OT: Digital TV, Sky+, hard disc recorders and stuff

Media centre pc?

Fraser

Cheers for that. What's the going rate for installation of a digital-compatible aerial?

I might just go for the Sky+ multiroom thing though (for £10/month), as my Dad wants to go for the Sky deal (as he gets it free for a year due to being a cricket fan) so he can get the relevant sports channels, so if he's getting that, I'll have to foot the cost of the new aerial myself, and overall it'd take me a while to see any savings....

Yes. You can get single and twin tuner units. Sensible money being around £250 for the twin tuner. Humax and Topfield are the best ones to go for.

Here's a good list:

Sky+ is expensive. I have it, and it is good, but I couldn't really say whether it's worth the money. The EPG is about the best I have used on anything.

I used to have one of these:

Note: It has 2 digital tuners, so you can record one channel and watch another, so no need for a separate set-top box. It's not a bad unit - nowhere near as slick as the sky+ unit and it comes with a 20Gig HDD as standard, so only about 12-20 hours of recording, depending on the channel. It uses a 2.5" HDD, so upgrades are limited to ~100GB, or whatever you can get nowadays. It has an analogue phono and optical digital audio outputs, 2 scarts, RF feedthrough and (IIRC) both s-video and composite video outputs. It doesn't record analogue inputs - you can't transfer stuff from VCR onto the HDD, but can do the reverse. Also, whilst it has a card slot on the front, it isn't compatible with the top-up TV thing (or at least it wasn't on the firmware version I had at the time.)

I ran it from my old analogue aerial and it was fine, but I have nearly perfect analogue reception.

For a decent installation you're looking at £100+.

Been there with my parents on this one. If you are paying the subscription then in the first year, the cost is pretty much identical whether you go the Sky or Freeview PVR route. You only start to see the savings after year one. If you are only going to be paying the extra (£10/month?) with your dad paying for the bulk of it, then personally I'd go for the multiroom as it'll be at least two years before you hit break even and you'll get a shedload more channels, including sports/films, that you'd not get on Freeview.

Your existing aerial may be up to it (ours was). Could you borrow a freeview box off a mate and see if it worked?

cheers, clive

Why bother with tv at all? If you've got broad band you'll be able to find most decent tv programs on p2p. The only thing sky's good for is live sport, but that's just a good excuse to go to the pub.

James

And if you insist on paying Sky

Build a Mythtv PC with a broadband connection, and two freeview Digital=20 terestrial tuners, and you can have all the channels, or two sky digital=20 tuner cards+ sky by broadband, watch/record multiple feeds. Of course=20 two tuner cars means you need to pay for the multiroom option.

--=20 Carl Robson Car PC Build starts again.

Homepage:

We got an man out, cost £120iirc to fit one, he was some dude with an advert tacked in the post office. Included a booster, huge aerial and cabling for any room we wanted. Top bloke.

I think the sky digital tuner cards only let you watch the freeview stuff, and skybybroadband only lets you have access to some films and some sports stuff. Some of the SBB films are o.k., but most are a bit crap, and definitely not worth getting the minimum £30+/mo sky package you need to qualify.

I reckon a decent broadband connection, a freeview recorder and possibly a subscription to a DVD-by-post service would give you much better selection and quality for the same money.

Anyone have any experience of the various HTPC front ends/epg systems - I have only tried the Hauppage one which ships with their external usb freeview box, and that sucks quite a lot.

The Hauppage one BLOWS. The Pinnacle one I use is a bit crap, but is acceptable - worlds above the Hauppage.

That's not very clear as to exactly what Sky by Broadband is - is it basically streaming all the regular channels you'd normally get under whatever subscription you're on (plus the bonus ones they mention) via broadband? Do you need one of these sky digital cards (i.e. PCI cards?) to use sky by broadband? I'd have thought it'd all just come streamed, woudln't it - it's just that you mention a couple of of tuner cards plus sky by broadband.....

Thing is, the basic recurring theme is that if you want to view different channels received via Sky Digital, in different rooms, independently of each other, then there's no way around paying for the multiroom option, right?

All I want is the regular free-to-air channels, preferably digital ones too, but something that comes through a regular aerial signal so I can feed it into any HD recorder with a digital tuner, and not a sky signal that will only be decoded by a Sky box, plus get charged £10/month for the priveledge of not being restricted to one room in the house to watch all the available channels.

In reality though, that's probably what I'll go for as it'll be cheaper than getting a new aerial put up.....

Heh - the joys of living in the South-East. If I hadn't been too lazy not to google for it, I'd have found a local company and called them up before asking. £175+VAT.

Heh, if it's similar money, without the initial outlay, then I may as well go for Sky. Apparently Sky do a freeview thing as well where you just pay about £150 for the box + installation, and that's it. But I don't like the idea of that as that presumably won't include a Sky+ box, so I'll have the same problem of not being able to record one thing and watch another, as it'll probably be some sort of scrambled signal rather than just a regular one that any old digital tuner can tune into. So for now, the best option looks to be £10/month for a Sky+ box....

Dont jump ship too soon,

NTL's own digital PVR is being release Q4

and quite a nice bit of kit it is too :)

in the mean time phone up threaten to leave and get mucho discount for 6 months

regards

an ntl staffer

Sounds about right. You're looking at £50 at least for a decent aerial and the cabling needs to be changed too for a proper job.

The Sky by Broadband thing is basically a website where you can download some films and sports stuff in some heavily protected .wmv files. I used it once but tbh its a waste of time

On the TV end of things i have Sky+ here and also a fancy philips HD/DVD recorder thingy which promises to do teh same job as sky+. Despite its best intentions its neither as complete or as easy to use as Sky+ so the only use it gets is for archiving recorded stuff from the sky box.

Also if you DO get sky+ you'll never be able to go back to normal tv afterwards, you get to used to pausing/rewinding etc. A few times i've been in teh car listening to the radio, realised i missed something and automatically went to rewind it... Others sky+ users have had the same sort of experiences.

Chet

If you get a freeview box make sure it has top up tv, it's only 7 quid a month and has the 2 channels I watched most on Cable, UK GOLD and DISCOVERY.

I am thinking of ditching my tv in the house now, and watch tv on pc, I subscribe 4 quid a month to this website,

and watch exactly what I want. I find it much easier :)