Digital Freeview Box

BatCat

Hi,
Our rescan was a failure too. No RTE in sight. We have a fairly decent RTE picture through non digital TV, but it's a pain switching from digital to non digital so we don't bother. Guess it will take a while longer for RTE to infiltrate East Belfast!
Cheers,
BatCat

energy80s

The RTE Freeview service is a test service with very little signal being beamed north. Signal fine in mid Ulster but definately not getting to Belfast. It's also in a differnt encoding standard to the BBC service, so you need a box capable of receiving 2k and 8k transmissions.

Infidel

I plan on buying a Freeview Box soon. Anyone have any recommendations (or ones to stay well away from?).
Not really bothered about features, just the cheapest one that works okay will do.

ballyblack

avoid the very basic cheap models.

Go for a middle of the road model, with twin scart connections and Electronic programme guide (EPG)

'Which' magazine recommends the following as best buy;

"LOGIK Vesa Digital TV Adapter
Price: £50
Score: 73%
The LDR V2 set-top box from newcomers Logik stood head-and-shoulders above the rest and is the only one worth considering.

It's an easy to use box with a well-designed, simple 8-day EPG. It's well-featured too with two Scart sockets for easy connection to both TV and recorder and the Scart-link feature that lets you programme a compatible DVD or video recorder via the on-screen TV listings"


'WHICH'Don't Buys
Given that Freeview set top boxes are cheap and reliable nowadays, there is no need to waste money on a duff one. Here are a couple we would advise you to avoid.

The Digihome DV940B may only be £25 but don’t buy it. It’s lacking in useful features with only one Scart socket, no Scart link and no hi-fi connection. We also found its EPG hard to use – it’s poorly laid out, shows listings for only a single channel at a time and we found the information was often out of date.

The instructions were confusing and the remote control was also poorly designed and hard to use. It has poor green credentials too – it’s very power hungry, using over 7 Watts in standby.

The Sagem ITD58G set-top box is also one to avoid. It’s a very basic box with hardly any features, so basic in fact that Sagem haven’t even given it an EPG, which is very poor.

And thumbs-down to Sagem for producing the most energy-greedy box on test – with worries about CO2 emissions rife manufacturers should be doing all they can to drive down power consumption. But, Sagem seem to be ignoring this and have made a box that gobbles a shameful 9 Watts when on and a truly awful 8 Watts when left idle in standby.