Freeview boxes

As long as you have a decent aerial and you are currently on terrestrial tv it should be an improvement.

You also get the advantage of interactive (if you see that as an advantage!), widescreen (if you have a suitable telly) etc.

If, like me, you get one for the portable tv and only have a portable aerial, be prepared for lots of frustration. There's no ghosting or noise etc, but lots of digital distortion and freezing pictures if your reception is not absolutely right.

I've tried signal boosters as well but nothing really works.

Regards

Mark

1. Check you have a digital signal in your area.
2. Install a digital TV roof aerial (anout £75 all in).
3. Buy a Pioneer DVR440HX - £270 from Amazon - a brilliant machine which gives you freeview, a more than big enough hard disk drive, and a DVD recorder (and CD player/ recorder) all in one box. Audio out to your Naim preamp and you're sorted!

http://www.freeview.co.uk/

You can type in your postcode at the above link to see if you are "Freeview ready"

For the price of a Freeview box nowadays there really isn't any excuse not too!!!

OK - I'm ready!

Will try a cheap box and see how it goes - fancy a bit of Film 4 !!!!

Thanks

Please bear in mind that the Freeview postcode checker is famously innacurate.
Top Up TV are just launching a new service called Anytime whereby 100 programmes are downloaded to your (Special and expensive if you already have a hard drive Freeview box) digi box overnight. Just more info for you.

Tony

Try the Digifusion 100, it's the Lancia Delta Integrale of HDD freeview boxes. When it works it's brilliant, stunning even, which in fairness it does most of the time, (after you thow away the cheap power supply it comes with and buy a decent after market one). When it doesn't it's just like an italian sports car, or an italian woman, come to that.

Fisbey

I bought a cheap box, Matsui I think. It is awfull. Keeps freezing, then I have to get on my hands and knees to switch it off for 30 secs. The cheap ones are a false economy.

Regards

Guy

I bought a Topfield the other week. Really good box. There's a good community providing additional software that can be installed to the box to do a variety of different things.

Can record 2 channels whilst you watch something you've already recorded or, even possible to record 2 channels whilst watching another channel (as long as it's on the same mux as the channels you're already recording).

Just my 2 pence worth.

Steve.

quote:

Originally posted by GuyPerry:
Fisbey

I bought a cheap box, Matsui I think. It is awfull. Keeps freezing, then I have to get on my hands and knees to switch it off for 30 secs. The cheap ones are a false economy.

Regards

Guy

I agree. Had 2 Nokia boxes give me endless trouble before I switched to a Sony.

quote:

Originally posted by GuyPerry:
Fisbey

I bought a cheap box, Matsui I think. It is awfull. Keeps freezing, then I have to get on my hands and knees to switch it off for 30 secs. The cheap ones are a false economy.

Regards

Guy

We bought ours a year ago and the Toppy really is a revelation. We rarely watch 'live' TV and when I get round to it I'll reload the Jags keyword search software.
There are rumours that the Topfield can be modified at some point in the future to run the Top Up TV Anytime service.

Tony

Is there a good quality freeview box without harddrive? All that is available round here is cheap as chips ones which are shite. I had to throw one out the window because it kept crashing. The one I have now the remote is unresponsive you have to really deliberately press the buttons to get anything to happen and is also shite.

It just seems they are all cheap shite, or cheap shite with a harddrive on making them more money.

My experience is that the Topfield models, with or without hard drive, are the way to go. I have one of each and they're both excellent products, no glitches or stuffing around, they just work.

I'm on my fifth; two Humax and two Phillips and now a Sagem. Sagem doesn't freeze and works really well.
Keith

Completely agree about the false economy of cheap boxes - our Philips one (which was circa £40 freezes almost daily and about twice a month loses all the channels taking about 5-10 minutes to reset itself). It is very boring and if I watched more TV than I do, I would certainly have replaced it by now. That said, picture is vastly improved over analogue.

regards, Tam

My first was a Humax - it was awful - even managed to get sound & picture out of synch on some channels including channel 5!!

Some would call me an idiot but I replaced it with a Humax having twin tuners and 160gb hard drive.

It is brilliant - has saved me alot of time instead of watching films I just recorded them instead! Trouble being I've now filled the hard drive and may have to consider watching some of the rubbish films I recorded!!!

Apart from my incompetence I would recommend this Humax to anyone - very good channel guide compared to a Panasonic one I saw recently.

Peter

I too have the Philips box on the TV in the bedroom. Utter, utter crap. It freezes at least once a day and loses a few channels overnight (mainly Channel 5 and BBC4).
It will be flying out of the window as soon as I identify a replacement. I have thought of buying a DVD recorder with an inbuilt digital section but am worried similar problems may persist, rendering a more expensive box annoyingly useless.
Regards,
Steve O

quote:

Originally posted by Steve O:
I have thought of buying a DVD recorder with an inbuilt digital section but am worried similar problems may persist, rendering a more expensive box annoyingly useless.
Regards,
Steve O

I have a Sony DVD recorder, that has a built in freeview tuner and an Electronic Programme Guide, no hard disc though, it records straight to DVD. It's not the easiest machine to operate and seems to suffer badly from cutting of the front or back end of pre-set programmes, very annoying. Does anyone know what happened at the end of Hiroshama Mon Amour, did the french heroine return to france to confront her demons, or did she stay in Japan with loverboy ?

quote:

Originally posted by Diode100:
It's not the easiest machine to operate and seems to suffer badly from cutting of the front or back end of pre-set programmes, very annoying.

Although I'm not familiar with your Sony, this sounds like a problem with "Auto Padding" on timer recordings i.e. starting & stopping a few minutes before and/or after the scheduled transmisssion times. This can cause problems if your timer is set to record consecutive (or overlapping) programmes.

If the Sony has this feature, have you read the instruction manual to see if it can be disabled or adjusted ?

The Humax 9200 DVR (which is otherwise a brilliant machine) suffers from this but there are ways to overcome it.