Beyonwiz DP-P2: An Affair To Remember

This is not a product review. This is a love story.

Last month I purchased a Beyonwiz DP-P2 PVR (thanks to the Global Financial Crisis-inspired stimulus payments issued by the Rudd Govt). The unit is a dual High Definition tuner with a 500gig hard drive. This is not the first PVR I have owned. About 4-5 years ago I purchased a no-name standard definition single Tuner PVR. While that was okay for recording the occasional TV show, the Beyonwiz has radically altered the way that I watch television.

Before I go into depth on the Beyonwiz unit, or how its altered my viewing, I feel it’s important for me to outline how I consumed television.

The Former Television Consumer
I’m not much of a fan of reality television or sports programing. Primarily, my viewing consists of scripted dramas and comedies, with the occasional news, light entertainment, or panel program. Over the past ten years, we’ve seen a strong shift on Australian TV to whats deemed to be reality fare. Scripted programs either didn’t get screened locally, or when they did, very few of them were in prime time. And when they did, the shows were rarely screened in a timely fashion (against the original US/UK airdate), or there was no guarantee that we’d see more than a handful of episodes before being pulled due to bad ratings. For a quality television experience, most of the TV I watched was downloaded.

Every day I would finish work, come home, and my first duty would be to check out a bittorrent site and start the download my evenings viewing. By the time I was ready to watch TV in the evening, I usually had everything ready to be watched by 7/7:30pm. Transferring my files to a multi-media hard drive connected to my TV, I’d then sit down and enjoy my shows. I knew that there were shows going to air on local broadcast TV that I was missing. You’d be surprised at just how much good TV goes to air in the early hours of the morning these days. I wanted to access this very late night, fringe programming. I knew I had to buy a PVR.

Choosing a Unit
Being fairly aware of my options already, my research involved reading through a few websites (I strongly recommend checking out the DTV Forums), as well as bothering salesmen at various electronics stores. On a side note, it must be said that of every store in Brisbane, Harvey Norman at Indooropilly had far and away the most informative staff on the subject. This is not true of most Harvey Norman stores, but the staff there were particularly impressive.

My choice was down to three possibilities. Tivo, a Topfield (7100, I believe), or a Beyonwiz DP-P2 or Beyonwiz FV-L1. Tivo I ruled out quite quickly. The unit only has one HD tuner (with a second SD tuner inbuilt), plus I wasn’t particularly impressed with the software installed. Tivo is a perfectly fine product for your average consumer, but I am reasonably tech-savvy and wanted a machine with a bit more grunt and flexibility. The Freeview-branded Beyonwiz FV-L1 had some restrictions placed upon the unit, such as the inability to skip ads. The Topfield unit was tempting (and came with a strong recommendation from the Manager at Harvey Norman), however I’d heard a few grumblings from folks online. The Beyonwiz DP-P2 was the most expensive, but I just wasn’t hearing any substantial negative feedback. Besides, PM Kevin Rudd was paying.

The Unit
You can read up on the exact specifications on the Beyonwiz site, so I’d like to give a quick overview about the way I interact with my device.

Each unit purchased comes with a three month subscription to IceTV. The Beyonwiz has a perfectly fine EPG from which one can set up recordings from, but the unit is most certainly enhanced by using the IceTV service (which generally comes at a cost of $13 a month). The Beyonwiz unit has an ethernet connection which connects the unit to the Internet. Through the IceTV website, one can program the recordings on the Beyonwiz. Once logged in on the site, you no longer need to be physically close to the unit to record ones shows. One can also utilise their iPhone application to make recordings. All recordings offer the chance to record the single program, or to record the series each time it goes to air. Users can choose between recording every time the show airs, or just first run programs. Also, users can select it to favor the HD broadcast, if possible. Recording programs via IceTV cannot be made more simple.

Once a week I sit down for twenty minutes and thoroughly go through the online guide to select my weeks viewing (adding new shows, one-off specials, and movies). I’ve found the amount of free to air TV I watch now has soared. I’m sure this will vary on a week to week basis, but for the past month and a half, I’ve certainly found enough to keep me watching quite a hefty amount of locally broadcast television. I haven’t missed any episodes of Media Watch (in the past, I’d only remember it was on halfway through the show), and the late night recording of Channel 7′s Saved has introduced me to a little-seen gem.

I still watch a bit of downloaded content (there are a lot of great shows that simply do not get an airing locally). And I’m sure that when the US TV season starts up again, I’m going to find my viewing habits shifting slightly. The Beyonwiz has a great USB input which will play media from any portable media (including my multi-media drive). So far I’m yet to find a file that the Beyonwiz won’t play.

There are two functions that I am yet to really dabble with. The unit has a video input connection which enables users to record video onto the Beyonwiz’s hard drive. This can be used for a variety of purposes from digitizing home movies, your VHS collection, Foxtel, or even DVD’s. A trial of the functionality showed that it doesn’t have a problem with Macrovision encoding. So far I am yet to find I have much of a need for this (aside from digitizing the film Electric Dreams – not available on DVD in any region that I’ve been able to find), but it’s certainly nice functionality. Another feature enables users to export video from the unit across their home computer network. I’m still yet to use this, but again, it is certainly a handy functionality.

The Future
From Dec 28 this year, OzTam will be releasing data relating viewers using PVR’s. My experience in using my PVR has taught me just how much of an extension a high quality unit can make to ones TV viewing experience. Watching TV in this manner is the future of television and its heartening to see the industry now actively seeking audience measurement data on PVR audiences. Audiences aren’t going away. They just want more choice in the content delivery platforms.

I couldn’t be more impressed with the experience I have had in using the Beyonwiz PVR. The user interface took a day or two to get used to, but once familiar with it, the machine has been an absolute dream to use. With iiNet and Telstra mooted to be launching similar boxes in the near future with additional IPTV capability, one can only hope that the units are as flexible and feature-rich as the Beyonwiz has proven itself to be.

I just wish it had in-built wireless connectivity.