Topic: Thinking of going digital need advice

[Tony]

:not2:

[digitalfife]

Finding the right freeview box can be a nightmare. I would certainly agree that it would be unfair to compromise this Sony's pedigree for a lesser one whick includes a digital tuner. I have one of the first 32 in Sony widescreens, bought for an arm and a leg 10 years ago. A 50hz model and having slight flicker is well worth putting up with for the sheer picture quality I get from it, can't remember the mod number !! . I degress. I have over the last 18 months purchased various makes of freeview box's as presents for family members, and all have given some sort of problem, mainly locking up or powering down for no reason. Usually having to do a fresh install to get them working. recently my Son's On Digital box lost some of its channels and no amount of reinstalling, tweeking et all would get it working. I noticed that Asda were selling the Pacific Freeview box for about £40. Fairly basic. I bought one to try out. I am very impressed. It's been on constantly as a burn test for the last 7 weeks. No lockups, no pixalating, no freeze and giving 100% signal on all channels !!!! . Shure it's a little slow but the picture quality is superb. Will be quite sad when I hand it over to him next week.

Not saying "Go out and Buy one" Just a little supprised to find that there MAY be a box out there that could be ok.

Cheers

[Simon]

I've had exactly the same trouble with various Freeview boxes, all of which have some sort of fault, or compromised usability.  I had a Nokia 221T which froze every two hours, and had to be powered down to restart, then had a Pace box from Argos, which kept losing all the timer programs.  Had several cheaper models (most of which bought off eBay), including Thomson, Echostar, Sagem, none of which would allow recording of RGB signal to a DVD recorder.  Also had a Humax F2-Fox T, which is OK, but the menus always cause my Panny TV to zoom in for some reason, so you can't see the top and bottom, and the 7 day EPG only seems to work on the channel you are actually watching!  Now have a Sony VTX-D800 which is alright, and a Pioneer DBR-TF100, which is the best box ever, in my opinion, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it, especially now it has the 7 Day EPG upgrade.  Never crashes, always reliable, perfect sound and picture even from a set top aerial.