Hard News: Speaking Freely
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That $250 set top box Russell linked to is a web-purchase only offer that ends today! Get in quick if you want it.
Seeing as I wont be buying a New TV any time soon, (Warehouse 29" glass tube telly) and get a perfect picture on TV1-2-3, close to perfect C4, slightly fuzzy but watchable prime and too fuzzy to watch Maori...
Will the $250 HD terrestrial signal be visibly better on my (3 year) old telly than the $180 satellite receiver's non-HD signal? (I have an unused dish on the roof, so either will work for me)
Cheers for any advise...
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Oh yeah..... the zinwell's had a bad rep when first on the market... has this been overcome with time?
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Seeing as some people on this forum seem to know quite a bit about this stuff, I have a question about the TVs with integrated freeview in them. Its probably a stupid question, but I am a total tech novice :)
If our freeview decoder is built into the TV, how can you record in HD onto an external harddrive or dvd recorder?
We had thought we needed to get an external box which does all the HD/freeview stuff, and then pipes it into the harddrive/dvd recorder so we can tape freeview in HD, and then onwards into the freeview compat TV.
If the decoder is inside the TV, how does the dvd/harddrive recorder get the decoded HD freeview signal?
Thanks
Andy C -
My sweetheart watches a fair bit of tv - me not so much - and we were discussing the possibility of upgrading from our current set-up by getting a big ol' 46" LCD screen with HD (not sure if they even make them without HD) and getting a MySky HDi subscription.
It is bound to be better than the cruddy UHF we get at the moment. The free-to-air stuff on 1, 2 & 3 gets reasonable reception but everything else is shonky. I suspect because we live behind a ridge in the Waitakeres with no direct line-of-sight to the main broadcast tower on the Wiataks or the SkyTower.I have been led to believe that we might get a good price on a "big tv" (as above) but I am not sure about the quality of reception because of our location. Switching to digital and/or satellite should fix that, I guess.
Does anyone have any firm recommendations? Bearing in mind that we are non-techies (proto-Luddites, in truth) we need something that is easy to install & maintain and that will be minimal hassle with a reasonable future-proofing scenario.
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Andrew - not all Freeview boxes are also DVRs/PVRs (in fact I'm not sure any are yet - Russell's article, in part announces what are probably the first ones) - most just replace the analog channel tuning with digital tuning
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Andrew - not all Freeview boxes are also DVRs/PVRs (in fact I'm not sure any are yet - Russell's article, in part announces what are probably the first ones) - most just replace the analog channel tuning with digital tuning
I was more thinking about dvd/hd recorders not related to freeview.
I guess the question is:
If i were to go and buy a tv and hd recorder this week, if i get the one with the freeview decoder built into the tv set, can I record my freeview hd programs on the hd recorder in HD, so that when I watch them again they are in HD?Or does the dvd/hd recorder just record whatever turns up, and it would be decoded on the way back into the TV when watching the program i recorded on the dvd/hd recorder?
Basically we want to buy something which lets us
1. watch hd tv live and in hd
2. record shows in hd so when we watch them later they will also be in hdThanks
Andy C -
If the decoder is inside the TV, how does the dvd/harddrive recorder get the decoded HD freeview signal?
If it's like this puppy, there's old-school video out on the back of the set -- although it won't be in HD, of course.
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I use an EyeTV Diversity in Britain to watch Freeview. No HD yet. Elgato, who make EyeTV, are the best company I've dealt with in the UK, although it turns out they're not British but German, so no surpise there.
What makes the EyeTV shine is the software. Paired with 24" iMac it's second to none and can even stream recorded TV to my iPhone, which is handy in bed. Especially good for blogging clips from TV too, with a bit of help from QT Pro..
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If our freeview decoder is built into the TV, how can you record in HD onto an external harddrive or dvd recorder?
We had thought we needed to get an external box which does all the HD/freeview stuff, and then pipes it into the harddrive/dvd recorder so we can tape freeview in HD, and then onwards into the freeview compat TV.
If the decoder is inside the TV, how does the dvd/harddrive recorder get the decoded HD freeview signal?Hi Andrew,
In my case, no, it can't be done. With the Sony KDL40V-4000, the integrated digital tuner is fantastic, but the TV cannot output the digital channels to be recorded. Thus I can't record TVNZ 6 and 7, nor can I record HD programming (even if my recorder would support it) from the TV's built in tuner.
So...1. watch hd tv live and in hd
2. record shows in hd so when we watch them later they will also be in hd1. Yes
2. No.So I am looking in the future to a PVR with it's own independent dual digital tuners that can record full HD programming, and then play back via HDMI the full HD goodness.
But at this stage anything I record is in SD using the Analog tuner of my HDD recorder. -
Basically we want to buy something which lets us
1. watch hd tv live and in hd
2. record shows in hd so when we watch them later they will also be in hdYou should really wait for the new Zinwell official MyFreeview HD box, and not buy a set with integrated tuner, then. Output of the true HD content is controlled via HDMI to only go to approved devices. I guess you'll save about the cost of the box by buying a non-integrated TV -- and I'd expect there to be bundles in December.
Unless ... I'm wrong. Anyone know for sure?
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What makes the EyeTV shine is the software. Paired with 24" iMac it's second to none and can even stream recorded TV to my iPhone, which is handy in bed. Especially good for blogging clips from TV too, with a bit of help from QT Pro..
I think you've sold me -- that confirms my impression of the software and support for Eye TV.
Damn shame it's gonna make a $400+ hole in my bank balance. And then there's the way my hard drive is going to fill up ...
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On Windows the software is a complete PITA, it's fairly unreliable, requires registration that locks it to the PC and all that proprietary malarkey. Stephen Judd reports that the latest version of Ubuntu shows TV perfectly well in VLC Player though, so that's cool.
Is that so? We've been mucking around with doing a complete switch to Linux in our household, but the TV card is the one thing that won't work properly. If the latest Ubuntu release has fixed that, it's excellent news.
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So I am looking in the future to a PVR with it's own independent dual digital tuners that can record full HD programming, and then play back via HDMI the full HD goodness.
As a bonus, you should also be able to watch one channel live on your integrated tuner while you record two others on the PVR.
On a couple of occasions, we're recorded two channels while we watched a third on the MySky HDi, which has three tuners now active. But that's just silly.
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Eye TV... wish it all away.
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I wonder if economic slowdown will affect the sales of what are after all discretionary purchases of luxuries.
I guess most gadget geeks work in IT, so it'll really only be an issue if the IT industry turns down. Which in turn hinges on whether the $3bln of pork (sorry, visionary broadband funding) gets signed off by our new masters.
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Were Eye TV the HD version of The Nixons?
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one extra tuner is a must, one extra per TV (for a PVR that supports multiple TVs) is better.
I once lived with a 4 tuner/1 TV PVR for a while and only ran out of tuners once ....
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Were Eye TV the HD version of The Nixons?
Yeah. Before it was just basement static.
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I once lived with a 4 tuner/1 TV PVR for a while and only ran out of tuners once
Is there a single poster in this forum who is not married to a TV reviewer? Where do you find all this simultaneous stuff to watch on TV?!
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Great post and discussion. As an CE manufacturer insider, it's interesting to note that the bugs and problems involved with handshaking via HDMI between different components are significant. Particularly in the US where full home integration is more advanced that anywhere, many installers are voting for video at 720p/1080i via component video as a best solution.
Secondly, on a recent business trip to NZ, it was fascinating to see how well informed about high-def many people are. The Dick Smiths store in Mt. Wellington deserves special mention. Some of the retail staff are way onto it. Apaprently, Blu-ray Disc is poorly priced for the NZ market.
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yeah HDMI sucks badly (for lots of reasons, not just the copy protection - but a lot of them caused by the copy protection)
As I said before I design DVRs for a living - I had a 4 tuner satellite box in the US as part of a company home trial, from memory it was Sun night and we were recording The Simpsons, The Sopranos, Sex in the City and Law and Order - at which point someone wanted to check the news (4 recordings and 1 live but only 4 tuners) - see perfectly reasonable
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Lots of great responses to tech-y questions. Great to see the community helping each-other out...
I'll just ask my one again incase it got lost inside the larger comment...
Will the $250 Freeview-HD set-top box give noticeably better pictures than the $190 non-HD Freeview-satellite box when viewed through a 29" glass-tube TV?
Cheers.
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"As I said before I design DVRs for a living - I had a 4 tuner satellite box in the US as part of a company home trial, from memory it was Sun night and we were recording The Simpsons, The Sopranos, Sex in the City and Law and Order - at which point someone wanted to check the news (4 recordings and 1 live but only 4 tuners) - see perfectly reasonable"
Awesome. I can't say enough about Axium in Auckland on the integration front.
I guess Sony's influence is the core reason behind copy protection. I'm sure there are ways of working around it.
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Will the $250 Freeview-HD set-top box give noticeably better pictures than the $190 non-HD Freeview-satellite box when viewed through a 29" glass-tube TV?
Probably not. And satellite has the advantage of getting Stratos (and thus al-Jazeera) -- which hasn't yet forked over to go out via DTT.
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Cheers Russell...
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