I wanted another digital receiver, but after the rather poor performance of the Omni DVB-101 set-top box I was a bit hesitant about buying what might be another lemon. I bought this one from Myer (for about $140, in September 2005), and it does seem a fair bit better, though it's not without its problems.
Good points:
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Handled quite poor reception very well—I tested it in an area with severe ghosting and low signal strength, using nothing more than a Tee shaped length of ribbon cable as used by many older HiFi radio receivers.
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The picture and sound quality is quite good, probably about as good as can be expected for a standard definition box.
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Simple way to switch between 16:9, 4:3 letter box, & 4:3 cropped display modes without wading through menus.
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You can program four buttons on the remote to be hot-keys for your favourite stations.
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Has composite, S-video, and component video outputs (all working at the same time), two stereo audio outputs, and digital audio outputs.
Bad points:
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Remote control seems a bit quirky (e.g. you press a button once, and it often acts like you've pressed it twice).
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It frequently blocks access to some channels, requiring me to enter a PIN to watch that channel. I haven't configured the box to lock out channels or programs above a certain rating, and I've check those settings are disabled, yet it keeps on doing it.
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You can't do some things in combination, like change channels while the subtitles are on, you have to exit one of the functions.
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Has DC on the video outputs. This seriously upset one box between the receiver and my video monitor.
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Setting the clock is awkward. The automatic mode doesn't work, it doesn't understand my local time zone (nor daylight savings, properly). This also, periodically, makes using the electronic program guide impossible, as it keeps getting the time wrong: The clock shows the right time, but the box doesn't seem to understand the correlation between local time and the broadcaster's program time, then you get shown programs that have nothing to do with what's current or next, and the box doesn't let you see anything other than what it thinks is the current or next program (you don't get a guide for the whole day's programming). And, of course, that means you couldn't set the box to change channels for timer recordings.
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The box's channel numbers are meaningless (e.g. television channel seven isn't represented as “7” on the channel display, nor will pushing button seven on the remote control switch you to channel seven). Why bother putting numbers on display if they don't display anything useful?
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The only buttons on the box are power/standby, channel up & down.
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It can't be turned off; you have to turn it off at the wall, or unplug it, if you don't want to waste power (it does use quite a bit, even while in stand-by mode, and gets quite hot—as does the separate power supply plug-pack). And then you'd have to set the clock again, as it doesn't handle sorting itself out, automatically, like it should do, from the station's broadcast time signals.