Freeview HD/Freesat HD deals discussion

veronarona

TehJumpingJawa wrote: »

Returned because they are full of irritating bugs, including frequent crashes.

There are a few half-decent customer reviews on Reevoo, but I've had a cross between resigned and sceptical look on my face ever since I ordered it

HD without a PVR seems rather pointless to me. I'm going to wait until there is a £200 (or less) HD PVR that *works as advertised*.

I wouldn't have dreamt of buying a non-PVR model if I hadn't chanced upon the £40 offer. I ordered Technika's £200 HD PVR but refused delivery when buyers who'd received theirs earlier in the day reported huge bugginess on AV Forums.

The much delayed Humax seems to be the only model that's not buggy, with Digital Stream fairly close behind - and they're £300 (not allowing for variations and Quidco)

PVRs generally seem to be the buggiest technology on the market, and it particularly beats me how a huge and powerful company like Tesco can commission and put such buggy buggaz on their shelves... brown envelopes must surely be involved :mad:

Anyway, my box should arrive this morning (it was mis-routed by Parcel Force, according to the tracking, or I would have had it yesterday) and I'm dying to see how my telly looks displaying HD. I'll only use it for HD footie and a few other things that I can stay awake to watch live, so it won't be overtaxed.

I hope to be back soon with a mini-review, before the "bargain" sells out.

veronarona

pjvenner

According to Maplin

[ http://www.maplin.co.uk/media/pdfs/HD%20Review%20-%20Foxsat%205stars.pdf ]

"Delve into the Humax setup menu and you'll find an
option to switch to non-freesat mode, which makes it
possible to add every single free-to-air channel that's
available on the Astra satellite to the list (amounting to
more than 400 channels in total), although they dont
appear on the electronic programming guide. The extra
channels include CNN and Luxe.TV HD".

I'm still searching for the best deal, so I can't vouch for the quality of the extra channels, but IMHO, if it equates to ONE extra WATCHABLE channel, then it is worth considering.

JasonLVC

pjvenner wrote: »

I'm still searching for the best deal, so I can't vouch for the quality of the extra channels, but IMHO, if it equates to ONE extra WATCHABLE channel, then it is worth considering.

The extra channels are not worth getting excited over (except perhaps BabeStation 2;)). You need to programme them in one-by-one on most Freesat Receivers but here is a list of what is available :-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free-to-air_channels_at_28%C2%B0E

Luxe HD does produce stunning images.....but mostly of posh folks in their yachts or eating caviar at The Ritz. More an advert for millionaires than any proper programmes but a good test of your TV/HD abilities.

veronarona

The Technika HD STB arrived today. It set up without problems, but the remote operates my Vestel PVRs and I can't find out yet how to change the IR (is that what it's called?) channel on the remote

So I'm not going to use it tonight - fortunately there's nothing for me on any of the HD channels, so I've got time to investigate.

PQ is not obviously much better than the upscaling of SD by my Panny plasma TV, but the test will be MotD on Saturday.

veronarona

SavingSteve

Am considering buying the Technisat HDFS myself.

Thought - I was wondering if, considering the device can play video over LAN and WLAN, and considering it has iPlayer capability, does anyone know if there is a way of getting it to show internet video (i.e. Youtube) via streaming from a PC?

VoucherMan

SavingSteve wrote: »

Am considering buying the Technisat HDFS myself.

Thought - I was wondering if, considering the device can play video over LAN and WLAN, and considering it has iPlayer capability, does anyone know if there is a way of getting it to show internet video (i.e. Youtube) via streaming from a PC?

You'll probably get a better response asking on the techie forum

Nottingham_Tony

I've got an HDFS connected to my wlan ok, and can stream some media types. Mp3's are fine. The HDFS doesn't seem to support DIVX though (think its Mpeg2 only at present) so limited value there. The iplayer function again works over wifi ok, but not sure it can stream video from any website except the iplayer site.

gillian0808

Hello All,
Sorry if this is a totally dumb question but the amount of info out there is making it harder for me decide if this is the right choice for us.

Basically we have Sky+ (out of contract so free to leave) and only pay for the "basic" sky Tv package, some of which wouldnt really be missed, but we love the Sky+ functions for the ease of use.

I have looked on the Sky site and the card can still be bought for £25, but doesn't give any info if the Sky+ box will still work in the same way?

If so I would be onto a winner as the card would pay for itself in 1 week.

I am also going to post this on the Techie forum please if this is Ok Mods?.

Thanks for any advise you can offer.

Regards,
Gillian

boglesmum

hi, we recently left Sky and went for the humax recorder box but sky told us that we could continue to have the sky+ box and features for £10 per month. hth.

SavingSteve

That's right, sky charge a tenner a month just to keep thr recording.

Over a few years it might be more cost effective to buy a recordable freesat box, cost almost 200 upfront but no monthly fee.