Review of Fusion's FVRT100 Digital Video Recorder - posted 28/06/04 by Barry Flynn

The first thing to say about the new Fusion Digital Video Recorder is that it's very slim - about half the depth of my Sky+ box, and rather narrower, too. Setup was easy: within ten minutes, it was powered up and automatically searching for the Freeview channels, which it successfully scanned in within a minute or two. Picture quality appeared excellent, even though I've been told by an aerial engineer that I'm in a slightly 'marginal' area for Freeview reception. Another promising sign: pressing the red button on BBC1 loaded up the first interactive menu on the right of the screen almost instantaneously - a good indication of the box's processing-power (and of the BBC's continual tweaking of its interactive interface).

The remote control - which is a very important but difficult thing to get right - I confess to having some doubts about. This is probably a bit unfair: I'm a seasoned Sky+ user, and I find any new button layout awkward, for obvious reasons. Someone coming new to this box would probably get on with the remote fine, but a few observations: changing channels outside the onscreen electronic programme guide (EPG) is via two keys labelled CH+ and CH- which are somewhat distant from the centre of the keypad. My natural impulse (because it's what the Sky+ remote does) would be to use the up and down arrow keys, which are central, to perform this function, since it is by far the most frequent one. On the Fusion box, you can do that within the EPG to scroll up and down the channel list, but not outside it. Second observation: the way you 'back out' from a feature or function is to press the 'CANCEL' key - not the most obvious label, I would suggest. The intuitive mode would be, again, to use the arrow keys to do this - as in the Sky+ layout - pressing the left arrow key to exit. I suspected that Fusion was unable to copy the Sky+ design - which is surely the definitive one - for patent infringement reasons, but Fusion tell me this is not the case. That's how they wanted to design it.

Within the EPG, everything worked much more intuitively, I found. A one-button press on the programme you want to record sets it up for future recording, and there are some clever little features available on playback once you've recorded it. For instance, a sequence of 'thumbnail' stills excerpted from the recorded video are displayed when selecting the recorded programme in 'library' mode, offering viewers a visual cue if they want to start watching at some other point than the start of the programme. Another clever touch is a 'timeline' that appears along the bottom of the screen when fast forwarding or rewinding, which gives an indication of where you are in the programme. These two features show that Fusion has emphasised navigation with respect to 'time' almost as much as navigation with respect to 'channel' or 'programme', and represent one area in which their approach is actually superior to the one BSkyB has adopted for its PVR, I would suggest.

At this point, honesty compels me to say that Fusion's proprietary 7-day EPG didn't work properly the first time round. When you first set the box up, the EPG is only able to show you 'now-and-next' information - so you have to leave it in standby mode overnight to capture the full 7-day listings download. Except that doing that appeared to have crashed the box when I next came to look at it. The only way I could persuade it to turn on was to take the power plug out of its socket and perform a 'hard' reboot. And when the box powered up again, no 7-day EPG was in evidence. It seems that on a very small percentage of boxes with a slightly out-of-date version of the software, this 'freezing up' can sometimes happen, and I was just unlucky. Fusion told me that an over-the-air software download was scheduled for 3 a.m. the next morning, and if I left the box in standby mode again, that should cure it. Happily, it did. Actually, I think this little incident works in Fusion's favour rather than against. They knew there was a bug, they knew how to fix it, and the proposed remedy worked. It's not often in the Freeview set-top box world that things are that clear-cut!

However, would-be purchasers should be aware that - although once downloaded, the Fusion 7-day listings guide works fast and effectively - it's not always going to guarantee reliable recording if the schedule changes in the interim. Freeview's free and 'open' equivalent, still undergoing testing, is 'live', and if the schedule changes, your recording start and stop times should change too. At the moment, though, the Freeview EPG is extremely slow and clunky (it can take up to 7 minutes to do a live download of the details for a programme broadcast in 7 day's time) - so you pays your money and you takes your choice. My guess is that Fusion's 7-day EPG, produced by 4TV, will give its PVRs a significant market advantage for some time to come.

VERDICT: This is an attractive, well-designed digital video recorder, which in terms of usability is superior to any other terrestrial PVR on the market - by sole virtue of integrating a 7-day EPG (which will eventually be expanded to 14 days). While we have reservations about the remote control, we believe that purchasers new to the PVR world should have little difficulty adapting to it - particularly when you consider that it beats time-shifting using an analogue VCR into a cocked hat. Should you buy it now? If you're not desperate for one, it may be worth waiting until the pre-Christmas season starts, by which time the Freeview 8-day EPG should have rolled out nationwide and a number of new, competing devices (perhaps containing integrated DVD burners) should have appeared. Then a more considered purchase can be made. But if you really want one now, we recommend it - particularly if you can find one priced below £200.