Digital Products Group, the company behind the Aussie distribution of Beyonwiz and Slingbox among other brands, has just launched a new PVR brand in Australia called Magic TV. From the specs, it doesn’t seem to be too magical though.
That’s not to say it’s bad – For $699 you get a 1TB, twin HD tuner PVR with 1080p upscaling and Freeview EPG support. It also comes with a free Wi-Fi dongle to connect to the web for news and weather feeds or firmware updates, but there’s no IPTV options out of the box. You can also organise your recordings by folders, but there’s nothing magical about that.
Still, it’s a $700 DVR with plenty of storage and flexible enough for power users out there. And more options are always better, right?
[MagicTV]
Andrew
Friday, December 17, 2010 at 1:50 PMFor $700 you can build an HTPC with 2TB HDD, all the functions of a PVR and endless additional functions. Where’s the value proposition?
Virus__
Friday, December 17, 2010 at 5:33 PMFor that price I should also be able to stream media to it from my PC or plug in an external drive for playback off it & transfer shows to an external.
Snapper
Tuesday, January 25, 2011 at 8:37 PMFrom what i’ve heard the Magic TV is IPTV capable but Freeview delayed the implentation of this feature until later on? Magic TV in Hong Kong apparently has this feature so i can’t see a reason as to why it couldn’t happen here in AUS.
hifibloke
Saturday, June 18, 2011 at 5:09 PMHey, for $299 which is what I paid, i think it’s an awesome bit of kit, get a net connection and use the Magic Tv guide though, is better laid out than the freeview option.
swanson
Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 1:13 AMAgree with hifibloke. Just bought one from Crazystu for $250 and love it’s simplicity. Ive had a topfield,strong and panasonic recorder in the past and this leaves them for dead. Quite honestly this review does the unit a disservice I would recommend to all looking for a twin tuner PVR.
Mack
Friday, October 28, 2011 at 2:08 PMI had a friend buy one of these “Magic” PVR’s and it had reception issues, kept breaking up and dropping out on a couple of channels, the problem was strange because other PVR’s tested in the same house worked fine on all channels, we tried everything to try and resolve the problem but nothing worked? picture quality was not as good when compared side by side with a Topfield 7000 either, nothing to be concerned about but it was noticeable.