Freeview boxes from £23.99 - Can you beat it?

bagand96

iansp wrote:

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

Yes it is a great box for that price. It is made by Access Devices, and carries the Digital Tick Logo.

The Digital tick logo is something to consider. This is a standard that has been agreed for Digital Television in the Uk and only products that conform to these standards are allowed to carry it.

Many of the cheaper boxes don't have it. They will still work fine and give you Freeview, but at some point in the future you could run into problems.

A good example is recently Teletext upgraded and changed some of their service. This caused havoc on many boxes that DIDN'T carry the logo. My house has two boxes, one has the Digital Tick logo, this worked flawlessly throughout and handled the teletext changes fine. The other one is a cheap £25 box, this refused to work with Teletext at all after the changes and just crashed everytime you tried to use it. Eventually Teletext made a lot of changes their end, and some box manufacturers made updates to their boxes and all is ok again.

But it is worth remembering that service providers (channels, teletext etc) only have to comply to Digital Tick regulations, they are under no obligation if they make changes that your non-Digital Tick box can't support.

Check the Digital Tick Website for a list of boxes that are approved. Unfortunately its not always straight forward though. The Matsui box is not listed. However, that is because it is made by Access Devices as the "freeway", and they hold the license not Matsui. The same box is also called the Bush DFTA3, Daewoo DS700 and Astratec among others, but only listed under "Access Devices". That is a flaw with the website, in my opinion it should list all the names a box has been made under.

£29.99 is a great price for the Matsui though, and it is Digital Tick Approved (not sure if any of the other cheapies listed here are).

mikeos

saintscouple wrote:

This Sagem set-top box seems good value at only £19.99, http://www.shop.bt.com/invt/ccf120 but then they insist on £5.99 for delivery!

but not all digital boxes are equal. In my experience, and I've had two, Sagem are particularly prone to dodgy subtitling, losing half of the second line, and frequently changing colour to a fuzzy unreadable blue. Also the software seems buggy, even sometimes losing one of the muxes completely. neccessitating a re-tune.

You really do get what you pay for, and much more to be recommended are the Sony (£90 in Argos), or the Humax, (around £64 in Dixons.)

skintchick

Apparently my area won't be getting Freeview until 2012 so I'll have to stick with terrestrial for the time being

thamesmatt

Just to let you know I lived in an area (harlow) that didnt receive freeview at the time but couldnt have a Sky dish on my wall.

In the end I went down to currys, bought the cheapest matsui box and a set top booster aerial £19.99 with a view to taking them back if they didnt work.

It worked a treat, the signal strength wasnt perfect and mobile phones interfered slightly but I had sky sports news and that made me happy!!!

I moved to Bishops stortford (even further from Crystal Palace transmitter and the same result v watchable)

Now I live in greenwich and it works perfectly here.

I might have been lucky but buying a booster aerial to go with a set top box worked fine for me in 2 poor signal areas and 1 medium signal area.

I have also taken it on on holiday etc... and for some reason the digital signal is fine in areas where you struggle to get all the analogue signal

matt

beerbellybill999

mrsausages wrote:

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

Thanks,

Peter.

You need two scart sockets on the decoder so you can record to a VCR and also if your tv has only one you won't be able to connect a DVD player. The one from aldi has two and also a RF output so your tv can still recieve analogue so you can still watch a program on analogue and record another channel from the freeview box

The Aldi one comes with a year G'tee all for £23.99

I have one and i am very pleased

looneyleo

I run my own aerial and satellite installation company and have a fair amount of experiance of fitting freeview boxes. I would not at all recommend buying a cheap freeview box. They are less likely to pick up channels if you have a marginal signal comming in, their menu systems for navigating around channels are terrible and they are more likely to lock-up and freeze. Lets be honest this is something that most people will be using a lot, if you buy cheap you get cheap. The minimum spend I would advise is £40 and I would advise buying a branded item as the manufacturer is more likely to spend more money on the software.

With regards to Freeview coverage, the postcode checkers are a guide only and are based on information created for On digital, years ago. They do not take into account the lay of the land, and also the fact that a large proportion of people have the wrong type of aerial to receive digital (you need a wideband aerial and not grouped)

I would advise you buy a box and try it on your existing aerial, if you dont get all the channels, most aerial companies carry out free on-site quotes. Get two or three in to see if you can get freeview in and get prices. For an aerial to one point you could be looking at anything from £65-£180 +VAT.

JamesDB

bixbarton wrote:

Oh heck. So it CAN work?!!

Perhaps NTL started including the Freeview multiplex channels after I tried - it was 2years ago.

Sounds worth a go...

A word of warning - it could throw all sorts of interferance from your TV back in to the network. If you damage their equipment by doing so, there's a chance they can find out which cable is causing the problem, trace it back to you and may even bill for replacing any equipment or time spent trying to trace a fault.

To be honest, I think it'll save you more money to get a Freeview box and leave the connection alone than it will to risk getting a bill from NTL. Actually - give them a call and ask if you can do it. They might have started to put TV signals down the wire for this purpose, but I don't think it's always been that way if they have.

As for the Freeview postcode checker, Martin is quite right... go to your neighbours and ask what they get! I know so many people who look out their living room window at a new aerial opposite the road, talk about it and then buy the box anyway for it not to work. Just go over and ask - introduce yourself, say you noticed the new aerial - do you use it for Freeview?

Also - I would try going to a smaller, indie electronics store. Our local Euronics centre can tell you what Freeview is like almost down to the road, presumably because of the feedback they get from customers.

Also, most of the cheaper boxes don't include an RF modulator - simply, this means if your TV doesn't have a SCART socket the box will simply pass the terrestrial signal through and not include the digital picture the box supplies. Check this out first - most do say on the box or the back. There's two portable TVs at home without SCART sockets, so none of the cheap options will work.

I've used grouped and wideband aerials on Freeview, and I've found grouped to be a tad better. Although I know someone with a CAI benchmarked Televes and they're over the moon with it. Again - find out what's working best where you live.

Before you lay out a single penny on an aerial see if anyone in your road has had one replaced in the last year or two. Find out if it's any good, whether they use a booster/distribution amplifier and how many TVs they run from it. See if you can talk to the same company - if your neighbour was happy it makes a safer bet than the Yellow Pages.

maddoglewis

West Avon Systems has Hauppauge DEC-1100T External Mini-Freeview Receiver for £17.60 + £6.38 postage making the total price £23.98

oap

Good morning, this may not be the correct thread, but would just like to make a small point, the cheaper boxes as far as I know do not have a card slot, it only costs about a fiver more for a box with a card slot, this may be useful if at some future date you might like to buy a viewing card. Cheers, oap

Patr100

willb wrote:

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.

There are limitations to having one scart but that is different to not being able to record from it at all which you seemed to imply from your original post. Being able to monitor or watch another channel at the same time is another issue.

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