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Thomas Haring
TELE-satellite
Test Center
Austria
48
TELE-satellite International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine
— 1 -12/2012
—
www.TELE-satellite.com
Living room compatible receiver with all the
necessary everyday features. Stable and
sophisticated software that functions without
any problems.
The Info bar should show the EPG data from
the current and upcoming program.
Expert Opinion
TURKSAT at 42° east as well
as relatively weak signals like
those on BADR at 26° east
that flirt with the thresh-
old level of the receiver. In
both cases the HDS275 was
able to handle the requested
tasks and left us with a very
favorable impression. SCPC
reception was interference
free starting at 2.0 Ms/sec.
and signals with a C/N of 5
dB could be displayed with-
out any large dropouts.
The HDS275 is further sup-
plemented by an integrated
teletext decoder (that also
functioned correctly in our
tests) as well as five video
games (Box Man, Tetris, Hit
Rat, Go Bang, Sudoku) to help
pass the time during those
long commercial breaks.
Since the manufacturer is
constantly at work improving
the HDS275’s software, any
updates that become avail-
able can be uploaded into the
receiver either via the exter-
nal storage device or directly
via satellite.
All in all, we had a lot of fun
putting the Panodic HDS275
through the ringer. It is an-
other excellent example of
a successful concept that in
this case involves not only
the miniaturization of the re-
ceiver and remote control,
but also its menu operation.
either a grid showing seven
channels or it can be limited
to the complete EPG display
of a single channel. Natural-
ly, timer entries can be pro-
grammed directly from the
EPG. This helps to guaran-
tee that you won’t miss that
blockbuster movie or that
next installation of your fa-
vorite TV series.
A total of only ten timer
entries can be filled; it would
be nice if the manufacturer
could improve this number
to 20 entries or perhaps even
more.
As soon as an external
storage device is connected
via the USB 2.0 port, the
receiver can begin record-
ing SD as well as HD chan-
nels. During a recording, the
channel list is reduced to the
number of available channels
and since the receiver only
has one tuner, it would be
those channels that are on
the same transponder. While
it’s not possible to record two
channels at the same time, it
will quite happily record one
channel and let you watch
another channel live. It will
also let you watch a prere-
corded program while re-
cording another program.
Overall we thoroughly en-
joyed the PVR features. But
there’s more. As you would
expect with any namebrand
receiver, the Panodic box
uses the attached storage
device to not only record and
play back TV and radio pro-
grams, it also serves as the
storage device for the MP3
jukebox, the picture viewer
and the media player.
All of these functions were
conceived by Panodic with
great detail. The MP3 player,
for example, can automati-
cally recognize integrated
cover art for a song and then
display it. The media player
supports the DivX (AVI),
VOB, MPEG and TS formats
and can also process full HD
content effortlessly.
As is standard during our
tests, the HDS275’s tuner, a
Sharp S7HZ7306A, also had
to undergo strenuous tests
such as with narrowband
SCPC signals like those on