Srikrishnak

StarHub Smart TV - Review : Home Entertainment : Video recorders - CNET Asia: "StarHub recently announced its plan to roll out a new Smart TV service centered on a TiVo-styled settop box. The latest offering differs from the company's current cable boxes in two key areas: A built-in hard drive and advanced A/V connectivity.

These additions will enable the telco to entice its cable subscribers with a suite of highly-sought after features. Among them, 60 hours of high-quality digital recording and a Live TV function. The latter enables users to rewind, fast-forward, slow-motion and pause live TV programs.

We got up close and personal with this promising service and its multitalented settop box to bring you a report on the ups and downs lest you need to convince yourself on the benefits of Smart TV.

Upside: It didn't took us long to master the simplified user interface employed by the Smart TV functions. Navigation was easily performed via four color-coded buttons and a set of directional keys. Icons of these controls with relevant descriptions were also available onscreen, eliminating guesswork and further enhancing the intuitativeness of the menu.

The marriage of an electronic program guide and a DVR was a godsend for couch potatoes. Recording TV programs was a fuss-free procedure of browsing the program guide and hitting a series of key strokes as opposed to the time-consuming newspaper scuffle. The picture quality of the recordings was top-notch, thanks to the combination of a digitized TV feed and digital recording technology.

Videophiles and enthusiasts will also be delighted to find a set of component-video and optical audio sockets at the flank of the set. These output 576i PAL-encoded video and uncompressed digital stereo sound for enhanced audio-visual playback pe"