Fusion's FRT010T Top Up Box - 5/1/04

Julian Clover of Broadband TV News has reviewed the Fusion FRT101T Freeview/Top-Up TV receiver for www.idtv.co.uk

If David Chance is to be believed, the great British public are enthusiastic about digital receivers adding greater functionality. As chairman of Top-Up TV, Chance has more than a vested interest in the success of units such as the Fusion FRT101T, which add the ability to watch the subscription service alongside the free-to-air Freeview channels.

The FRT101T is the third UK digital terrestrial TV (DTT) receiver, after units produced by Thomson and Echostar, to be packaged in Top-Up TV’s bright yellow livery. There’s no Conditional Access Module to worry about. All that is necessary is to insert the provided smart card into the slot on the front of the receiver and give Top-Up TV a call to claim the free one-month trial subscription.

Following the recent trend, the FRT101T is quite compact, about the size of a paperback book. In addition to the smart-card slot the grey and black facia sports two red/green indicator lights. Round the back are two Scart sockets for connection to the TV or video/DVD-R. RF loopthrough takes the signal from the TV aerial and passes it onto the TV set, but there is no RF modulator, so be warned if you are thinking of using this on an older second set that may not have a Scart socket. Rather than a figure-of-8 connector there is a small 5V power supply to connect to the mains.

All the set-up features you might expect are here, including aspect ratio and the preferred type of picture composition (RGB/SVBS/S-Video).

The Channel Organiser neatly sets out the available channels in your area, complete with icons to indicate audio and text channels, and the UHF channel number. The receiver will scan for channels when first connected or you can perform your own scan later on, either adding any new channels, or starting again from scratch. Channels can be deleted, should a broadcaster permanently go off the air, or be allocated a new number. My personal preference is to leave the channel numbers where they are (it helps when switching receivers), and, besides, the Favourites function can make sure you don’t constantly tune to channels in which you have no interest. There are ten Favourite groups available so all the family can have their own selection. Even if you are in one of the Favourite groups it is still possible to select individual channels through their number. I just confess to finding this just a little fiddly and wondered if in reality this functionality actually gets used.

The timer function allows for eight separate events to be programmed, though do remember that because this box only has one DTT tuner you can only watch or record a single DTT channel at any one time (although you can record an analogue one while watching a DTT one and vice versa).

One of the most frustrating elements of DTT receivers has been the need to drill down into the menu in order to use functions such as subtitles. Fusion has included most of these buttons on the remote, providing easy access to these and other ‘lost’ functions, including audio and widescreen switching. For the anoraks amongst us the Status button tells you the Channel, Provider, Network and signal Quality. Here in South Norfolk, the terrestrial signal is variable and reception of Five is poor, to say the least, but all the digital multiplexes were viewed without difficulty.

One annoying button is the 'swap' one, which while taking you to the last channel viewed, doesn’t take you back again.

The layout of the TV Guide is neat and tidy; the current channel takes up about a sixth of the screen top right, though the picture is tightly cropped. At the left is the description of the programme selected, which changes as you scroll down the list of channels below. Unlike Sky, the radio channels are also included in the guide. Eight-day listings are provided, though the system should be upgradeable in due course to 14 days. Reminders and timers can be set automatically from the guide, including daily and weekly settings.

Interactive services, such as BBCi, were fast - with just a few seconds between pages on the digital text service. Even the two-screen news ‘multiscreen’ loaded within a short space of time.

Conclusion

The FRT101T is a receiver I’d be happy to recommend; regardless of whether the intention is to subscribe to Top-Up TV or not. If you need additional information about the broadcasters and the multiplexes, then the information is here, though in reality most people will be concerned with just watching individual channels. It is a pity that there is no RF modulator, a feature of many other receivers these days, and one which is particularly useful in converting older TV sets to digital. Meanwhile, the unit is small and compact and will sit neatly on its side should space be limited.

Technical specifications