Freeview Boxes : Classic or Dud?

We bought a fairly bog-standard freeview box (to replace an unreliable one which kept freezing up) from Argos about six months ago. We pay monthly for that top-up TV thing, so presumably our details exist on some top-up-tv-database somewhere .... because a couple of weeks ago we had a phone call from whoever the manufacturer of our freeview box was, offering us an upgrade to this spiffing new recordable one for just £50. My husband, being a sucker for gadgetry, said yes immediately and it arrived by parcel courier the next day. I can't remember what make it is, but I can check when I get home tonight if anyone's interested.

oh, the topup tv thing, that makes sense. they've switched to uploading content to recordable devices during the times when other channels don't broadcast and the content is then available for topuptv people the day after, like tv on demand. as far as i understand it anyway.

http://www.radioandtelly.co.uk/topuptv.html

Top-up TV is rub-a-dub, as far as I can make out.

bought a new set-top box to watch at christmas whilst parents monopolised downstairs tv. only the bedroom tv didn't have a scart-in.

tried it on parents' bedroom tv which does have scart-in. no dice - loop aerial, even one that's amplified, doesn't get a good enough signal for digital tv. i fear this will be the same for millions of sets come 2012.

anyway, got it home and tried to use it to replace the old itv digital box that keeps freezing up (sticks on bbc channels, which meant i lost about 5 hours of recordings over christmas, 5 hours of bbc7 rather than virgin1) but the tivo cannot replicate the remote control commands that it needs in order to turn over to the correct channel.

it will, i think, let me watch one channel whilst tivo is recording another, so not entirely useless. i will need to rejig wiring though as i know have more scart inputs than i have scart-in sockets.

argos are doing a wharfedale 160G pvr thing for £75 in their sale btw

http://www.argos.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Search?catalogId=1500000701&searchTerms=WDTR160

have no idea what it's like other than the shape and the price. 8)

I think I need to get myself one of those, but the thought of disconnecting everything and trying to work that into my existing set-up gives me nightmares.

i believe it should come first in the chain, then output to your DVD/VCR/whatever, which then outputs to your TV - i think?

My OnDigital box finally died last week, so I replaced it with the only cheap crap that Tesco had. It's bollocks. Audio keeps going out of sync, and you can only pull up now/next info for the channel you're watching!

Staggeringly, neither can the Humax PVR that is tied for "best" in all the reviews. But the Topfield TF5800PV can, as it just as good, and also has firefox-esque extensions you can download to it. So that's the one for me.

I can press "guide" on the Humax and it tells me all the channels (providing it has been on for a few minutes).

We now have a cheap crap Tesco telly that is digtal-enabled, but it is total shit, can't get a decent picture for most of the channels, whereas the Humax can get a good picture through the same (not very good) aerial setup.

Mind you, all I do is record crap and never watch it.

PS: What did you end up doing, Deano? Giving up and Watching To The Manor Born?

(Portal / Half Life 2 / babylon 5 avis on laptop)

um, Teletext Extra. meant to be a 14 day episode guide but what you end up with is (virgin broadband) adverts top and bottom and room for 5 channels worth of listings in the middle = so much paging up and down.

new set top box is sharing a scart lead and a plug socket with the dvd. bit of a faff but should be ok as i should never be using both at the same time. but unplugging set top box means having to sit through 5 minutes of setup every time i turn it on. oh um. it's 'interactive' red button indicator is also eye-searingly bright compared to the last one.

So, until last weekend I had all the 'normal' channels (bbc1,bbc2,itv1,c4,5) working tickety boo through the freeview box, suddenly itv1,4 and 5 give me "no signal' or "service unavailable" and when I re-tune they've gone altogether. What gives?

Reload your channels when it's quiet and the reception is good (i.e. not during a thunderstorm)

Somebody told me that I should "empty" the box first by unplugging it from the aerial so you that when you retune you get nothing and then turning it off for 15 seconds and then plugging it all back in to re-tune again. Do you think he was having a laugh?

I mean - how would that help?

I dunno, but there is a 'replace all' option that's best. I tried "add new ones only" once but it ended up a complete mess (BBC4 was actually ITV3 and loads of other type mixups)

Looking at to-days listings I can see that would be disastrous - sitting down to enjoy Masterpieces of Vienna and being confronted with The Two Ronnies. For shame.

You'd only know which one you were watching when the fat lady started to sing! (maybe)

Miss Elaine Paige is not fat.

She's not as thin as she was.

Rear of the Year 1984.

Weren't we all.

I'm getting really pissed off with freeview. The reception has been terrible recently and half the channels have gone including C4. Someone down my road reckons it's because they've changed transmitters or something - could that be true? If so does that mean I need a new arial or can I just get on the roof and point it in another direction. I emailed the freeview website and (quelle fckng surprise) no answr. If this is still the case when they switch of analogue I am not going to be happy.

Some of the channels are reasonable. Some go into pixel meltdown every 15 seconds or so.

What to do about it? I used to have a standalone Freeview box, now it's internal to the TV, which is a drag for reasons probably mentioned above. (quick check, nope: Basically, I can't record off the freeview channels unless TV is switched on and showing *that* channel)

Well, those channels have had a big shift-around.

The one that had grrls in not much, 'vibrating' while shaking mobile phones has gone.

And "Russia Today" has begun, a news programme that's on 2 hours each day, around 07:00

There's one called QUEST that's starting in May.

Still, I'd scrap the whole thing if it wasn't for BBC4.

Official.

http://zattoo.com/

^ Shit, that's quite neat. Never bothered to check it out before. It's also a way of catching the Gaelic sitcom my mate wrote for BBC Alba (no, really) ... assuming they show it again. (If BBC Alba is anything like BBC3, I imagine it's on a constant loop).

Obviously, I won't understand a word of it, but hey.

Mine are all working really well now. I watch BBC4, E4 and More4 and a surprising number of films on Film4. What the hell is on 5 these days?

30 Rock! or maybe it stopped again

using Zattoo more and more lately

What the hell is on 5 these days?

FUCK ALL. One of the things I occasionally have to do at work is write little extended captions for the TV page -- ie pick something and knock together four lines about it for any given night on each of the terrestrial channels. The only thing that stops it being anything other than a one-minute job is the fact there is never a fucking THING worth writing about on Five. Once you've done CSI a few times, you're on to plums.

Peppa Pig getting short shrift here

also The Shield (i still haven't seen it but i'm sure it's lovely)

Five shows a lot of Segal/Van Damme movies.

Dudes, Neighbours is on Five!

(also Highland Emergency, which no-one except my mum watches)

And also THE MENTALIST which is OK, if you like watching Cracker reimagined as glossy American drama.

Zattoo doesn't appear to have any of the additional ITV or Channel 4 channels, which is a bit crap. You're probably better off forking out £20 or so for a USB TV stick or something.

Dudes, Neighbours is on Five!

Thus my point is made. (I've always hated Neighbours. Even when I was a kid. Mind, I also hate fun.)

Don't think the 2 are connected.

Rejected Neighbour spin-offs:

Bouncer's Nightmare
Bertha Goes Bananas
The Mangles Christmas Carol

and not forgetting "Hello again, we bludgeon"

> 30 Rock! or maybe it stopped again

last 2 of season 2 are on friday night.

five.tv seems to be of the same opinion as grimly, the listings link keeps giving me:

"The system cannot find the path specified."

anyway, gadget show (increasingly terrible), NCIS (increasingly terrible) and Numb3rs (increasingly terrible) are all on 5. as are L&O:* (although despite being 4 or 5 years behind on L&O:SVU they keep showing only repeats)

five.tv is one of the worst web sites ever made, and it hasn't changed in fucking years. Just try to find information about the baseball games they show. I dare you! They show two games a week. What teams will be playing? Who knows!

apparently HD is coming to freeview on or around nov. 1! hotcha

that's BBC HD, mind you - which i believe currently has about five shows on repeat and a test card

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3166/3098983708_59d3a0f7c9_b.jpg

the "x" on the tic-tac-toe board marks the exact center of the screen, fact fans

Remember to retune your boxes if you want more TJ Hooker and Ironside repeats.

Channel 4 HD coming soon too, apparently. Course, existing freeview receivers (including lots of those built into HD tellies) won't actually be able to decode HD channels, we'll need new boxes for that. (although apparently the USB DVT jobbie I've got for my PC will be able to cope with it)

You need really good reception for the HD channels. If you have problems picking up the regular channels, you'll be out of luck.

Unless this is what the whole retuning thing is meant to solve, who knows?

Doesn't digital reception become less of an issue when analogue gets switched off? Because then they can turn the power up without worrying about disrupting the old system, or something.

Remember to retune your boxes if you want more TJ Hooker and Ironside repeats

What channel shows TJ Hooker repeats?

still not got a humax

val guest as well

Down to the Sea in Ships, on very early this morning, like 3am, hadn't heard of it but taped it on spec. Whaling drama about a grandad and his grandson, full-sized boat, full-sized whales. an example of what TPTV does the best, i think.

(i'll now look it up on imdb and it'll have 6 oscars)(oh, lionel barrymore, dean stockwell as the grandson...)

Portrait Artist of the Year back on sky arts (ch11) from today. there was a special beforehand as well - PAotDecade which was a lot of the previous winners doing Judy Dench

Legend has just finished its second run of Twilight Zone series 1 and started on series 1 again. come on...

a lot of the previous winners doing Judy Dench

Who says tv has become sexless!

tptv has 'rich and strange' on 9th of november - a pre-war hitchcock i've not seen before (or, indeed, heard of)

It's great and important and jazz

think there's an early brian de palma on tptv next Friday that I've never seen.

funny things:

kes is on tptv and then on film4 the following night.

a kiss before dying also on twice, on tptv and somewhere else

Small Films documentary on bbc4 tonight. prior to that a couple of episodes of bagpuss including one i don't recognise, Owls Of Athens

didn't make the connection until the documentary that professor yaffle from bagpuss is basically cliff clavin from cheers

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0056478/

this was on tptv this morning. Anna Karina talking English in a comedy starring Bob Monkhouse and Hattie Jacques. it's after A Woman is a Woman but before pretty much everything else. it's quite bad, she's just about saving it.

(oh, it's called She'll Have To Go in the UK at least, 1962)

Bob's Burgers from the beginning on itv2 from Monday

my 12-yr-old freeview box has taken to turning itself off when i'm using it and turning itself on when i'm not

i'd upgrade obviously except there's a whole bunch of stuff recorded on it that i want to salvage if possible (no clue how tho)

the hitachi problems chatbot just laughed when i asked them abt it

some pvrs have an "export" feature that'll let you move stuff off the internal disk onto a random usb drive. mine needs a disk specially formulated and will only do sd recordings, not hd. takes stupidly long and you end up with raw .ts files but...

i fear my humax will eventually die and there won't be a decent replacement