The Great Digital Con

LizEstelle

Like everyone else, I've been watching with some interest/amusement the constant ads on the box exhorting us all to go digital and how it's only going to cost us a 'one-off payment of around £50' for a digibox.

Since originally they were saying 'around £100', my father thought it might be time to give it a whirl.

We checked out his reception area on the internet and it got the thumbs up. We asked the nice man at Dixons and he was enthusiasm personified.

We get home and connect up and what do we get...?

A totally garbled, unwatchable screen, that's what we get.

Problem: we hadn't read the tiny, small print which read: 'Yes, but you may need to upgrade your receiving equipment.

Dad's aerial was only 10 years old, hardly out of the ark or suchlike.

Now, three weeks and a £178 new aerial installation later, he can finally receive perfectly several hundred channels of unimaginable junk instead of the usual 5.

What a con, from all points of view.

culpepper

We had a similar thing with our freeview box.It was 'possibly' in the receiving area.It worked all winter but when the hot weather arrived we couldn't get a signal.It turns out it's harder to receive a signal in the hot weather!!

We had to get a booster thingummy for our aerial.

Still,if they are eventually going to switch off the analogue signal ,everyone is going to have to have one eventually aren't they?

frestuffwooo

tis not all a con, just a con to those who opt for an aerial installation such as you, I however opted for the cheaper method -an asda freeview box - £25.99 and a small "oneforall" digital aerial with inbuilt boooster - set me back £20 odd and what do i get full signal on all 50 odd crisp didgital channels.

amcluesent

>The aerial installer is the one who conned you<

I paid big money for a a CAI member to fit new DAB, FM and Freeview aerials on an outside mast. What a cowboy!

Suggest that being an aerial fitter could be the new goldmine that being a plumber was a few years back. Plus you can't be outsourced to India like lots of the jobs that we were silly enough to go to Uni and train for

frestuffwooo

amcluesent wrote:

>The aerial installer is the one who conned you<

I paid big money for a a CAI member to fit new DAB, FM and Freeview aerials on an outside mast. What a cowboy!

Suggest that being an aerial fitter could be the new goldmine that being a plumber was a few years back. Plus you can't be outsourced to India like lots of the jobs that we were silly enough to go to Uni and train for

i second that!:T

navig8r

I rang to check if the area in which I live could receive freeview and was told NO..A few months later I bought a Dawoo freeview box at a C Boot for a fiver and hooked it up to 35 year old aerial in my loft and have a perfect picure from the Wenvoe Transmitter so ,never take what your told as Gospel and "suck it and see"

Dave

LizEstelle

They just don't mention the possible reception/installation problems in all the glib, smart alec hype, do they? That's what really annoys me.

£50 my sainted backside...

SherlockBones

Hi, yep i too had the aerial set up cost!!! But now just over 12 months down the line my digital box 'Digifusion' Ok only £30 at the time has now given up the ghost! Yep it has passed away.
But having mentioned this to a few friends we've discovered that last week sometime around the 16th Nov no fewer than 4 different brands of digital recevier all packed up round this date???
So now we are left with getting a new ones!
Don't want to pay much have been looking at the Phillips DTR 210 £39.99 Currys. But having read the bad service reports regarding Currys i may look else where?

Has anyone heard of or had a similar problem with their box?
Can anyone offer advice on this or similar priced digital recevier?

SherlockBones.

Hotspur

Good forum for digital radio and TV

http://www.radioandtelly.co.uk/cgi-bin/forum/YaBB.pl

superscaper

LizEstelle wrote:

Dad's aerial was only 10 years old, hardly out of the ark or suchlike.

I think it has very little to do with age, it's the type and how good the aerial is in the first place. My dad's aerial (quite a large thing) must be well over 20 years old now, but plug in a digibox and it receives all the digital/dab channels perfectly.

geordie_joe

I live in an area which is almost exactly half way between to transmittors. Half the people use one transmittor and the others use the other transmittor.

You can easily see this as to pick up from one transmittor your aerial has to be horizontal and pointing north. To pick up from the other on your aerial has to be verticle and pointing south. A quick look at the roofs tells you which transmittor they are using.

When one transmittor started transmitting digital many people bought freeview boxes. Half of them couldn't get freeview, because their aerial was pointing at the wrong transmittor.

The local aerial installers were telling those people they needed a new aerial, when in fact, in the vast majority of cases, all that was needed was to turn the aerial from horizontal to vertical and point it in the opposite direction.