Thomson DTI 2300 - 27/10/04

I have to say at the outset that I had several problems getting this receiver – the first to be made with the Top Up TV service in mind – to work properly. One of the problems – which resulted in the box locking up – I didn’t manage to fix at all.

But to begin at the beginning. The box is impressively featured for its price (between £70-£80 depending on where you buy it). In addition to the Mediaguard smartcard reader for Top Up TV, it offers RF modulation, two SCARTs, Digital Audio output (through an S/PDIF connector), and Stereo Phono Audio Outputs. That lot takes up most of the available room on the back of the receiver, which is slim (Height 5.2 cm x Width 25cm x Depth 13.8cm), and – if you like the black plastic frontage, which I’m a little ambivalent about – has a sleek, uncluttered appearance.

Set-up was relatively straightforward in terms of scanning the channels in, although it seemed to me the process was a bit slow compared to some other boxes I’ve reviewed. One minor issue: after setup the electronic programme guide (EPG) didn’t come up when the appropriate button was pressed on the remote control. Instead I got an error message saying the time and date hadn’t been set. This proved easy enough to remedy in the installation menu, but it’s the only box I’ve ever reviewed which needed the user to do this.

Automatic switching between 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratios worked well, once I had found the setting in the installation menu for a widescreen TV (confusingly, it’s listed under ‘Connection’). The picture quality was not the best I’ve seen, however, although to a certain extent, you pays your money and you gets your choice.

The box also automatically detected that there was a new software update available, which was installed without any fuss. I assumed this was the update to the Freeview EPG Thomson had previously told me about, extending it beyond just ‘now and next’ to six days’ worth of data. Whether it was or not, the new EPG functions very efficiently on the DTI 2300, in any event. Certainly, the speed with which it pulled back the furthest-away listings was remarkable compared to earlier demonstrations I have witnessed on Thomson receivers.

I’m not mad about the EPG design, though: it only gives you one vertical time-slot at a time, for one channel. Most people would want the screen to carry information on what was on different, adjacent channels as well, and some indication of what was coming up, perhaps several time-slots ahead. The remote doesn’t carry an ‘info’ button, either, so that information about the programme being viewed can’t easily be called up after the default ‘banner’ times out.

It was when I started testing the BBC’s interactive service, BBCi, that the box really -ran into trouble. First of all, I assumed the receiver wasn’t responding to me pushing the red button on the remote, and had to press it several times to get the BBCi menu to come up. But it transpired that the menu was just taking a long time to load! In this respect, the DTI 2300 is one of the slowest boxes I’ve tested. I would certainly expect performance to be better than this with a receiver that has only recently come on to the market. In the circumstances, it’s somewhat puzzling that it handles the extended EPG so effectively.

Accessing the BBC’s multiscreen news service, I was taken to channel 703 (which is where the BBC broadcasts the extra BBCi data for this interactive service), and offered the message ‘no signal’. Having tested other Freeview receivers recently, I knew this was not a problem with my aerial, since on other boxes channel 703 (and the multiscreen service) works perfectly well. So I assumed the channels hadn’t been properly scanned in. Back in the installation menu, I erased all the channels and invoked a re-scan.

Once this was finished, I attempted to go back to BBC1 by pressing the number 1 on the remote, but this time a message was displayed that the channel was ‘not recognized’. After some messing around, I decided the only way to effect a cure was a factory reset (although I was a bit reluctant to do this, since it might mean having to re-install the software upgrade).

This did the trick. I scanned the channels in again (for the third time), and the BBC’s news multiscreen application subsequently worked fine - the slow load-up time of BBCi’s initial ‘half-screen’ menu excepted.

My next test was to see how the DTI 2300 performed loading up the data-heavy Teletext channel on Channel 9. This time, the receiver locked up completely – so completely, in fact, that it couldn’t be switched off without physically removing the power cable from the back of the box. After rebooting, the same thing happened again when I tried to access Teletext … and again. I have since discovered that some other viewers with DTI 2300s have experienced identical issues loading the Teletext channel – and it could be that a recent revamp of the service has something to do with this, since some owners of other types of receiver report difficulties, too. That said, my Humax F2-Fox-T receiver negotiates the new version with no problems at all.

What worries me a little is the way in which the box failed. Freeview boxes crashing occasionally and having to be rebooted is (sadly) nothing new. But a lock-up so severe that it stops you switching the box off seems to be of a somewhat different order.

Conclusion: For the price, this box is ostensibly good value, and boasts impressive connectivity. But my overall impression is that it’s a bit of a curate’s egg – i.e. good in parts (which perhaps is not that surprising given that it’s the first made-for-Top Up TV receiver). On the one hand, the DTI 2300 certainly does what it says it can do: tune in Top Up TV’s 10 pay-TV channels. Thomson also needs to be commended for backing the extended EPG, and cracking the software engineering required. On the other hand, the EPG doesn’t exploit the new data-sets particularly well, the picture quality is adequate at best, and the box appears to be somewhat slow and unreliable, even leaving the Teletext issue to one side. One certainly wouldn’t expect ordinary users to have to negotiate the series of problems I was faced with before I could get the thing running properly. Certainly, I’d want to see the Teletext issue sorted out (whoever’s fault it happens to be) before I feel I could recommend purchasing it. At the moment, it feels rather as if Thomson has released version 0.9 rather than version 1.0.

Specifications

• Top Up TV ready
• 2 x Scart Socket
• Digital Audio and Stereo Phono Audio Outputs
• RF Modulator
• Auto Set Up
• Digital Teletext
• Dimensions - H - 5.2cm W - 25cm D - 13.8cm
• Mains Voltage - 230V - 50/60Hz
• Power Consumption - Operating 10W, Standby <1W
• Ambient Temperature - +10 to 35'C
• Audio Format - Analogue - Stereo Sound, Digital : SPDIF
• Weight - 0.7Kg