Freeview boxes from £23.99 - Can you beat it?

alanferrier

asda have a settop box @ £23.97 and their standard guarantee is a 12 month exchange or refund plus extension of garantee to another 12 months!. I had a faulty dvd recorder exchanged today. Absolutely no quibble.
regards alan

boggs

your previous poster is a trifle to say the least,wrong about old freeview boxes, yes they are a huge saving, but.....
IF THEY DON,T WORK PROPERLY.
You have simply bought yourself a major problem.
This is not a lost cause however, IF YOU HAVE THE OLD On Digital Card [so DON'T buy one without it]
Then load the card with the set hopefully set on one of the old channels [again don't worry if you can't even get it to switch on properly - they are pretty robust especially the Knokia & Pace ones]
You should be then be able to get into either the master/original setup menu or at least the update menu..
When you have got this far you are pretty near to an almost fully functioning freeview device because [and this is where the panic tends to creep in.... the ondigital techies used to spend most of their time trying to explain the following to distraught customers]

The ON Digital updates used to mostly take place at night so simply following the instructions in their guide/guides hardly ever brought a reaction in the daylight hours.. so the obvious, leave the d*** thing on all night & it still works 'cause I've just done it for two friends

As part of this info-gathering I phoned TopUpTv AND was hugely impressed that the techie they put me through to was/is a lady so bully for the girls AND.. she practically told me word for word what I've written here so if you are lucky enough to get o'd' boxes for chickenfeed they ARE a real saving plus you may not even need to seek help on these forums simply phone TUPTV.
N.B. Should it become necessary I could of course copy/lend Martin the instructions I have which have as already stated been well tested on both Knokia & Paces boxes old & new.
N.B. 2, Perhaps I should also point out, it might seem a good idea to buy a TUPTV card for a box lacking the original but no that didn't work 'cause I know two people who tried & gave up...
The annoyingly frustrating thing is once you get your old box functioning properly then insert the TUPTV card it marries superbly with the box, hardly suprising as they specifically designed it to do so using I believe the old o'd' data which rurmour has it they did actually buy, so why they do not allow/enable their card to perform the original functions seems on the face of it a considerable oversight
Anyway - hope that lot helps.

Raj27

Sagem Freeview at Woollies for £24.99

iansp

This cracking little box (with a TopUpTV slot) is going instore in Currys.Digital for £29.99

Rebob

I would not recommend the cheap duraband one from asda. This is the third box since christmas and it is going back tomorrow, where as the fergusen one that was rather pricey is still working well after about 2 years so I do think you get what you pay for

lolly5648

iansp wrote:

This cracking little box (with a TopUpTV slot) is going instore in Currys.Digital for £29.99

Could someone please tell me what a topup TV slot is? Does it mean you can pay for extra channels?

willb_2

Patr100 wrote:

You did miss something - to record you would simply connect the single scart to the VCR and then from the VCR run a scart out or co axial aerial lead to your tv.

There is a problem with this though, in that you wouldn't be able to watch a freeview channel whilst you are recording another channel.

whaleshome2

I have previously purchased open box Freeview boxes from Richersounds. If you do not mind not having manuals (download them) or a few marks on the case then they still work and are warranted for short time. You can buy a 3 year extended warranty for £10, so still as cheap as anywhere else but with a 3 year warranty rather than the usual 1 year.

The offers are at the bottom of the page for the link below:

http://www.richersounds.com/productlist.php?cda=productlist&sgroup=FREEVIEW

BTW: As Richersounds have different prices in store compared to the web, always take a printout with you when visiting the store. They will sell you the goods at web prices as long as you can prove the price.

Also Richersounds provides special offers to anyone registered for emails on their website.

:j

iansp

lolly5648 wrote:

Could someone please tell me what a topup TV slot is? Does it mean you can pay for extra channels?

It does - it also means that the box can be used for any future card-related services

https://www.topuptv.co.uk

willb_2

mrsausages wrote:

Could you explain why two is such a benefit for a technical thickie?

Thanks,

Peter.

With two scart socket you can plug one scart lead into the back of the TV, and the other into your VCR. That way you can:
a. record programs from freeview channels on your VCR, and
b. watch a freeview channel, even while you're recording another (non-freeview) program.

With one scart socket, you could either plug the lead into the TV (so you couldn't use your VCR to record any Freeview programs) or plug the lead into your VCR (so you couldn't watch Freeview if you were recording something else).

In the days of On-Digital, most of the set-top boxes included a PROPER RF-out connector, so your coax leads went:
1. from your aerial to the set-top box
2. from the set-top box to the video recorder
3. from the video recorder to the television.
You then tuned a channel on your video recorder and your TV to the 'set top' channel (usually somewhere close to Channel 5).

You could then watch a freeview channel whilst recording something else (albeit with a slightly poorer picture and sound quality).

Sadly, apart from some high-end models, I don't think set-top boxes include this feature anymore.

Will

PS. Well, finally, some manufacturers have realised that we might want to record one freeview channel whilst watching another and have brought out TWIN-TUNER set top boxes. Only took them 10 years ....