Cheap Freeview Boxes discussion

BernardM

If you want to pay a bit more.
These are nifty little also cattie.

http://www.comet.co.uk/shopcomet/product/562050/TVONICS-MFR-300

SuzySF

HI i called the digital change over line as we are losing the analouge in Nov 09. The £40 quoted is for the basic freesat box with ariel. Unfortunately where we live we have no analouge as we cannot pick up a signal via ariel - unless it was mounted on a pole about 35ft high !!!! but thought it would be great to get a second system (we have been on sky for 10 yrs + its the only way we got telly) so i could watch/record other channels.

i explained this to the operative, so they offered me another sky system. at £150 plus i would have to subscribe then cancel. I said that it was only £49 advertised on the telly (ooppsss they missed that one) and that as we already had a sky card registered here they wont let us have another one.......

so the offer is somewhat limited, as quite a bit of wales does not have the digital ariel signal available - nor do we have DAB radio either.

so if they do offer you Sky package you will be better off doing it off your own back and direct it will save you £100.

i just bought a basic sky box of ebay for a tenner, our LNB already 4 sockets - we got Sky+ so its just a matter of wiring the new box to the satellite...

ARDUP

wharfedale lpdv832hdmi still available @superfi.co.uk
refurbished @ £24.42 free delivery

BRENDA_2

I have a curtis undercounter model kcr2611uk tv in my kitchen it is only 6 months old, i cannot get a freeview box to connect as the tv has no scart connection, it has plug ins red, white and yellow, so i purchased a lead with that at one end and scart at the other, but had no sucess, can anyone help me, i feel iv been swizzed

quantium

I think you need a scart lead with "video out" and "audio out" connectors. Try and get one with both "in" and "out" connectors (ie 6) and try both. One will work. The phono sockets on the tv are input sockets, yellow for the video and the others for the audio.

Ebay item 350218428670 is appropriate and would cost you £3.49 including postage

Christian_Mc

Freesat is a great way to handle the digital switchover - particularly if you live in an area of poor terrestrial signal, like I do.

However, you should note that although the Freesat Card's cost of £20 is advertised as a "one off" payment, it isn't in reality.

Every 3 years Sky upgrade their viewing cards. When this happens, all those customers who are not Sky subscribers will have to buy another viewing card.

Not the end of the world, but something to be aware of!

quantium

Christian_Mc wrote: »

Freesat is a great way to handle the digital switchover - particularly if you live in an area of poor terrestrial signal, like I do.

However, you should note that although the Freesat Card's cost of £20 is advertised as a "one off" payment, it isn't in reality.

Every 3 years Sky upgrade their viewing cards. When this happens, all those customers who are not Sky subscribers will have to buy another viewing card.

Not the end of the world, but something to be aware of!

Maplin sell freesat boxes. They don't mention this. Maybe theirs don't require viewing cards. Does anyone know?

Although £20 every three years is no big deal, it does mean that the name "FreeSat" is misleading.

KilGore_3

There is "Freesat from SKY" and there is proper Freesat (not from sky) the first uses the sky box to get all the info and display it on your telly (and needs a Sky card to get all the Free channels) Freesat (not from sky) you have to purchase your own box to get all the Fee channels.
Sky do this to a) Confuse people
b) garner your details to "upsell" all those HD movies and Sports.

I looked into getting SKy for one year, for the Cheap installation and box as opposed to paying £90 -£100 to have a satellite and box from another supplier.
In the end I did neither and got TiscalI TV.

quantium

There is now also full HD from terrestrial Freeview, but guess what - you need a new set top box to get DVB-T2. What i find particularly irritating is that retailers are advertising TV sets as "full HD" when they only have a DVB-T1 receiver built in. In order to get full HD you have to buy another set top box. What they mean, of course, is that the display is full HD -- many aren't.

Full HD is 1920 x 1080 pixels. (width x height) Even if you are buying a small second room set, you can still get full HD displays. There is no reason to accept a lesser number of pixels. These sets are no or little cheaper.

If the height figure is followed by a p it means that is progressive scan, ie 1080p. If followed by an i it means interlaced.

The latter means that you get two half sized pictures displaced by one vertical pixel. They come in sucession so fast most people just can't see the flicker. That is how old style CRT TVs used to work unless they were listed as "100Hz" as were a few of the later ones.

Progressive scan is, of course, better and relies on computation to produce the picture from the broadcast stream of digits. Even if an interlaced signal is being broadcast, the set's computer will remove the flicker. You can see this by pointing a video camera at a digital TV - there is no bar moving up the screen in the viewfinder as it does if you point it at a CRT set.

pstuart

We are currently running two HD freeview boxes, on our HD ready TV,s, upscales the standard picture and also gives us HD on freeview.

These are now available for less than £65 and are well worth it (particulaly if you have an 5 year old HD ready Toshiba - its transformed our viewing).

Thanks to quantium for bringing to our attention that yet again the english language is being !!!!!!!ised by thugs in suits (unlimited downloads on our mobiles anyone?).