Freesat or Freeview for HD in the long run?

Freesat HD - the boxes are nearer £300!

Then you need at least a dual LNB


"David WE Roberts" wrote in message
...
O.K.

looking at various online fora it seems that Freesat may be a bit behind
the curve as regards HD.

HD soon/now involves paying Sky.
warding sign against evil
Or paying Virgin extra for the + service.
reinforce warding sign and sacrifice sexually inexperienced offering

HD later involves replacing current Freeview kit with new Freeview HD kit
(when it starts shipping).

Freesat offers very limited HD now but may well not offer much more in the
future.

So my calculation about cost of upgrading my current naff TV aerial
(probably £200 to send someone else up a longer ladder than I own) against
installing a Sky mini-dish (£29.99) and buying a Freesat receiver (about
£120 for a 12v one which we can also use when camping) could well be
irrelevant if I am going to have to upgrade the aerial anyway to get HD in
the future.

If Freeview HD is the long term offering then I have to install a new
aerial AND buy new STBs.

Why is life so difficult?
And expensive?

Cheers

Dave R

They are very expensive, a lot more than the Humax and don't support ITV
HD - I looked at this last summer.

Why not just an ordinary HD satellite receiver? Gets all the FTA HD stuff
(only BBC and ITV HD at the moment from the UK).
There's no need to involve Sky or Freesat.

On 8 Oct, 23:25, "Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:
In article ,
* *David WE Roberts wrote:

looking at various online fora it seems that Freesat may be a bit behind
the curve as regards HD.
HD soon/now involves paying Sky.
warding sign against evil
Or paying Virgin extra for the + service.
reinforce warding sign and sacrifice sexually inexperienced offering
HD later involves replacing current Freeview kit with new Freeview HD
kit (when it starts shipping).
Freesat offers very limited HD now but may well not offer much more in
the future.

Why not just an ordinary HD satellite receiver? Gets all the FTA HD stuff
(only BBC and ITV HD at the moment from the UK).
There's no need to involve Sky or Freesat.

....unless you want frivolities like an EPG and PVR. ;-)

Cheers,
David.

On 8 Oct, 20:26, "David WE Roberts" wrote:

Why is life so difficult?

Because you're trying to plan too far ahead. Think two years ahead at
most with this stuff! Buy based on what is available now, not on what
you hope will be available in the future.

btw, £200 is a bit much for a bog standard aerial. A piece of wet
string may well work after switch over.

Cheers,
David.

How big is your screen? If its kind of less than half a wall, my mate says
hd from anywhere is really pointless, unless the broadcasters reduce the
bandwidth of sd more to make it look better.

Brian

--
Brian Gaff -
Note:- In order to reduce spam, any email without 'Brian Gaff'
in the display name may be lost.
Blind user, so no pictures please!
"David WE Roberts" wrote in message
...
O.K.

looking at various online fora it seems that Freesat may be a bit behind
the curve as regards HD.

HD soon/now involves paying Sky.
warding sign against evil
Or paying Virgin extra for the + service.
reinforce warding sign and sacrifice sexually inexperienced offering

HD later involves replacing current Freeview kit with new Freeview HD kit
(when it starts shipping).

Freesat offers very limited HD now but may well not offer much more in the
future.

So my calculation about cost of upgrading my current naff TV aerial
(probably £200 to send someone else up a longer ladder than I own) against
installing a Sky mini-dish (£29.99) and buying a Freesat receiver (about
£120 for a 12v one which we can also use when camping) could well be
irrelevant if I am going to have to upgrade the aerial anyway to get HD in
the future.

If Freeview HD is the long term offering then I have to install a new
aerial AND buy new STBs.

Why is life so difficult?
And expensive?

Cheers

Dave R

"David WE Roberts" wrote in message
...
O.K.

looking at various online fora it seems that Freesat may be a bit behind
the curve as regards HD.

HD soon/now involves paying Sky.
warding sign against evil
Or paying Virgin extra for the + service.
reinforce warding sign and sacrifice sexually inexperienced offering


What do you actually want to watch on HD?
Another option is to download HD tv shows off the net and play them from a
PC or PS3.....

It's not legal , but is an option
--
Alex

"I laugh in the face of danger , then I hide until it goes away"

"2Bdecided" wrote in message
...
btw, £200 is a bit much for a bog standard aerial. A piece of wet
string may well work after switch over.

I get an acceptable freeview signal with just a flylead!
Of course it helps that I can see the transmitter from my lounge window.....



--
Alex

"I laugh in the face of danger , then I hide until it goes away"

"David WE Roberts" wrote in message
...

"Ivan" wrote in message
...
David WE Roberts wrote:
O.K.

looking at various online fora it seems that Freesat may be a bit
behind the curve as regards HD.

HD soon/now involves paying Sky.
warding sign against evil
Or paying Virgin extra for the + service.
reinforce warding sign and sacrifice sexually inexperienced offering

HD later involves replacing current Freeview kit with new Freeview HD
kit (when it starts shipping).

Freesat offers very limited HD now but may well not offer much more
in the future.

So my calculation about cost of upgrading my current naff TV aerial
(probably £200 to send someone else up a longer ladder than I own)
against installing a Sky mini-dish (£29.99) and buying a Freesat
receiver (about £120 for a 12v one which we can also use when
camping) could well be irrelevant if I am going to have to upgrade
the aerial anyway to get HD in the future.


Adrian pointed me in the direction of this a few weeks ago, so far I've
been
extremely pleased (apart from the handbook which is virtually useless)
with
its performance, it also runs from a 12 volt power supply as well,
although
I haven't actually tried it out on a car battery.

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/5321564/Trail/searchtext%3EFREESAT.htm

http://www.avforums.com/forums/frees...ni-review.html

Mixed reviews, and especially several warnings about over heating.
This was enough to put me off that particular box.

Thanks for the link, though; I hadn't realised that it was 12V.

Some of those reviews are now over a year old. I bought the Bush HD freesat
receiver a month ago and was agreeably surprised at how good the HD picture
was.

I would say that the box runs warm, but I haven't seen any overheating
problem. Anyway, as it uses basically the same power in use or on standby
(15w) I have taken to switching it off at the socket when it's not in use.

A couple of minus points, though. The Scart output is video only - not RGB,
so any recording is of pretty poor quality on my old Panny DVD recorder
(which has no HDMI input). And non-Freesat setup is a pain. There is no
auto scan - it's all manual. And I haven't found a way (a) to add
non-Freesat channels to the Favourite list (b) to directly punch in
non-Freesat channel numbers from the remote, so you have to scan through the
channel list. That is because the non-Freesat channels are numbered 3001
up, and there are Freesat channels from 300 up. So as soon as you enter the
first 3 numbers of a non-Freesat channel, up comes the 3xx Freesat channel
instead! Can't see why a software update wouldn't fix both of those, but
there is nothing on the Bush website for making update suggestions.

--
Jeff

Jeff Layman wrote:
"David WE Roberts" wrote in message
...

"Ivan" wrote in message
...
David WE Roberts wrote:
O.K.

looking at various online fora it seems that Freesat may be a bit
behind the curve as regards HD.

HD soon/now involves paying Sky.
warding sign against evil
Or paying Virgin extra for the + service.
reinforce warding sign and sacrifice sexually inexperienced
offering HD later involves replacing current Freeview kit with new
Freeview
HD kit (when it starts shipping).

Freesat offers very limited HD now but may well not offer much more
in the future.

So my calculation about cost of upgrading my current naff TV
aerial (probably £200 to send someone else up a longer ladder than
I own) against installing a Sky mini-dish (£29.99) and buying a
Freesat receiver (about £120 for a 12v one which we can also use
when camping) could well be irrelevant if I am going to have to
upgrade the aerial anyway to get HD in the future.


Adrian pointed me in the direction of this a few weeks ago, so far
I've been
extremely pleased (apart from the handbook which is virtually
useless) with
its performance, it also runs from a 12 volt power supply as well,
although
I haven't actually tried it out on a car battery.

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/5321564/Trail/searchtext%3EFREESAT.htm

http://www.avforums.com/forums/frees...ni-review.html

Mixed reviews, and especially several warnings about over heating.
This was enough to put me off that particular box.

Thanks for the link, though; I hadn't realised that it was 12V.

Some of those reviews are now over a year old. I bought the Bush HD
freesat receiver a month ago and was agreeably surprised at how good
the HD picture was.

I would say that the box runs warm, but I haven't seen any overheating
problem. Anyway, as it uses basically the same power in use or on
standby (15w) I have taken to switching it off at the socket when
it's not in use.
A couple of minus points, though. The Scart output is video only -
not RGB, so any recording is of pretty poor quality on my old Panny
DVD recorder (which has no HDMI input). And non-Freesat setup is a
pain. There is no auto scan - it's all manual. And I haven't found
a way (a) to add non-Freesat channels to the Favourite list (b) to
directly punch in non-Freesat channel numbers from the remote, so you
have to scan through the channel list. That is because the
non-Freesat channels are numbered 3001 up, and there are Freesat
channels from 300 up. So as soon as you enter the first 3 numbers of
a non-Freesat channel, up comes the 3xx Freesat channel instead! Can't see
why a software update wouldn't fix both of those, but there
is nothing on the Bush website for making update suggestions.

I found that it took some configuring to get the picture quality to my
liking, the strange thing is that both my LCD TVs are only 720P, but for
some reason the picture looks a lot better when the output is set to 1080i,
even the upscaled SD ones look pretty good.

On 2009-10-08, nospam wrote:
"David WE Roberts" wrote:
So my calculation about cost of upgrading my current naff TV aerial
(probably 9C200 to send someone else up a longer ladder than I own) against
installing a Sky mini-dish (9C29.99) and buying a Freesat receiver (about
9C120 for a 12v one which we can also use when camping) could well be
irrelevant if I am going to have to upgrade the aerial anyway to get HD in
the future.
I use and HTPC with DigiTV card for Freeview. The PC died recently and I
added a satellite card for Freesat to the replacement (already had a dish
from the days when Sky was free - lol).

I have tried the software that came with the card and a couple of free
alternatives and none seem to offer much in the way of electronic program
guide. If you wait a bit you might get a description of what's on and
what's on next on some of the other channels.

Anyone know if that is because Freesat does not broadcast decent EPG
information or do I have crap software?

The alternative is to get the EPG information separately from the
program stream. I use TV Scheduler Pro controlling a dual DVB-T card
to record TV programs, and automatically grab EPG data from the
Radio Times website. I would highly recomment TV Scheduler Pro, it
has proved very robust and easy to use, and is free.

The programs used a

TV Scheduler Pro:
http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawik...itle=Main_Page

XMLTV Grabber:
http://www.birtles.org.uk/xmltv/

Script to automate grabbing and importing:
http://www.jackelec.myzen.co.uk/comp...bws/index.html
(Search for Scheduling XMLTV GUI Grabber)