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TELE-audiovision International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine
— 07-08/2013
—
devices. This means the re-
ceiver acts as a Digital Media
Player (DMP), but also as a
Digital Media Server (DMS).
The Internet is gaining
ever more importance in
combination with TV recep-
tion, and Tiviar has certainly
taken into account this devel-
opment when designing the
α+ PVR receiver. FreeTV+
and Internet TV are the two
platforms that provide multi-
media content via the Inter-
net to owners of this Tiviar
receiver. FreeTV+ is based
on the app concept we know
from smartphone and tablet
operating systems and al-
lows creating customised ac-
cess option to services such
as YouTube and Fashion TV.
Soon 200 apps will be avail-
able here.
The same is currently true
for the Internet TV platform.
While the concept looks
promising and should even-
tually provide a substan-
tial collection of channels
streaming their program
via the Internet, the status
quo leaves some room for
improvement, as the only
channels that are available
by default are: Al Jazeera,
Dog Channel TV and the Mo-
bile Channel. A simple touch
of a button will update this
list from the Tiviar servers,
even though we were not
offered new entries during
our test. This is not to wor-
ry, however, since individual
services can easily be added
by simply manually putting in
the corresponding streaming
address. It’s the same story
with radio streams, which
sported 58 entries from a
number of different coun-
tries by default. This number
may of course have changed
in the meantime, since Tiv-
iar is constantly updating
its range of services in the
background and might have
increased the number of sta-
tions and channels available
since the time of this test.
Updates can easily be down-
loaded from the Internet to
with its three tuners really
offers some added value.
The PiP feature can be set
at two different modes (one
channel in the background
and a second one in a small
window, two different chan-
nels side by side in small
windows).
The satellite tuner turned
out to be of very good qual-
ity and flawlessly processed
SCPC transponders from
TURKSAT 42° East, which
have a very low bandwidth,
as well as weak signals from
ASTRA 2D 28.2° East at our
test location. The same holds
true for the DVB-T2 tuner
selected by Tiviar, which did
not falter when fed with a
weak signal from our small
indoor antenna. Obviously,
we also checked out the re-
ceiver’s credentials with sig-
nals from a local cable pro-
vider and – needless to say
– the α+ easily detected all
available DVB-C channels.
Let’s dig a little deeper
into the various multimedia
and network features of the
α+ now. For starters, ba-
sic functions like audio and
video playback as well as im-
age viewing are implement-
ed neatly, with the following
file formats being accepted:
MP3, WMV, MPG, MP4 (TV),
DivX and AVI as well as JPG
and BMP. On the audio front
WAV, OGG and MP3 are im-
plemented. Multimedia files
cannot only be played back
from a locally attached stor-
age medium, but can also be
requested from any network
source.
Thanks to full DLNA (Digi-
tal Living Network Alliance)
support the α+ will automat-
ically identify all available AV
sources in the local network
and will happily play them
back. For our test we used
both a Windows7 PC and a
digital television receiver as
available sources, and the
Tiviar was able to play back
all music and video files from
those two devices. Then
again, we wouldn’t have ex-
pected anything less.
We should note at this
stage that the α+ cannot
only access files from other
devices in the network, but
can also provide its own files
to compatible third-party
64. DivX playback
65. Image viewer
66. Minimised menu bar of the
Tiviar α+
67. Extended menu bar of the
Tiviar α+
68. Calendar
