I’ve had one of these Sagems for about 6 months or so and my experience is pretty much the same as yours. I’m fairly impressed with the unit but it seems to be missing recordings at an increasingly common rate.

Googling doesn’t throw up many similar complaints apart from your blog so I’m wondering if it’s a faulty batch. I’ve also been told that the broadcasting stations may be at fault if they don’t broadcast the programme’s unique ID tag. This may have some truth in it as my sister in law has a Sky+ box that misses some recordings as well.

The other issues such as noisy HDD when starting up and USB import/ export problems are apparent but aren’t my main concern.

I get serious ‘earache’ when the soaps aren’t recorded so I’m considering returning this unit if the problem persists.

NOTE
I think it’s fair to say that the unit doesn’t miss a beat when in standby. My wife normally has a pretty heavy recording schedule loaded when we go on holidays and there’s never anything missing when we get back.

John

I can hear the disc drive but only if the TV is off so that’s not really a problem.

Very pleased with the way series link seems to work so far (doesn’t pick up the multiple showings of programmes on some channels)

Export to USB is terribly slow which is a real pain. I have an Archos media player and I want to be able to copy programmes on to that so I can watch them out of the house. If I can only export one at a time and it’s going to take 15 minutes to do each programme then it’s going to be pretty painful.

No, the guide lets you flick through what’s available on all channels for the next 7 days whilst watching your chosen channel in the top left corner (or you have the option to have more channels listed and no picture, just sound). You can also ‘zap’ a channel in the guide if you want to start watching it, but this feature doesn’t exit the guide itself, so you can keep browsing.