keep it simple, but am going to look at a windows 7 based media centre. At least when it breaks there will be plenty of support and I won't be dealing with a "black box". I find the menuing much better than others that I tried previously such as the LG, but can't… Read more

recommend due to continuing faults. TF7100 keeps on locking up, have sent back twice for repair and wish I had never bought it. It now often has a message something like "service unavailable, or scrambled", particularly if I am recording already on that station's band such as ABC1 and ABC2. I suspect that maybe one of the tuners has died. I would like my money back and I guess I will need to fight it through something like ACCC.

Bad – I would not recommend a Topfield product because of the number of bugs they are happy to leave. It is Oct 2009, and the last firmware was 17 March. Prior to that there were a number of firmware releases so unstable they had to withdraw them. They have cast this product adrift. The Australian Topfield site no longer links to their once decent… Read more

forum. A forum can be found with effort. The company seems to have dissociated itself from engaging consumers regarding product wishes and faults. Good 1080i picture. Easy to add external USB disk. Can be networked to a PC. Loses HDMI Sync regularly (to Sony 45Z4600). Menus near impossible for the colour blind (red on grey). Editing recordings does not release disk space. Wifi speed is unusable - slow. The Toppy video control format is unique, addding 2 Toppy files to each for positioning and information (cannot freely move videos from a PC and play them on the Toppy - only from the Toppy to a PC).

Good – We purchased this machine 2 months ago. We like that it is not Freeview compliant (read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/freeview_(australia) for more info)As far as we know, this is the last model that offers this feature. We have had a Topfield (TF5000) before and are still very happy with it - however it is getting very old and most of our… Read more

friends' TF5000 are no longer working. We still run both Toppies together. This can get annoying as either remote controls can operate either machines so we have to cover one of the infra-red sensors for the other to work - but this is a user problem. What we dont like about it is that the recording feature only shows the channel and time being recorded and does not show the programme's title. Also keep in mind the TV station's guides are not always correct. Looks nice. Has the ability to hook up external hard drive. Doesnt have ability to play DivX, Xvid, and standard MPEG files. It's not progammable like the TF5000. Timers show the station rather than the show being recorded.

Good – A competent unit that I would be happy to recommend. However, as with all these type of machines (PVRt) they are basically small PC's. As such they have some of the problems of PC's such as lock-ups. Firmware updates need to be applied to solve some of these issues and to get the latest features. These firmware updates are done with a provided… Read more

USB key that you can use to grab the file from the Topfield website and transfer it to the 7100 unit.

Once everything is set-up though and its working sweetly you will be please with the quality of the output. You can smile to yourself as you timeslip one channel and record another!

If you are in the market for a device of this type the only other one worth looking at the moment is the Beyondwiz. (at the time of writing) Great looking unit with a number of excellent features. Stabl, good quality picture. Integration with ICE tv useful forprogramme information Has not been problem free. Occational lock-ups.

1)Hard disc noise can be intrusive when sound is low.

2)File system for transfer of prgrammes back to a PC is not in a Windows format (although with abit of softwareit can be done).

3)Set up of the wireless system is not straight forward, although later versions of the firmware have improved this.

4) Viewing the tv guide causes the channel to change - this is counter intuitive to me.

Excellent – Being a new product it has come with several bugs most have been fixed there are working on new firmware which should be availble soon. Using it with IceTV is a great advantage the ability to set your recorder to record shows from anywhere there is internet access is fantastic. Easy to use and set up The ability to record 2 shows at once while watching a pervious recording Using with IceTV few bugs with firmware the need to update firmware