which freeview?

homealone_2

i want to get my dd2 a freeview for her birthday in a few days time. am not totally convinced she wants one so dont want to spend a lot. looked in argos as i have one near by but it rambles on about digital boxes and stuff, so dont know what i am ordering. her birthday is on saturday so dont have much time but if needs by i can try for a next day delivery somewhere if a good deal. can someone help please, dont want to buy the wrong thing

jayme1

any basic freeview box will give you the freeview channels and the red button content, you connect the box to the TV using a scart cable, so you will need to check if there is a scart socket free on the TV.

something like this is perfect and you can get a scart cable from the pound shop if you dont have one spare.

to set it up just connect the aerial to the freview box and connect the scart from the box to the tv, switch on both the box and the TV and switch the TV to the AV channel and follow the set up options which include scanning for channels. from then on you leave the TV on the AV channel and just use the freeview box fo switching channels.

fwor

Do you mean a Freeview set-top box? I don't think there's a huge amount to choose between them these days, but I'd go for a well-known make if not a lot more expensive, as cheap ones can have really nasty remote controls.

You will of course need to know what type of connection she has on her TV - i.e. whether it has SCART or HDMI (it may have both). HDMI should (in theory) give a better quality picture.

And you might want to get one that can handle Freeview HD, though I'd guess that will add a bit to the price, as would adding a record function - though being able to pause/rewind live TV is IMO a very useful feature..