Once high-end luxury items, satellite receivers with two tuners are now fairly common. The feature tends to go hand-in-hand with an integrated HDD, so that one channel can be viewed while another records. Some receivers - notably the Sky - have the HDDs built in; others (often free-to-air or CI-upgradable types) can be fitted with the drive of your choice.

The TF6060CI, however, falls into neither scamp. There's no IDE or SATA interface inside the unit, or a USB port for external drives. In this case, the two tuners are used to provide nothing more than a picture-in-picture facility.

In other words, one channel (received by the second tuner) can be monitored within a 'window' that overlays the main picture (from the first tuner). That you can do little more than this is a wasted opportunity. It's almost as if Topfield's engineers were planning a twin-tuner PVR, but ran out of time.

To the outside world, the TF6060CI presents a pleasant albeit functionally styled fascia, which is freed of clutter. The only visible control is a standby button; there's also a large fluorescent display that gives you the current channel's name and number - some other information (radio/TV mode in use, for example, plus the current time in standby).

Lower the flap that dominates the right-hand side of the front panel and you'll find some essential operating controls (channel/volume/menu access) and a pair of CI slots. Above this is a card slot, but it's just an empty slot in this model, so if you're looking for firmware emulations of expensive CAMs, then you're advised to look elsewhere.

Interestingly, there's what looks like a HDD interface, but the relevant components are missing (could our earlier assumption have some basis in truth?). Although the case is far from densely packed, the TF6060CI runs surprisingly warm.

This receiver is well-specified in connectivity terms, though regrettably, you can't send one channel to the TV Scart and another to the VCR Scart for recording.

In the main menu, you'll find a 'system setting' option for setting parameters like AV output, parental control, clock, languages, OSD transparency level and even the type of onscreen transition experienced when channnels are changed (a straight 'switch', fading or freeze).

Timer out of place

Overall, these menus are reasonably well-organised, but for some bizarre reason, the VCR timer is grouped here. Before you get this far, though, your dish/LNB arrangement needs to be specified and channels found. This is the responsibility of the 'installation' submenu. The presence of two independent tuners makes configuration slightly unusual.

For each tuner, you have to specify LNB details, whether DiSEqC is used, and whether they're separated or looped through with a jumper cable (if the latter is chosen, then Input 1's settings take precedence). You can then automatically search for channels; free-to-air only, encrypted only or all channels (network search is also possible).

But what about more advanced searches? Sadly, blind-searching is not available. Manual searches allow you to concentrate on single transponders, which can be edited or defined manually with an installation-menu 'sat/TP edit' option. Polarity, frequency and symbol-rate can be entered here. In the third 'advanced' mode, you can also enter service PIDs.

Channel databases can be 'copied' between the two tuners - useful if you're using a motorised dish and dual-output LNB. On which subject, DiSEqC settings (1.2/1.3/USALS are supported) are independent for each tuner. In theory, you could have two different motorised dishes.