On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 13:20:24 +0000, John Laird
wrote:

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 08:19:29 -0000, "PJO" wrote:

Why would you be amazed that a single box picks up a single channel?

Yes, I do find that amazing. Basically the STB needs two tuners.

That's all it does, though - decode a single channel from one of the digital
multiplexes. To put in a second tuner is to duplicate its primary function
and would lead to a significant extra cost. Your options a
a) Watch analogue while recording digital.
b) Get a second STB.
c) Get a TV with a built-in digital decoder.

I'm considering the purchase of a USB digital decoder from a company whose
name I forget (it's not Hauppauge), and going fully digital for recording,
onto a PC disk. The box under consideration can also output an entire
multiplex for recording, too (somewhere between 5 and 8 channels). An
obvious next step after that is a DVD recorder.

The boys at work are building me such a box right now. With DVD
writer, freeview TV tuner, 160Gb disk and more ports you could shake a
stick at it will cost £400 odd plus VAT. It's all built into a neat
cubic box and will be on my LAN so I can use it as a fileserver too.
Audio quality won't be audiophile, but I can live with that for the
convenience it will give me in general use.

The crappy, broken Sony HD recorder is going back to the shop,
liberating £340, and I won't have to buy the wife a new VCR to replace
the dying one she uses for taping Corrie.


--
Tim Hobbs

"PJO" wrote in message
...
OK, make that 2 Bush boxes (now, why does that make me smile? :-) which
will total only 80 nicker then.......

Yes, fine if you like buying crap, which I don't. Bush these days is any
cheap forign crap they can find with a Bush badge on it.

Personally I don't support such practice and am prepared to wait until a
"proper" manufacturer produces what I want at the right price. Paying
double
for quality is a wise thing to do me thinks. (Says me who spent £650 on a
Panasonic telly 13 years ago and still appreciates it even though it has
recently been demoted to the bedroom).

The old saying "buy cheap - buy twice" still has clout these days.



OK, it seems you are not wrong here - I've had the snitty sent to me since I
posted the above and it appears the Bush is indeed a pile o' ****e:

Picture quality not good (kinda important that one, ain't it?)
Picture prone to freezing according to some reports
A number of people unable to pick up Channel 5 (that's gotta be the aerial,
I would have thought)
No Teletext
No 'Interactive'
Poor menus
No standby button
The EPG does not have future 7 day capability
Poor connectivity - 1 x Scart, Aerial In and Out only, no Audio Out
Crappy build quality.


Apparently the one to go for is the Sagem IDT602 (see
http://www.sagem.com/en/produits-en/...-itd602-en.htm) which
is currently available from Woolies and Safeway for £59.99 instead of the
'normal' £100.

It's like Kurt says - ya gotta do ya research these days!

I will also agree with you, in a heartbeat, that you 'only get what you pay
for' and would normally advise buying high quality secondhand gear (which is
why some of own kit is 30+ years old....) but, lately, the rocketting
escalation of features, speed and functionality with consumer electronics
tell me the best way forward is to buy cheap and expect to upgrade/replace
often!

When (and if) you are looking at perfectly acceptable performance at summat
like 50 quid a slice, you have got to be well 'badge-brainwashed' to want to
spend £1,500 on a poncey 'name' that only does the same job! (And that's
entirely glossing over my 'if it's quick, convenient and cheap you want, go
digital, but for real quality stick with analogue' philosophy, for the
moment....)

YMMV of course.....

"PJO" wrote in message
...
OK, make that 2 Bush boxes (now, why does that make me smile? :-) which
will total only 80 nicker then.......

Yes, fine if you like buying crap, which I don't. Bush these days is any
cheap forign crap they can find with a Bush badge on it.

Personally I don't support such practice and am prepared to wait until a
"proper" manufacturer produces what I want at the right price. Paying
double
for quality is a wise thing to do me thinks. (Says me who spent £650 on a
Panasonic telly 13 years ago and still appreciates it even though it has
recently been demoted to the bedroom).

The old saying "buy cheap - buy twice" still has clout these days.



OK, it seems you are not wrong here - I've had the snitty sent to me since I
posted the above and it appears the Bush is indeed a pile o' ****e:

Picture quality not good (kinda important that one, ain't it?)
Picture prone to freezing according to some reports
A number of people unable to pick up Channel 5 (that's gotta be the aerial,
I would have thought)
No Teletext
No 'Interactive'
Poor menus
No standby button
The EPG does not have future 7 day capability
Poor connectivity - 1 x Scart, Aerial In and Out only, no Audio Out
Crappy build quality.


Apparently the one to go for is the Sagem IDT602 (see
http://www.sagem.com/en/produits-en/...-itd602-en.htm) which
is currently available from Woolies and Safeway for £59.99 instead of the
'normal' £100.

It's like Kurt says - ya gotta do ya research these days!

I will also agree with you, in a heartbeat, that you 'only get what you pay
for' and would normally advise buying high quality secondhand gear (which is
why some of own kit is 30+ years old....) but, lately, the rocketting
escalation of features, speed and functionality with consumer electronics
tell me the best way forward is to buy cheap and expect to upgrade/replace
often!

When (and if) you are looking at perfectly acceptable performance at summat
like 50 quid a slice, you have got to be well 'badge-brainwashed' to want to
spend £1,500 on a poncey 'name' that only does the same job! (And that's
entirely glossing over my 'if it's quick, convenient and cheap you want, go
digital, but for real quality stick with analogue' philosophy, for the
moment....)

YMMV of course.....

"Kurt Hamster" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 13:44:13 -0000, Keith G used
to say...

Apparently the one to go for is the Sagem IDT602 (see
http://www.sagem.com/en/produits-en/...-itd602-en.htm)
which
is currently available from Woolies and Safeway for £59.99 instead of the
'normal' £100.

An alternative is the Netgem. Not only does it have 2 scarts it also has
optical out. (as well as lots of other goodies I can't remember).


Yebbut it's not cheap is it?

I'm off over the town now for a Sagem (having checked availability at
Woolies) - 12 in stock atm and it's Locust Day tomorrow!

(Fekkin' ng - I didn't even know I *needed* one of these until this bloody
thread started!!!)

:-)

"Kurt Hamster" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 13:44:13 -0000, Keith G used
to say...

Apparently the one to go for is the Sagem IDT602 (see
http://www.sagem.com/en/produits-en/...-itd602-en.htm)
which
is currently available from Woolies and Safeway for £59.99 instead of the
'normal' £100.

An alternative is the Netgem. Not only does it have 2 scarts it also has
optical out. (as well as lots of other goodies I can't remember).


Yebbut it's not cheap is it?

I'm off over the town now for a Sagem (having checked availability at
Woolies) - 12 in stock atm and it's Locust Day tomorrow!

(Fekkin' ng - I didn't even know I *needed* one of these until this bloody
thread started!!!)

:-)

Tim Hobbs wrote:

The boys at work are building me such a box right now. With DVD
writer, freeview TV tuner, 160Gb disk and more ports you could shake a
stick at it will cost £400 odd plus VAT. It's all built into a neat
cubic box and will be on my LAN so I can use it as a fileserver too.
Audio quality won't be audiophile, but I can live with that for the
convenience it will give me in general use.

Stick a decent sound card in it - or an external one - and rip your CDs at
320kpbs and you'll get as good quality as you'd get from the Sony

Tim Hobbs wrote:

The boys at work are building me such a box right now. With DVD
writer, freeview TV tuner, 160Gb disk and more ports you could shake a
stick at it will cost £400 odd plus VAT. It's all built into a neat
cubic box and will be on my LAN so I can use it as a fileserver too.
Audio quality won't be audiophile, but I can live with that for the
convenience it will give me in general use.

Stick a decent sound card in it - or an external one - and rip your CDs at
320kpbs and you'll get as good quality as you'd get from the Sony

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 14:44:55 -0000, "Stimpy"
wrote:

Tim Hobbs wrote:

The boys at work are building me such a box right now. With DVD
writer, freeview TV tuner, 160Gb disk and more ports you could shake a
stick at it will cost £400 odd plus VAT. It's all built into a neat
cubic box and will be on my LAN so I can use it as a fileserver too.
Audio quality won't be audiophile, but I can live with that for the
convenience it will give me in general use.

Stick a decent sound card in it - or an external one - and rip your CDs at
320kpbs and you'll get as good quality as you'd get from the Sony


My view exactly. The box / board combo has on-board sound. I have
low expectations of it, but will try it out first and then perhaps add
a decent third-party board if I the in-built stuff won't cut it.
There's only room for 2 PCI cards and I don't want lots of bits
hanging out of USB connectors if I can help it.

What I do want is lots of disk space as I'm getting quite into the
camcorder thing as we have a new baby and my brother is a competitive
athlete. I'm looking at a terabyte disk array as my next project
(once the bruising on the credit card goes down after Christmas).

The Sony box was OK sound wise (it's playing compressed audio, so
isn't going to be any match for the Arcam it sits on top of and cost
half as much as) but has a nasty habit of corrupting all the data...


--
Tim Hobbs

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 14:44:55 -0000, "Stimpy"
wrote:

Tim Hobbs wrote:

The boys at work are building me such a box right now. With DVD
writer, freeview TV tuner, 160Gb disk and more ports you could shake a
stick at it will cost £400 odd plus VAT. It's all built into a neat
cubic box and will be on my LAN so I can use it as a fileserver too.
Audio quality won't be audiophile, but I can live with that for the
convenience it will give me in general use.

Stick a decent sound card in it - or an external one - and rip your CDs at
320kpbs and you'll get as good quality as you'd get from the Sony


My view exactly. The box / board combo has on-board sound. I have
low expectations of it, but will try it out first and then perhaps add
a decent third-party board if I the in-built stuff won't cut it.
There's only room for 2 PCI cards and I don't want lots of bits
hanging out of USB connectors if I can help it.

What I do want is lots of disk space as I'm getting quite into the
camcorder thing as we have a new baby and my brother is a competitive
athlete. I'm looking at a terabyte disk array as my next project
(once the bruising on the credit card goes down after Christmas).

The Sony box was OK sound wise (it's playing compressed audio, so
isn't going to be any match for the Arcam it sits on top of and cost
half as much as) but has a nasty habit of corrupting all the data...


--
Tim Hobbs

Well, IIASTP i found that if it tried WWIHYT and a CHHUP together they
wotked ok unless they sun. I think IWNGTR if future.


"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message
...
In article , Keith G
wrote:

"PJO" wrote in message
...
I know this is rather off topic but I don't know of a TV group (is
there one?).

Freeview... Having just bought a standard set top box I was amazed to
discover that one is unable to watch one channel while recording
another. Does anyone know of an alternative STB which can do both jobs
with the simple press of a button?


If you want to watch one digital channel while recording another, the
best, if not *only* way (presuming no digital telly) is to daisychain 2
STBs together. There is one by (dare I say it?) Bush being advertised
for only £40 atm. (Not an undue amount, IMO.)

Well, I've just boldly gone and bought a DTTV receiver box (Nokia 221T).
Chose this one as it had good reviews and has a S/PDIF output for sound as
well as a pair of scarts.

The 'snag' wish daisy chaining I have found is as follows:

Both the DTTV and my VHS/DVD combo unit have 'aux' scarts as well as 'TV'
scarts, so can actually be daisy-chained in either order. However although
each outputs RGB, the each (it would seem) only accept composite or S
video. Thus the unit at the 'far' end of a scart daisy chain suffers a
loss
in image quality. Since my TV has two scarts - but only one RGB - this is
a
pest.

At present I have opted to have the DTTV box at the 'far' end of a daisy
chain, so the DVD can still give good pictures, but the DTTV picture
suffers as a result.

When the DTTV box is connected directly to the scart RGB input of the TV
it
gives a very good picture despite our only having a poor signal level
which
causes breakup when it is raining heavily. (A better antenna is on the
list
of future improvements ;- )

I am currently investigating scart switches of the types sold by
lecktropacks, etc, to see if I can effectively give my TV two RGB inputs
by
using a suitable switch. I believe you can get 'auto' ones that switch in
response to the inputs.

The quality for recording does not matter so much, so I'll either use UHF
or try the aux scarts. No point in trying to give the VHS a superb image
as
the recording will be relatively poor anyway! :-)

Seems weird that units output RGB but do not accept it inwards to pass
through...

OT: Another pest with the Nokia turns out to be that the 'TV station' and
'Radio station' lists are distinct, so switching between radio and TV is
clumsy if your TV is switched off and you are just hearing the output via
S/PDIF. Is this standard for DTTV boxes?

The user guides for both the DTTV box and the VHS/DVD recommend daisy
chaining scarts with the VHS/DVD 'upstream' of the DTTV so far as signals
sent to the TV are concerned. This works, and means the DTTV box can auto
switch and pass through the VHS/DVD output, which is convenient. However
the degrading of DVD images is obvious when I do this.

FWIW I tried connecting the DTTV output to the secondary scart on the TV
(which does not have RGB inputs) but this caused problems as they seem
incompatable as to the form of composite/S video. Colour was difficult to
obtain, and seemed to rely upon 'leakage' from one cable to another, but I
have not yet sussed this out beyond finding it did not work! ;-)

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics
http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/AudioMisc/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/Audio/armstrong.html
Barbirolli Soc. http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/JBSoc/JBSoc.html