Freeview boxes from £23.99 - Can you beat it?

MONEYSAVER_3

Fusion FRT100 Set Top Box seem to be good with 2 scarts

for £20.69 delivered

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/116278

snappy901

Woolworths are now doing a good Phillips freeview box for only £24.99 down from £34.99 and as I have seen this box in action I cannot fault it.

percyjohnb

I Have just bought a Tecnikia box from my local tesco store for £29.99 But it comes with 500 points which I will convert to 'deals' to the value of £20!!
Result, a perfectly satisfactory box for the equivilent of £9.99

cowbutt

looneyleo wrote:

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.

I understand entirely why you hold those views, but I think you're scaremongering a bit. I considered my signal to be a bit marginal, based on analogue reception, and bought a 40 quid Daewoo Setpal-based box from Richer Sounds a couple of years ago. It's worked fine apart from the odd crash.

A few months later, I bought a Goodmans GDB3 from Argos for 30 quid as a pressie for my parents, and it worked fine for them (in fact, better in many ways than my Daewoo - it crashes less, and has a free 7 day EPG, for a start!). At the weekend, I bought one of the Aldi Tevion boxes for 24 quid for my parents' other TV and it works just fine. In fact, the software appears to be essentially the same as that loaded in the Goodmans, just green rather than blue. The remote control is a bit fiddly, but other than that, it seems to be a fine box - two SCARTs, RF through and stereo audio out; what more do you want?

The best Freeview receiver I've seen, though, is a MythTV/PC-based PVR I built using a couple of Hauppauge Nova-T cards that I bought for 40 quid each. Obviously, though, this is probably not suitable for the average consumer. :-)

nemo183

I am finding it a tad difficult to come to terms with this thread.

Surely what we want is the most cost effective product? I've bought 5 set-top boxes (more TVs, replacements following storms, etc.) and I find the less I pay, the worse the product. A case in point would be the Technika STB9001 (from Tescos). Was it cheap? Yes. Was it any good? No. The remote would choose when it wanted to operate. It would need re-tuning every two weeks. Useless.

The problem is, at around £25, it's hardly worth taking back. I'd love to know how these products get made - I suspect that a buyer says "Just make me a box that just about works for as little as you possibly can".

I really do think that the big stores are becoming more and more cynical when they sell this kind of junk - they really have no interest in the quality of the product because they have calculated that below a certain price most people will junk the product rather than return it. Just great.

tin

Only one answer to the last two posts. Get the Matsui TUTV-1 from Currys for £30. It's a truly *excellent* box, it has Access Devices innards. I have 2 of these, plus a Daewoo which is almost the same, and a PVR based on the same technology. I can't be completely objective but I have had 10 or so different boxes pass through my hands (most back to the shop

If you want to get something of a feel for it's quality - you can buy the exact same box if you like from Currys with Ferguson written on it for £70, Asda will sell you it with Digifusion written on it for £60. There are Philips and Humax badged ones around as well - notable as these two manufacturers usually make their own - but I'm not sure of the prices but it's a damn sight more than £30. <edit> JL will sell you the Humax for £65.

Freeview box pricing versus quality just does not work at the moment. "You get what you pay for" is just rubbish in this market. There are actually VERY few different boxes around, most are actually manufactured by Vestel, and there are an increasing number of Access devices clones coming onto the market. Sagem, most Philips and a number of the smaller manufacturers make their own. Last Chrismas you could by a Vestel clone from Asda for £30 or from Dixons for £70. They were literally flying out the door at Dixons, and I wanted to tell everyone they were wasting £40.

The point is illustrated excellently in Martins first post. The Tevion is likely to be vestel (depends which model it is), the next 3 boxes are almost exactly the same innards, and the fourth (supposedly branded - watch this as Bush badge cheap imports the same as any no-name box) is probably the same. It's very likely every box mentioned is basically the same box with different writing on!

Futhermore the market is utterly complicated by people reviewing the boxes subjectively - signal, environment, noisy mains, manufacturing tolerances, and what people want out of a box all complicate matters - resulting in a very unclear picture for all.

nemo183

tin wrote:

Only one answer to the last two posts. Get the Matsui TUTV-1 from Currys for £30. It's a truly *excellent* box, it has Access Devices innards. I have 2 of these, plus a Daewoo which is almost the same, and a PVR based on the same technology. I can't be completely objective but I have had 10 or so different boxes pass through my hands (most back to the shop

Thanks - great post - spot on.

Hogster_2

Just bought an Akura freeview box from Makro - £19.99 plus VAT (£23.49). Excellent cheap box. Had to return two Aldi units one because of a cracked transformer and the other because there was no remote. Aldi offers are very limited and stock runs out very quickly.

1196rachel

I've had 3 set-top boxes over the last 5 years. The first 2 completely froze up and couldn't be reset. My latest one, a cheap Alba one, freezes very regularly. The remote control doesn't work all the time, despite the light on the machine indicating it's receiving some signal from the remote.
I think I have a reasonable signal, but the co-ax cable from the aerial to the box is old and shabby.
So is the consensus of this thread that I am better to spend more on a Freeview box? Are these more reliable, or is it the poor signal/connection/the house wiring (?) which make all the boxes fail?

Thought I was saving money buying a cheap model. Am I wrong?

nemo183

1196rachel wrote:

I've had 3 set-top boxes over the last 5 years. The first 2 completely froze up and couldn't be reset. My latest one, a cheap Alba one, freezes very regularly. The remote control doesn't work all the time, despite the light on the machine indicating it's receiving some signal from the remote.
I think I have a reasonable signal, but the co-ax cable from the aerial to the box is old and shabby.
So is the consensus of this thread that I am better to spend more on a Freeview box? Are these more reliable, or is it the poor signal/connection/the house wiring (?) which make all the boxes fail?

Thought I was saving money buying a cheap model. Am I wrong?

Well, at least you didn't buy a TV with Freeview built in........

For what it's worth, having read this thread and taken into account personal experience:

1) More expensive boxes are more likely to work than very cheap ones.
2) Some very cheap boxes work very well, and some are complete rubbish.
3) Regardless of it's external appearance, if at some point you have seen, however briefly, a good picture via your box when connected to your "shabby" cable, your main problem is probably not your cable.
4) It's always worth replacing the batteries in the remote as a last resort.
5) (and this maybe just bad luck...) Complete failure of a number of my boxes seems to be associated with storms, lightning, fluctuating mains voltage and power cuts. If pressed to offer an explanation for this I would suggest that Digiboxes are being made just for the UK market where we are supposed to have a fairly stable power supply, and in order to keep the price down any circuitry that would handle power fluctation has been dumped. In contrast, many other electrical products are designed to be used in a world market, and can't afford to take this short-cut. Unless anyone else knows better....?