Centrex Technologies CTDV400HD

Centrex's CTDV400HD brings crystal-clear high definition digital television straight to the user. With a compatible television, resolutions of up to 1920 x 1080 are possible.

The CTDV400HD is a lot larger than Centrex's SD receiver, the CTDV100. The back panel is intimidating at first, sporting a number of connections and switches. Once figured out, though, the CTDV400HD offers a multitude of connection options, including composite and DVI.

The remote control is well laid out and marked, with a row of coloured buttons at the bottom of the remote providing various functionality, depending on which menu the user is currently accessing. A few functions are missing from the remote, although the menu system does provide access to everything except resolution changes.

A full scan on the Centrex takes no longer than two or three minutes, and brings up a wide variety of regular broadcast channels, high definition channels, extra channels, datacasts and radio stations. Unfortunately for the user, however, there's no way to alternate between just TV or just radio, which makes flipping up or down through channels an unnecessarily tedious process. The favourites system does offer a viable solution to this, allowing different sub-categories in the favourites menu to be created.

While a lot of the features on the CTDV400HD may be hard to use at first, being poorly integrated or difficult to find, once established, Centrex's CTDV400HD performs as a high-quality digital TV receiver.