First impressions of the Sagem 6280T were mixed, the unit looks like the rest of the Sagem IDTV range and has an ok if possibly cheapish build quality, but as the unit hardly moves once under your TV the case should be the least of your concerns. The heart of the unit is the 80gb hard drive which should be good for around 40 hours of recordings at a claimed "DVD" quality but more on that later.

The RF signal from your standard TV aerial is plugged directly to the 6280 which in turn connects via SCART to your TV. Power up the STB for the first time and the necessary evil of the channel scan beckons, this is an automated process as with most Freeview PVR's but one that took over 5 minutes with the 6280T and once complete we were missing several channels. Channel 5, Sky Three and E4 were all missing from the line up so we re ran the auto tune and after 3 attempts managed to get a full house. The unit was connected to the same RF chain that feeds a Humax 9200-T and a Sony Freeview receiver both of which have no issues getting all the channels.

Finally with a full EPG we were able to peruse the channel line up via the user interface which is reasonably done if a little basic compared to the Humax and Topfield units. There is a full 7 day EPG which takes a while to get populated over the air when you first power up, but given 10 minutes the full list was available for us to browse. Strangely when working through the guide the channel changes as you move from service to service which is quote annoying when you are just marking recordings. The actual tagging of programme to record is simple enough and the unit knows when you are trying to double book the tuners.

The use of the term "twin tuner" is becoming widely abused by makers of Freeview boxes, we think of a twin tuner as having the ability to record two things at once and by that we mean two programmes that we are not watching. The Humax and Topfield units do this but almost all other units dedicate 1 tuner to recording from the EPG and the other for pausing live TV or just normal viewing. The Sagem falls into the later category and will only let you tag one programme for recording at once. There is a live pause feature and you can rewind TV up to a maximum of 30 minutes presuming you had left the room, this seems to be an artificial cap and annoying one that other units do not have.

Continued use of the unit while testing started to show the cracks in this design, the user interface is very average and seems to lack any real thought requiring multiple button presses on the cheap remote control to bring up the recorded programmes list. The EPG when full can be slow to scroll and given that no Freeview units have series link this can be a big issue when working your way through 7 days of TV. To its credit the 6280-T didn't miss any recordings over a 7 day period and managed to get almost all of the programme material only missing the first minute of a Simpson's episode on channel 4 which started early.

Playback quality is so so, it is not DVD quality and it is fair to point out none of the Freeview PVR's are either. The Sagem is on a par with an average VHS recorder, there is some pixelation and also colour bleed on the reds and high contrast areas of the picture, slightly objectionable but nothing unexpected for a box of this price. Replay once you have worked your way through the menu is easy enough and it is quite possible to skip through ad breaks (or dull bits), recordings are presented as a big list which we guess could become and issue if you fill the box up to its limit.

Reliability had to be questioned during our review as the unit hung no less than 3 times, once during playback, once when we rewound the live pause mode to the start of the buffer and once all by itself when no recording was in progress. Each time and power down and up was enough to reset the unit but the recordings had holes in them and we were already on the latest firmware version available. Another annoyance is the noise level of the Sagems hard drive, which Sagem claim to be "silent" we can only assume they employed someone with impaired hearing to make that claim as when the unit is screeching the disk a very high pitched scrubbing sound emanated from the box. Even during recording there is a background hum.

A year ago when the Sagem 6280T PVR first appeared in the UK the notion of a Twin tuner PVR with an 80gb hard disk was a new one and at this price it was well worth a punt. However during the last 12 months the game has moved on and we're sad to say Sagem have not. Your expectations of a reliable good quality PVR are not overblown and when spending £150 you have very right to expect a more polished and competent unit. For us the Humax 9200-T and Topfield PVR have set the bar by which all PVR's are being measured and the Sagem 6280T is limboing under it.

Published - 17/12/2006

More Freeview PVR Reviews-

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