Gadget User Blog

The Beyonwiz DP-P1 is a pretty remarkable product. For those tossing up between a fully-fledged home media centre PC and a PVR, it’s a natural (and cheaper) and compelling option.

It’s won an Australian Design Award and it’s easy to see why. It’s a very neat package. It combines a hi-def dual receiver tuner, a hard disk with 200GB capacity, networked file sharing and more recently a remote (via web) programming function. All this in a package that you can get for less than $1000. Still a pricey undertaking, but not unreasonable given its feature set.

I have found the hd image quality to be excellent. It looks great with very good colours and crisp outlines. It has a strong digital receiver and improved the reception quality of all stations above my old Strong STB.

The firmware that drives the whole thing has been recently updated and this works quite well. There are still a few glitches (e.g., subtitles don’t toggle on and off, there is no resume facility when you want to finish watching a recording you previously had started, and you can’t modify the seconds on the FF arrow button to skip you through ads much quicker) but these are all fairly minor niggles in the grand scheme of things and not enough to put me off this device.

The networking ability of the unit is solid. It’s not fully robust, but if you are not going to be using that function regularly it’s not going to bother you. What is great is the ability to add files to the unit or indeed copy or move files from the unit to other PCs on the network.

I don’t have a DVD recorder so this means I can burn a DVD through a PC if ever I need to (mind you I don’t find myself wanting to preserve a lot of television in this way!!)

It has a well laid out remote control that places functions generally where you want them. I’d argue the record, play, FF and RR buttons are too small but again, it’s not a deal breaker.

It plays photo, music and video files across the network or via USB generally well. There is a wide range of compatible file types so most of your collection should play. The photo slide show is a little clunky but to be honest I haven’t really had cause to play a slide show that often.

Remote Programming

One of the things that really makes this device stand out (since the latest update of the firm ware) is its ability to set timers for program recording remotely. That means if you have an IceTV account (this costs around $99 per year) you can actually program your DP-P1 via the web. It can even be done via your mobile if you have Internet access.

This sounds pretty cool doesn’t it? The only baffling drawback is none of the programming works if the device is in stand-by mode (i.e, turned-off not powered-off). At first I thought this was slightly frustrating and bizarre - I didn’t want to leave the device running all day. Then I realised you can do a non-recording timer start up of the device thereby giving it time to download all the latest remote record updates from the IceTV server - phew. It won’t really solve the emergency, “oops, I forgot that program is on in ten minutes and I’m down at the pub” situations, but it will cover you for most remote recording needs. Perhaps that’s something that Beyonwiz and IceTV can look at in the future.

Conclusion

It’s all good. I really like this machine. It does what it says it will do and does it reasonably simply and with a minimum of fuss. Firmware updates seem to have been reasonably regular so there is the reassurance that Beyonwiz are committed to the product. There is a good forum for the product too.

If you are thinking of a media centre PC I’d be giving this product a closer look. It does most of what you’d need from a media centre for a good price.