Freeview Boxes : Classic or Dud?

i have a channel 8, sat there between BBC3 and BBC4. never saw it before last night. some local london channel. lots of pearly kings and queens and people complaining about pains in the gulliver.

need a new PVR. current one (a digistream) suddenly keeps insisting on recording two copies of the same program, at the same time, tying up both tuners. it also claims to be recording when it isn't, "Recording (empty)" it says. playback has gaps in it too.

humax hdr2000t? it says 2013 on some of the listings. things have moved on since 2013.

the newer humaxs (humii?) have smart tv like features, "freeview play", which i don't really need - the fvp series. reviews of these on amazon are mediocre, citing hmi issues.

i guess i'll have a wander to richer sounds, see what they have.

so, i walked to chiswick richer sounds* and bought a "Mocha" Humax FVP 1000 or something. got it home plugged it in and it was like My First PVR, episode guide had space for 5 channels a page and 2 hours across, finding anything would take forever.

but i updated the software and it drastically improved, UI-wise. am generally happy with it. recordings list is a mess though (like windows Icons view, always sorted by most recent first) and no user-defined folders like the DigitalStream. programme info also harder to get to.

the interesting thing is that LOADS of people are having the exact same problems i was, the forum, which i only looked at today, has pages of them. apparently sony PVRs are rebadged DS boxes and they are also suffering. DigitalUK, the governing body, seems to have changed something that's caused all the recent woe - https://www.facebook.com/UKterrestrialTV/posts/1303918016299713 and oddly the incoming signal is breaking playback of old recordings.

so it wasn't the box, and i could've saved myself 180 quid.

* richer sounds is posh nowadays, catalogue is printed on proper paper, not that cheap shiny stuff. also has a lot less in it, as do the shops. a few big tvs, more high end stuff. and many fewer people than when i went there a few years ago.

(i say it's posh but it's still at the arse-end of chiswick, past all the closed down shops, empty blockbusters etc)

Channel 81, Talking Pictures, home of creaky old British movies that no-one was or is interested in, does play the occasional blinder - tonight, they have "The Passenger" followed by "Gumshoe".

Tuned over at random last night, it was Otis Redding doing "Satisfaction"

More like it.

brown t shirt again (seriously this t shirt and the prison grey one have just gone on and on - like 12 years now)

whoops wrong thread

They had 'Bedazzled' followed by 'The Red House', way more interesting than most of the stuff you get on Film 4.

That was on Wednesday night.

'Bunny Lake is Missing' is the highlight of the schedule next week, must see, bizarro pyschological noir from Otto Preminger. https://talkingpicturestv.co.uk/schedule/

Soundtrack by the zombies as well. And great titles.

Talking pictures freezes for a second or so every few seconds on my PVR but doesn't on the TV or the other PVR. It's annoying.

London Live is another source of good old films if you can get it. They are obsessed with London gangster movies though.

> Bladerunner 2049

yeah, i've noticed the sony movies channel sometimes has a decent, recent film that hasn't been on broadcast tv before at the weekend (repeated later in the week. the above was one such (and an interesting watch, but far too long)

I think that film's tremendous! And underrated - a bit like WATCHMEN (2009) in that regard: films that fan types wanted to happen, and then people predictably slated, but that I think are terrific.

GUMSHOE w/ Albert Finney and Billie Whitelaw on Talking Pictures TV tonight at 10pm

dir. Stephen Frears iirc. it's a good one

Tonight on Sony Classics: SATURDAY NIGHT & SUNDAY MORNING

Then on Talking Pictures (new channel to me but maybe I can get it): THIS SPORTING LIFE

You can get it.

Here's a list of Freeview channels from the Crystal Palace transmitter and which multiplex they're on. Basically, if you can get any channel on a "mux", you can get everything on that mux. My HD reception is crap at times (despite being so close to the CP transmitters); we don't have a rooftop aerial and delivery vans in the Sainsbury's car park seem to temporarily block out the mux the HD channels are on. I think there might be a Doug McClure film on Talking Pictures right now!

https://ukfree.tv/transmitters/tv/Crystal_Palace

Sony Classics is showing "Son of Paleface" right now, having shown "Duck Soup" earlier - two films where a character is pictured in bed with a horse. Can't complain tbh.

Tremendous post from Mike - a level of local obscurity and quirky technical knowledge that feels like the glory days of 2003.

I shall take that memory to Sainsbury's (car park).

Last night:

SATURDAY NIGHT & SUNDAY MORNING on Sunday classics - excellent. Wonder if it's actually the best of its genre.

THIS SPORTING LIFE: my first ever Talking Pictures experience. The adverts are always followed by a lengthy trailer of a forthcoming film. All these forthcoming films are oddly far off (like, two weeks away?) and, remarkably, all seem fairly obscure, bad or uninteresting. A baffling logic here.

As for THIS SPORTING LIFE: ultimately disappointing. I didn't remember it being quite like this: overlong, increasingly self-indulgent, the kind of film where a man smoulders then suddenly sweeps all the crockery off the table. The inchoate male rage becomes incredibly tiresome and unfocused. It also seems to go as far as domestic violence - he hits the woman he supposedly loves at least twice, not to mention forcing her to go to bed with him - which is never remarked on. I think that there were, partially observed, codes of conduct on such things even then - 'a bloke who raises his hand to a lass is a bad sort', etc - and it's disturbing to see this film disregard them.

That depends on whether he's supposed to be a hero. I'm sure he's not. The title is the first clue to that. That said, I watched the first hour but it was not the right mood for me last night.

All these forthcoming films are oddly far off (like, two weeks away?) and, remarkably, all seem fairly obscure, bad or uninteresting. A baffling logic here.

I always assume they just got a job of lot of (mostly bad) British movies that no-one else had any use for.

The Fast Lady was on Talking Pictures last week but, sadly, at a time when I was working. Stanley Baxter, James Robertson Justice, Julie Christie. Directed by Ken Annakin (whose Battle of the Bulge was on Sony Pictures this afternoon). Must be 40 years since I've seen that! Probably terrible. Strangest thing I've encountered recently was a 15min performance from 1949 by a pretty awful sentimental vaudeville crooner, probably a good 20 years past his peak... someone Baker?

Kenny Baker?

Found it! Ted Lewis.

It wasn’t this clip but this gives you a measure of the man.

https://youtu.be/eg7UKFGqAv4

How is that hat staying on?

ok, not strictly freeview, but we are in old films mode.

BBC matinees this week are all Ealing comedies*

M 15:15 school for scoundrels
T 15:25 man in the white suit
W 15:25 titfield thunderbolt
T 15:25 whisky galore!
F 15:30 lavender hill mob

seen them all before, would watch them all again.

* sfs not considered an ealing comedy

I missed Villain with Richard Burton on Talking Pictures TV last night (it'll be round again) - always remember Villain as being the film the BBC interrupted a late night screening of to 'go live' to the start of the first Gulf War - felt like the beginning of the end times, then, however melodramatic and distant that seems now.

Sure, 90% of the British stuff that Talking Pictures broadcasts is dull crap, but it is a fantastic resource for anyone interested in the history and content of our national cinema. The definitive account of The Huggett Family films is still to be written!

"What are you looking??!?!!" Hard to watch "Villain" without thinking of The Sweeney tbh, but it's definitely worth watching!

Also Burton kept reminding me of Bono, bizarrely enough - looks wise.

... "What are you looking??!?!!" that should be, ffs.

... "What are you looking AT??!?!!" AAAAAAAAAARGGHH!!!

"Girl with Green Eyes" on Talking Pictures. Never seen this before. Rita Tushingham is fantastic in it.

Fairly terrible British movie from 1972 on London Live right now, "All Coppers Are...", about a 'love triangle' between Ben Fogle's mum, a cheeky chappy Cockney crim and a boring posh policeman (played by Satyricon star, Martin Potter).

... sorry, keep forgetting that London Live isn't available outside London (I think), not that you're missing much.

LOL @ the filth getting a doing at a demo outside an Embassy in the most unconvincing London street Pinewood Studios had to offer - placards suggesting the demo is about torturers being harboured in the Embassy and, er, student grants.

just discovered there's a 1974 remake of brief encounter w. richard burton and sophia loren (also on london live)

it's not very compelling

When films like this occasionally turned up on the telly - before they had channels that show little else - I always used to make a jokey comment along the lines of "And people wonder why the British film industry collapsed?"

my gran (mum's mum, who ended her days in my parents' house) once walked into the room while i was watching some old B/W movie and just thought it was the funniest thing that a young person (as i then was more or less lol) was watching this format which had been ripped up and binned in her youth. i suspect the remake of BE was ordered up by ppl who thought the same way -- the idea of TV access to very old films is an 80s thing, more or less, occasional speeded-up clips of silent comedies notwithstanding

mark s 2020 stop saying more or less challenge

Post-Krays, I notice both "Villain" and "All Coppers Are" had gay gangsters. Also Robin Askwith and David Essex had blink and you'll miss them parts in the latter, David Essex had one line, something like, "'Ere, did you pull a bird last night?"

"Performance", too, tho obv that's a different thing to a point

Connections connections. We had T.P. McKenna as a London crime boss (in "Villain") one night and as a priest trying to talk sense into Rita Tushingham (in "Girl With Green Eyes") the next.

Mark's memories of the 1970s are stronger than mine, but I would say that there was a very big cultural attachment to vintage film then -- the obvious indication being Michael Parkinson's big interviews with veteran movie stars. And a great many TV sets then were still black & white anyway!

Michael Rodd's SCREEN TEST (19701-1984) is also relevant. I hope Steady Mike's reading this now.

Koogs: BBC is on Freeview, as much as any of these other channels are.

[*1970-1984]

this thread bumping reminds me to post

Talking Pictures Tv 17:50 today
Hell Drivers (1957)
which features, in no particular order, a doctor who, a james bond, a man from uncle, the prisoner, a professional, a ladykiller, and syd james.

How about SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRELS -- are any of us watching that?