Magic TV MTV3600TD

By Michael Wong

June 2010

Magic TV MTV3600TD MyFreeview HD PVR. $799

The Magic TV MTV3600TD is a Freeview certified DTR (Digital Television Recorder) from Hong Kong based video technology company Pixel Magic.

Magic TV

Out of the box this is a very stylish piece of equipment, easily the best looking of the current Freeview certified DTRs. It’s all rounded corners and gloss black, there are no controls to clutter the smooth look. The rear panel is equally simple with the main power switch and input jack for the external power supply, USB and network jacks, the usual audio/video connection options and antenna input/loop.

Inside there are two tuners, allowing the recording of two different channels and watching pre-recorded material off the internal 500GB HDD or live viewing of a third channel, provided it is on the same mux. A mux/multiplexer is a device that can send several different data streams simultaneously, over a single carrier. Freeview uses three muxes;

1. TVNZ (TV1, 2, 6, 7)
2. MediaWorks (TV3, TV3+1, C4, C42)
3. Kordia (the other channels Prime, Maori TV, Radio NZ etc.)

The Magic TV records the broadcast stream without recompression so recorded material should be exactly as originally broadcast.

With no controls on the actual unit, all user interaction is through the remote control. This is a large unit with well laid out and differentiated buttons, in a nice to hold, rubberised finish.

Being Freeview certified, the Magic TV uses easy to follow onscreen menus, with an enhanced version of the Electronic Program Guide for recording setup. The simple onscreen guide and printed quick start guide should have the Magic TV up and running in less than ten minutes, unless you run into a problem…

In my HT system with Rotel AVR and Pioneer plasma, the Magic’s HDMI feed was not happy. Basically HDMI was unusable unless I bypassed the Rotel’s video switcher and went direct into the plasma. No such problems through my handy OPPO HDMI switcher. Flashback to the early days of HDMI. Love HDMI, not!

Having managed to get a picture to my display, the first thing to do was to tryout the unit’s recording capabilities. Before long I had amassed episodes of most of the HD shows on TVNZ and TV3. It was great to be freed from the restrictions of having to use physical media. The Magic TV was so effective, that it instantly banishes tape and disc recorders to the dark ages.

Magic TV rear

Refelcted glory - rear panel of the Magic TV

Two things to note is that the advert skip function has been disabled; you can only skip in fixed ten-minute blocks and once you have recorded material there is no way to export the recordings. The good news is that this is due to change as Freeview have announced a liberalisation of the content protection protocols for the next generation of Freeview PVRs. With luck there will be a future firmware upgrades for owners of first generation Freeview PVRs.

However, the Magic TV stumbled slightly when it came to picture quality. Straight out of the box the picture was fairly sharp but the black levels were elevated to the stage where the picture could look a little washed out and noisy on some programs. This could only be fixed by tweaking my ISF calibrated plasma settings as the only onboard video adjustment on the MagicTV is a coarse black level enhancement. This adjustment was less than useful as it introduced a noticeable degree of black crush and it was not global, it must be manually switched for each channel.

AAC and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio through the HDMI connection was good with just a hint of roll-off at the extremes and a slight shrinking of the sound field.

PVR shootout

To put the Magic TV’s performance into perspective I set up a three-way Freeview HD comparison with a Freeview certified DSE/Zinwell set top box and a non-Freeview Draco 6300.

Best performer was the Draco with crystal-clear pictures, thanks largely to its ability to pass video signals at their native resolution instead of forced scaling. This is important in NZ as Freeview uses three different video resolutions and a good TV will have better video processing than any set top box. Sound quality is excellent (particularly TV3’s Dolby Digital soundtracks). Letdowns were the clunky looking (but most informative) OSD, prosaic remote and the inability to pass Dolby Digital 5.1 audio through its HDMI connection.

Next was the Magic TV with good video but the incorrect black level and the forced scaling introduced noise artifacts into the picture. Both problems seemed worse when watching live TV and reduced when watching a recording off the HDD. The Magic TV was not as open sounding as the Draco but it did pass Dolby Digital 5.1 through HDMI. It had the best remote and OSD, albeit the least informative. There’s no fan but the Magic TV was the noisiest of the three with the HDD constantly whirring away.

Last was the DSE. This was the first Freeview approved HD set top box and it shows it with forced video scaling, no Dolby Digital through HDMI, crude OSD and unmemorable remote. Video performance was a whisker below the Magic TV minus the black level and noise problems. Sound quality was a bit thin and bright, occasionally veering towards harshness. In its favour was the low pricing; regularly discounted, with refurbished units available for even less, and the inclusion of a basic HDMI cable.

The Magic TV may not be the best performing Freeview HD set top box but it’s a well balanced package with ease of use, versatility, solid construction and good looks ensuring it a place as the best Freeview approved PVR currently available.

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