Best Freeview box for £100 ?

[catretriever]

Any recommendations people?

Ta!

Matt

[simpo two]

Most are about £50. The Sony is the only one I can think of that's about £100. Very nice.

I was tempted until I saw what it offered at a frined's house. Just more channels of crud!

[catretriever]

Has anyone tried the Freview PVR's? I think they are coming in around £160 now.

[vex]

Caution, The cheap ones don't have a smart card slot to be able to decode the Topup TV channels.

These include a discovery channel and E4 allong with a couple of classic move channels.

The ones around the £100 mark should have the card slot and reader built in.

I would say Nokia, Pace, Panasonic would be the brands to look at. IMHO Sony product you pay for the badge as much as the technology.

[annodomini2]

Do the card readers in the old ON/ITV digital boxes work?

[vex]

AFAIK Yes,

Although I havent tried it with my one at home yet.

Thought I might get a card for Christmas, especially as it is a PAYG type service.

[squirrelz]

vex said:

I would say Nokia, Pace, Panasonic would be the brands to look at. IMHO Sony product you pay for the badge as much as the technology.

I would disagree with that (as much as I can without actually having bought any of them).

Check out the forums on www.digitalspy.co.uk - the sony gets rave reviews from pretty much everyone, wherea s there a loads of issues with the nokia, and pace only seem to do the "twin" box now, and I see very little about the panasonic. Cheapest place for the sony box seems to be amazon (£80).

>> Edited by squirrelz on Friday 10th December 15:18

[Jay-Aim]

got the Philips one

not that thrilled with it so avoid

[chrisjl]

catretriever said:

Has anyone tried the Freview PVR's? I think they are coming in around £160 now.

I bought a Humax 8000T for exactly that amount a couple of weeks ago. Quieter than a VCR when recording (but not silent), v. good picture quality, pause/rewind live TV etc.
(The manual includes the phrase "NOTE: You cannot fast forward beyond the current point in time." )
My only complaint is that the 7-day programme guide isn't brilliant to navigate around (it can only get 6 channels on screen vertically, and maybe 3 hours horizontally, so you tend to end up doing a lot of scrolling around).
There's a twin-tuner version due in the new year (so you can record one channel while watching another).
Also, no option of a top-up-tv card in the 8000T.

Edited to add:

simpo two said:

Just more channels of crud!

Yeh, that too.

The PVR feature is what convinced me to shell out. No more looking around for a tape only to find they've all only got 30 minutes empty - this way you've always got one big lump of free space.

>> Edited by chrisjl on Saturday 11th December 18:57