freeview?

TopMeTom

Ex Member
Joined
Sep 8, 2002
Messages
8,334
Reaction score
258
Points
1,329
This freeview box thing,worth it??
If so,what make of box to get??
Cheers,
Phil

straight to the point!!:p
 
My own opinion (and shared by friends) is, it's cack.If you've had a previous provider then prepare to be disapointed. I'm sure there will be people around to leap to their defence though.
 
I've got both NTL Digital and Freeview. The NTL box ****es me off because it only does 20 MIPS, so is slow changing channel, using the guide etc. It's costing me almost £20/month for the standard package which includes sky1. It works 99% of the time without the picture breaking up. Interactive is slow and doesn't overlay the tv picture (sometimes a good thing as there is no "press red", but means there's no interactive game shows etc).
I thought i'd give freeview a go because if it works I was prepared to get rid of cable and save a few quid, even tho i'd loose sky1. I bought the little Pace DTVA box. It's a great pice of hardware, does 100 MIPS and is quick changing channels, using the guide etc. It picks up all the channels from my standard rooftop aerial with 75-92% strength. the problem is the picture does break up seemingly at random, more frequent on ITV which is still 64QAM (they havn't switched their signal to 16QAM like BBC which is better signal). When the picture does break up, it makes a horrible shreiking noise through my hifi speakers which can't be good for them. I changed the cable inside the house for low loss satellite coax joined with F connectors but not all the way up to the aerial because I don't like ladders! It did make small improvement but i'd have to get a new aerial to make it perfect I think, and i'm not prepared to spend another £100 having one installed. Pace are transmitting a firmware update on 11th Nov so i'll be able to see what interactive is like, it make even make the signal better. So i'm gonna stick with cable, and keep the Pace DTVA for the couple of free music channels for now, maybe ITV will be forced to switch to 16QAM by the end of the year i'll consider dropping cable again.
 
Surely the killer app. for cable is not the pic. quality or the speed of channel changing (how slow is yours, and what speed would you find acceptable) but broadband internet. I'd consider freeview as an add-on, but I couldn't live without NTL, for all their faults, and the occasional 1/2 hour in their caller system. I just put the phone on speaker and get on with my life. Freeview and ADSL I hear you all shout? I've got it at work, it's cack too. 1/2 the speed, and many pop3 probs.
 
Freeview has enough channels for me and on the whole the digital picture quality is very good :)
 
Good for me too. Panasonic box (with a couple of glitches - see other threads). Picture quality excellent - never had a picture breakup. Fast menu system.

.Richard
 
I agree, I have to be very bored to want more channels than freeview, and where I live, it might well have better picture and sound than NTL. Just a question of the £100 then, not to mention the birds nest of wire on my rack, amp, proceesor, STB, hi-fi, network hub for street, router, vcr, I think I've got 14 plugs....
 
Well I bought an IDTV for 3 reasons

1) Widescreen broadcasts for widescreen tube
2) Future proof
3) Free BBC Channels

Ondigital was not great - only about 4 W/S channels
 
I got a Grundig Freeview Box for the upstairs TV. I didn't fancy paying Sky an extra £12 a month for an extra subscription and the only channels I wanted upstairs was stuff like ITV2/ITV News for Champs League and CBeebies for the nipper.

Initially I got picture breakup problems but a new £3 aerial lead to the STB solved that !

The picture quality is excellent, the TV Guide etc isn't too slow and generally I'm very pleased.

The only question now is do I get rid of Sky completely downstairs or stick with their £18.50 package. Until I can get all Sky Movies in widescreen and in DD5.1 (without paying £300+) then I can't justify spending £38 a month, especially when I've got a stack full of DVD's I haven't watched !
 
i'm thinking the same myself £38 for sky is a lot,when i've got loads of dvd's i don't watch,how can i find out sky prices to see if i can downgrade and still get the few channels i want???
 
Originally posted by philb
i'm thinking the same myself £38 for sky is a lot,when i've got loads of dvd's i don't watch,how can i find out sky prices to see if i can downgrade and still get the few channels i want???


You might be amazed what you find on the SKY website:)

SKY Packages
 
I've just knocked the whole NTL package on the head. I got sick of paying for channels I didn't watch, sick of the s**t customer service (I'm still getting bills for periods after I cancelled, after several phone calls and three sets of letters to various departments, needless to say the bills go straight back to where they came from!) and sick of the unreliable cable broadband service.

However, it was fun listening to one of the Customer Service reps grovelling unreservedly to desperately try and get me to hang on to any part of their **** poor package, and at the end of all that I still said no! They must be pretty desperate for customers now people are going back to BT.

Anyway I purchased a Panasonic TUCT 20 freeview box, which I don't pay £40 - £50 a month for, transferred my telephone back to BT and have just hooked up to OneTel ADSL broadband (highly recommended) which beats NTL cable hands down, it's about twice as fast, doesn't hang and the modem is about a quarter of the size of that NTL surfboard suitcase AND they give you the modem for free!! I calculate that I have saved about £30-£40 a month knocking NTL on the head. Not bad eh!

AJ
 
Ive fitted quite a few free to air STBs , the one to steer clear of is the Pace , the connections are a joke , the Grundig and Nokia seem the best.
 
Originally posted by installer09
the one to steer clear of is the Pace , the connections are a joke , the Grundig and Nokia seem the best.
Has the Grundig started outputting RGB recently then?

I find the Pace to be excellent. The connections are limited, but picture and sound quality are superb in RGB and the menus are very responsive.
 
Yes the Grundig does output RGB , I have quite a few customers that have bought the Pace then ended up having to change it when they found the connections were so bad , one of my suppliers wont even stock them any more.
 
Why do you say the connections are "bad"? You mean "limited" right? Because you only get one scart?

Also, just to be clear, we're both referring to the Pace DTVA here and not reincarnated onDigital/ITVDigital boxes?
 
Yes im talking about the Pace DTVA there Ondigital boxes were very good , probably the best of the bunch , I have two here that have worked faultlessly for 2 years.
 
Maybe we could just sort out the priorities here...

I have two DTT boxes - a Nokia Mediamaster and the small PACE FTA box.

The Nokia has a full set of connecting sockets to drive most sets of kit, but's slow and unstable at times, even with 80 - 90 per cent signal strength.

The PACE was intended to plug straight into into a TV with a spare SCART socket on the back - not a big sophisticated set up - and it does that superbly.

It's fast, stable and does all I could ask.

You pays your money and takes your choice and there's no point in knocking the PACE for something it wasn't mean to do.

Mine is feeding a VCR/TV combi for which it's absolutely ideal...
 
Originally posted by cybersoga
It did make small improvement but i'd have to get a new aerial to make it perfect I think, and i'm not prepared to spend another £100 having one installed.

The aerial is my biggest concern about Freeview. It is one of those ones in the loft/attic. I can afford to get the STB, but I don't want to have to find another £100 for a new aerial.

Does anyone have any experience of Freeview through a loft aerial?

Thanks

BJ
 
After having Sky come by three times with a silver box, I gave up on them. I know what the contract says, but I paid a small fortune for my BLACK DIGN case, so I am not about to put a silver box next to it......

I figured, I'd try the FreeView route, and picked up one of these:

http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/tv_adapters.htm

Cost a bit extra to get the USB connection as well as SCART/composite, but I am very pleased so far :)

BJ (the 1st :) )
 
I have fitted loads of loft aerials for free to view digital and they have worked fine , it all depends on where you live . But you need to use a good wide band aerial with a balun , and an approved copper screened down lead.
 
BallJoint,

You can also try an indoor aerial if the reception in your area is strong enough. Argos sell some ones which work with Freeview.
 

The latest video from AVForums

Is 4K Blu-ray Worth It?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom