Digtal TV

Hi Dustysox,

Have a look at the Humax 1 TB twin tuner Freeview PVR.

It's available in two versions, either satellite dish, which you will already have, or terrestial aerial connection.

It's a doddle to set up, and, if you buy direct from Humax, the HDMI cable is included, together with next day delivery. For an extra tenner, you can have a wireless dongle, to connect with your home network, for BBC i-Player etc.

Can't recommend it highly enough!

Hope this helps,

Dave.

Hi Dave. Top man.

Is this just a "one off" payment? I want to get away from regular subscription fees especially as we only watch usual suspect tv...BBC...ITV etc.

Hi again,

Yup, the only outlay is the cost of the box itself, as Tony says, Freeview is just that, completely free.

Also, if you live in an area which is already broadcasting HD channels, then the Humax will deal with those too.

Check out the customer reviews over on Amazon, you'll find that the Humax range are highly regarded by those who've bought one, me included. (Though, as I mentioned above, buying direct, the HDMI cable is included).

It's the future!

Dave.

+1 for all the above,  especially paying Sky for crap

Mind you with the 30 odd freeview channels, its not a lot better, endless variations on cops beating up innocent drunks, antiques roadshows, property finders & last of summer wine

HD progs are well worth it, last night the African Rift Valley was stunning as was EarthFlight on Thursday. 

I have a Sony HD/PVR box that works well as it links with the TV so we have 1 remote only - 

Tip:  Look into your areas new digital frequencies wrt aerials

What aerial group will you need when the 2nd phase is done ???   HD needs a good signal & what you have now might not get the best out of HD. 

Tip #2 if you do need a new aerial - get a Log Periodic,  not a Yagi. 

These are full wideband & give a flat response across 425 to 850MHz,  

Grouped yagis are OK,  but the WideBand yagis are weak at one or other ends or even both ends 

Tip #3  more channels will be coming in 2013/16 & they will fill up a lot of the available free frequency space your aerial has & might be outside whatever group you need for 2012,  so a WideBand is no bad thing for the future anyhow 

http://www.digitaluk.co.uk/

This gives info on switch-over dates & the aerial group (frequency band) you will eventually need

http://www.aerialsandtv.com/digitalnationwide.html

These people are excellent engineers, take a good look around this very extensive & detailed site

This link takes you straight to a section with detail on the aerial types & makes recommended for your area & with difficult location variables. Look up your TX location on the alphabetical listings

I had Sky then kicked it in to touch and bought a Humax Foxsat HDR, never looked back and not regretted doing so despite the regular letters from Sky begging me to come back with a so called great offer

Before deciding on either Freesat or Freeview checkout how close you are to the terrestrial transmitter and ensure that you are not shadowed by any hills,  buildings and trees as these obstructions can cause reception to vary.  If so then go Freesat, as you have been on Sky you can continue to use the dish.  I think that Freesat will lead in the availability of HD channels over Freeview  You can also use the Sky box to receive SD FTA and FTV broadcasts but you will lose recording capability.

Checkout the Freesat and Freeview web sites to check out the channels that they are broadcasting.

As for duff Sky boxes,  Sky  do offer a service call to get a system working again for about £60, we got a brand new HD box the other week.  The repair is cheap because they want to keep you paying the subscription.

Unfortunately NOT having Sky 1-4, Sky atlantic or Sky arts means we are missing 75% of our regular viewing.

If Sky is crap then it shows how much of the rest is better ? I agree Sky is too expensive.

Wow, thank you for your contributions. I have just spoke to Sky. I was paying £29.75 for basic entertainment pacakge and multi room. I have cancelled multi room. Thus leaving me £19.50 per month. This has saved £10.50 per month, and with your advice giving me the opotunity to investigate Freesat etc.

I am just wondering if the cost of new Freeview box and or Freesat box is worth the outlay (£300ish?) as I am now paying £19.50 per month and it would take me approx 16months to get that money back. A lot can happen in that time with all current movement on switch over. I have some "homework" to do....ouch my head hurts...

more music me thinks!!!

My wife called to get the box repaired and we got quoted the £60. We declined. I called back the next week to cancel - told them if they wanted to keep me they would need to come and repair the box on their tab, which they did.

Another vote for Humax. We've got the Fox - whatever it is HD Freeview box with twin tuners and HDD. Before that we had the 9 series PVR. With me it's a bit more personal because I will not pay a sub to Sky and avoid as best I can putting any of my money into that rotten empire.

Something I've always liked about Humax is that it just works. But before we went digital TV we got the signal strength checked and had a nice new, high aerial installed. Analogue picture around here was rubbish in any case. We're not interest in PPV or wall to wall sport, so Freeview does us very nicely - once we've edited the channels to remove the really banal stuff. Radio worked well also but that's taken care of by VTuner now.

All i wanted from Sky was the sports channels,but to get them they told me i had to take their basic package also which is total and utter dross.I refuse point blank to pay £40+ per month just to watch my footie.

When will sky wise up their are 1000s of people like me who just want the sports channels @ sensible money.

We are lucky that we have a large dlining room downstairs where her indoors has a digital tv + Humax box+dvd recorder.

Our lounge is on the 1st floor with my hifi+tv+Topfield box+dvd recorder. But to be honest most nights i find  tv is just 50+ channels of rubbish/repeats so i prefer to listen to music and read.

Mista h

Humax boxes are very good, but I'm pretty pleased with Sky these days. Being an "Early Adopter " of HD, I pay rather less for my package, the usual stuff plus movies. We watch a lot of films and for that, Sky's really unbeatable (we never pay for their Box Office stuff though) A friend who's a sports fanatic loves Sky also, and can't get the range of channels he watches elsewhere.

The Sky HD channels (lots) are very good for nature programs and the National Geographic ones have a wonderful picture quality. I also watch the Sky Arts Channels where there's usually lots of music-related content; I watched an excellent programme about Rory Gallagher last night.

Regarding the hardware, the latest boxes seem fine. Sky recently gave me a brand-new one FOC. They said it was because I was a long-term subscriber but in truth it was because my old HD box had Component-out sockets which would enable me (shock, horror!) to potentially copy HD content, and they wanted it back. The nice chaps who came with the new box kindly agreed to leave me with my old box as a spare. I'd replaced the capacitors in the power supply (a dead-simple job if you can use a soldering iron) which were the main cause of failure in the early boxes, and installed a larger hard drive.

The other lovely thing with Sky is the user interface - a work of genius. (Not sure if the Freeview/Freesat boxes have caught up yet, haven't looked at one for a while). I can look through the viewing guide on the internet from anywhere and ask my Sky box to record any programs.

The latest boxes are also neater than the original ones and we take ours with us when we go up to our holiday home - the satellite feeds are fitted with quick-release ends- & just plug it in, complete with viewing card.

Dusty

Before you cancel Sky check if there are any channels not available on free view that you MUST have access to. I personally need to watch cycling on eurosport, so I must subscribe to Sky or Virgin. I also use catchup TV a lot.

I switched from Sky to Virgin a couple of years ago. Sky didn't collect the box, Sky gave it to me.

It is still hooked up to the dish and I'm able to view a lot of channels available on freeview and a lot more besides. I mainly use it wto watch world news channels not available on virgin.

We've had Virgin for years now and have considered moving on a few occasions but each time I checked I found the selection of channels available free to be quite inferior to Virgin's. No Discovery, NG, History and all their offshoots. Fantastic stuff on all of these. No FX, so seriously good stuff like Dexter, Walking Dead, American Horror Story, True Blood is either unavailable or months behind.

For me there's just no comparison.

@Mista H.

You can get Skysports 1 & 2 and ESPN through Top-up TV if your digital TV can take the adapter cards.  I think it's something like £8 per channel (but don't know for sure).

Losing our analogue signal meant we had to switch, and lack of Freeview coverage means we now have Freesat and a Humax box. Did seriously consider just throwing away the TV as we watch so little, the odd film, bits of sport for me, almost nothing for my wife. Gets used less than an hour a week on average I'd guess.

Anyway I just wanted to agree with the first reply that the Humax Freesat Tuner/PVR seems excellent. Relatively simple to use and all that we will ever need if you decide to ditch the subscription and are happy with the Freesat range of channels.

Bruce

Darren,

As mentioned above, the only 'free' services (i.e. services paid for by your license fee) are Freeview and FreeSat (or FoxSat, which is simply another satellite delivering the same thing AFAIK). These 'free' services are pretty good and being expanded all the time. You already have a dish since you have Sky. A FreeSat (FoxSat) box can use the same dish with no change, and therefore minimum disruption.

Freeview is a service that comes through on the old fashioned aerials that everybody used to have. If you have an aerial, then you can go Freeview. My understanding is that currently, FreeSat provides more HD channels than Freeview, but that once the digital switchover is completed, this will open up bandwidth and the situation may well be reversed.

As you have a new more sensibly priced Sky offering, it may well be worth just hanging on for a few months to see how things change post switchover.

Me? I used to use TiVo which was wonderful, but this was analogue only and the new TiVo offering is tied to Virgin Media who wanted to charge WAY too much in my view, although their TiVo set top boxes leave everybody else's in the shade. I went Freeview with a Humax Fox-T2 1TB recorder which works very well indeed.

Regards,
Frank.
All opinions are my own and do not reflect the opinion of any organisations I work for, except where this is stated explicitly.

Many thanks Gavin B for the info

I will defo look into top up tv as we do have a card slot in the back of 3 of our tvs.

Also on the plus side from my point of view with using a card slot is that the old man has exactly the same tv as us,so when we want to watch a footie match i can just take the card round to his home and plug it into his set. That would be perfect.

Dont mind paying up to £20 p m for sport but NO WAY will i pay out  £40 +

Thanks again

Mista h

Wow, i turn my back for two mins!!!

Thank you all for all contributions.

Out of interest, the two other tv's (bedroom & kitchen) are very old and will need "cheap" free view box etc. Can you recomend cheapie boxes for these?

Hello Dustysox

Dont know how old you are and its none of my business,but the mother in law(87) had a very,very nice young man round last week from the council/daves mob ! who for about £40 boosted her ariel and updated 2 tvs. She lives in a dip(poor reception) in Swanley,kent.

Got to take SHMBO round next thurday morning and will try and get more info.

Mista H

If it's any help, a while ago now I called SKY and told them I had an old box in one room and a newer but not brand new one in another room and as they/signal were a bit flaky and as I couldn't be arsed to pay for repair visit or new ones I was going to just cancel it all...Unless as a long term valued customer they wanted to keep my biz...?

And they did...Sent a bloke round, replaced both boxes with whiz bang new, large memory HD ones, sorted out the iffy signal/cable on one of them, replacing it entirely (a long job as it's routed from one side of house to the other), replaced something in the dish antenna too. No charge for anything. But then I do pay sh*tloads over the year so they clearly saw a business reason.

I bought a couple of very basic boxes from Tesco for our kitchen and bedroom TVs. They cost 15 quid each as far as I remember and work fine although the kitchen one is very badly affected by weather conditions. It used to work fine with our old dead cheap analogue aerial. Digital's not always better you know.