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Freeview


suzywoo

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There's plenty of boxes in Asda / Tesco / Argos / wherever for 20 - 30. Don't think there's any better than the rest.

IF you could push that 20 a bit further - by about another 70 (!) then you should get a hard driver recorder with built in freeview. Argos has basic models with 80gb hard drives (around 40 hours).

I know it's quite a jump but it's worth it, believe me.

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I have also heard you can buy freeview boxes with a top up card so u can but extra channels...I havent actually seen these boxes like just a lad at work was telling me about em......Comes with like a phone card you can get topped up and the like...

That's not quite how it works. The top-up card is like a Sky viewing card, where you pay a monthly subscription of around 7.99 and get some extra channels. It's pretty much died on its arse since E4 and FilmFour became free-to-air channels as they were the main reasons to get Top-Up tv. Waste of money if you ask me.

Always buy a well known brand when you buy electrical equipment. The customer support is much better, should anything go wrong you may end up spending the money you thought you'd saved on premium phone lines to the company and courier postage. A good fully functioning freeview box starts at around 49. Something like Thomson or Sagem are good places to start.

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That's not quite how it works. The top-up card is like a Sky viewing card, where you pay a monthly subscription of around £7.99 and get some extra channels. It's pretty much died on its arse since E4 and FilmFour became free-to-air channels as they were the main reasons to get Top-Up tv. Waste of money if you ask me.

Come on Phil, where have you been? :p

Top Up TV changed to a strange system involving a DVR - if I remeber rightly, Five started using their capacity on Freeview and so Top Up TV had to change to a weird system where programmes are downloaded nightly to the hard drive - making it a very, very rubbish version of video on demand. As far as I know, they scrapped the system involving buying a viewing card and paying £7.99 a month - now you *have* to have the DVR and pay the subscription too. Considering that the DVR is £200 alone, it really makes the service completely rubbish.

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Come on Phil, where have you been? :p

Top Up TV changed to a strange system involving a DVR - if I remeber rightly, Five started using their capacity on Freeview and so Top Up TV had to change to a weird system where programmes are downloaded nightly to the hard drive - making it a very, very rubbish version of video on demand. As far as I know, they scrapped the system involving buying a viewing card and paying £7.99 a month - now you *have* to have the DVR and pay the subscription too. Considering that the DVR is £200 alone, it really makes the service completely rubbish.

Its actually "just" (as in the past few days-obviously its been in the pipeline for a while, though i didn't know that it was common knowledge yet) added that service. The other system still stands, you still need a viewing card. I know Cloud, i work in this industry (please remeber that) the dtr (the only reason its called that is because Sky owns the rights to the name pvr which is what the item is.) is a cheap rip-off of a sky+ box mixed with a humax pvr, total shite and still a waste of money if you ask me. Incidentaly the boxes aren't commercially available yet.

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Its actually "just" (as in the past few days-obviously its been in the pipeline for a while, though i didn't know that it was common knowledge yet) added that service. The other system still stands, you still need a viewing card. I know Cloud, i work in this industry (please remeber that) the dtr (the only reason its called that is because Sky owns the rights to the name pvr which is what the item is.) is a cheap rip-off of a sky+ box mixed with a humax pvr, total shite and still a waste of money if you ask me. Incidentaly the boxes aren't commercially available yet.

Aha, I knew you'd know more than me :) Don't worry, I was just trying to keep you on your toes :p

I noticed from a quick browse on the Topup TV website that they're trying to hide the cost of the box as much as possible - if they're doing that (Sky have always been pretty up front about the cost of Sky+), I reckon they must know that they're doomed. Apparently (but I'm not taking this for gospel), the offering is as little as 100 hours of programming a month for £9.99, which is bloody ridiculous.

I wonder if the boxes will be any use if (when!) Top Up TV goes bust, though.

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I wonder if the boxes will be any use if (when!) Top Up TV goes bust, though.

Well, you can actually still use the old 'ondigital'/'itv digital' boxes so long as you have your old viewing card. The signals not any different, the Freeview group (BBC, BSkyB, ITV, CH4 and National Grid Wireless) bought out the OnDigital DVB-T system that broadcasts on three multiplexes(multiple video/audio channels boadcast simultaneously over the same frequency channel) , so the bare bones of 'freeview' is the same as it was before but free. Top-Up TV is just freeview with add-ons, its the same set-up too.

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