Freeview Box

Trollydolly_2

I know this has been done before but not very recently and i thought the prices might have changed.

I want a freeview box for my living room TV but i want the cheepest out there!

Anyone know the cheapest and the assosiated probs with getting a cheapo one?

mhoc

Our Tesco had one for £35 but was out of stock so I dont know the exact details of it.

Mary

danoneil

Mine is a Phillips DTR 1500 - works great - never had any problems with it. Probably doesn't have all the bells and whistles that you can get, but for watching TV it's brill!

http://www.radioandtelly.co.uk/freeviewreceivers.html have some useful info - can't work out if they are affiliated to anybody though!

ManAtHome

There are quite a lot of reasonable and cheap ones about - link to a review site (if you can stand the garish background...):
http://www.idtv.co.uk/STBListings.php

before_hollywood

erm... i think i can help here.
the main think you need to look for is number of scart sockets:
it needs one to connect to the tv, but if your tv and video are seperate (i.e not a combi) you will need one with 2 scart sockets so you can record from freeview.

Worst problem i have heard of is reliability (usually software), trouble is lots of cheap ones are made on the cheap in turkey by a company called 'vestel'.
They make many of the cheap ones- alba, bush, goodmans, matsui, pacific and most of the cheaper boxes are vestel ones, you can identify them easily 'cos they all have the same remote.

not sure about the one mhoc is talking about- in my local tesco the only budget freeview boxes they have are a 'digilogic' which looks like a lot of the recent vestel efforts, a bush which i have owned (and is shocking) and a daewoo (which looks just the same).
my advice? get a sagem, i bought an itd58 (1 scart) from argos recently for £35 and to stick on the end of a tv/video combi it is perfect.
richer sounds get the 2 scart models in every so often and are v reasonable for the money.
The best make for reasonable price digiboxes is 'humax' but they start at about £60.
also, for box reviews head to https://www.digitalspy.co.uk on the media section link on the left, click terrestrial and click the 'box reviews link on the left (i think)
my review for the sagem is there somewhere

cheghead

Have Matsui DTR 1 from Currys and can recommend. It has RGB loop through (2 skts) which if you have a dvd and only one RGB scart enabled socket on your TV you will need to get best picture quality. Quite sensitive as well if you have weak signal.

And hurry up and get one your missing Big Brother on E4!!