Compulsory Digital TV

[rosstheboss]

That's it, I have come to the conclusion digital tv is crap, we have been sold a disaster.

Freeview, I am not paying for more crap, but freeview what I take to be the replacement for the reasonable terrestrial tv we have had is very poor by comparison.

Honestly, I would have preffered to stick with terrestrial tv, but we are forced to have digital.

If you have a half decent screen digital freeview (with a good signal) is mostly far far superior to analogue. If you find the analogue picture better I'd suggest you get someone to check your aerial.

As for the content, well, you may have a point. However you do of course get the four main channels and some of the other channels are worth having for free imo, stuff like bbc3, bbc4, itv4 (TdF coverage), e4, film4, more4, bbc news etc.

Also check out freesat - as mentioned before, half the reason freeview reception is so iffy is it can be severely effected by other machinery around it - ridiculous but true!!!

 

[silverclaws]

The other thing that really annoys me is the decoder box, I am on my fourth one, they don't last, granted they are cheap ones, but wtf, they should last a year at least or is it something to do with the signal.

But the decoder box, it must be plugged in and at least on standby all the time or the programming is lost, tell me again, was the government drive at one point to suggest we do not waste energy and turn off stuff we are not using, then they bring in digital tv, I have got an additional heat source in my flat now, has anyone noticed the heat that thing generates, probably a very good reason why they don't last.

What we had before was just pay the tv tax and receive five channels plus a bit of radio legally, now we have the same plus x amount of crap to make us feel tv has got better, yet we were expected to purchase the decoder for something we could alredy pick up and use with analogue tv. We were robbed and screwed over, not only did we have to purchase a decoder and leave it on standby turning electricity into heat, we in return got substandard tv, a poor deal and in a society where we have to curb our costs, we are assaulted with buy this crap or that crap on every other channel. If we are not into buying, we can gamble or ogle at the sort of women no one meets.

Tv is now appealing to the base instincts of people and the knob jockeys in government can't see that, or maybe they can as they may have fingers in pies that we watch on tv.

 

[mattbrown]

The other thing that really annoys me is the decoder box, I am on my fourth one, they don't last, granted they are cheap ones, but wtf, they should last a year at least or is it something to do with the signal.

But the decoder box, it must be plugged in and at least on standby all the time or the programming is lost, tell me again, was the government drive at one point to suggest we do not waste energy and turn off stuff we are not using, then they bring in digital tv, I have got an additional heat source in my flat now, has anyone noticed the heat that thing generates, probably a very good reason why they don't last.

What we had before was just pay the tv tax and receive five channels plus a bit of radio legally, now we have the same plus x amount of crap to make us feel tv has got better, yet we were expected to purchase the decoder for something we could alredy pick up and use with analogue tv. We were robbed and screwed over, not only did we have to purchase a decoder and leave it on standby turning electricity into heat, we in return got substandard tv, a poor deal and in a society where we have to curb our costs, we are assaulted with buy this crap or that crap on every other channel. If we are not into buying, we can gamble or ogle at the sort of women no one meets.

Tv is now appealing to the base instincts of people and the knob jockeys in government can't see that, or maybe they can as they may have fingers in pies that we watch on tv.

My parents have found the decoder box dies in various forms sooner or later, they have gone out and bought a digi tv as now SW england is full digital.

 

[FluffyChicken]

Join the "I don't have a TV club" it's brilliant, you find yourself doing stuff again

yep go for it! i have just cancelled SkyTV and the licence runs out at the end of this month,will i miss it?

soon i will know.

You'll still get Freesat or 'FreeSat from Sky' as you have the sky box.

 

[Easy_Rider]

Join the "I don't have a TV club" it's brilliant, you find yourself doing stuff again

yep go for it! i have just cancelled SkyTV and the licence runs out at the end of this month,will i miss it?

soon i will know.

You'll still get Freesat or 'FreeSat from Sky' as you have the sky box.

That's my setup. A Sky box with no subscription. I have an expired card in the slot and just get all the free channels which is plenty. The only annoying thing is I cannot get Dave despite it being a free channel on freeview :roll: (and I can no longer get sky3 and channel 5 they seem to be encryping the FTA channels one by one )

 

[legrandefromage]

I was an early adopter of Freeview and have been constantly let down by the equipment and service.

With freeview, the main channels are fine but the other channels suffer from lower quality from cramming in as many channels into the available space. This can be seen when watching fast moving action in sports or films. I could blame the TV monitor but I had access to some of the best video monitors available at the time (2001?) and it was clear that the service itself was skimping on quality.

It makes it almost unwatchable on large screen TVs as the TV's own video processing then makes a balls up of it.

I switched to Murdochvision after a succession of faulty Freeview boxes (cheap, good, expensive), channel drop-outs and poor quality pictures - even on the backwater channels, Murdoch TV resolution is good.

On the technical side, Freesat should be much better.

 

[legrandefromage]

Join the "I don't have a TV club" it's brilliant, you find yourself doing stuff again

yep go for it! i have just cancelled SkyTV and the licence runs out at the end of this month,will i miss it?

soon i will know.

You'll still get Freesat or 'FreeSat from Sky' as you have the sky box.

That's my setup. A Sky box with no subscription. I have an expired card in the slot and just get all the free channels which is plenty. The only annoying thing is I cannot get Dave despite it being a free channel on freeview :roll: (and I can no longer get sky3 and channel 5 they seem to be encryping the FTA channels one by one )

I think you need to ask SKY for a FTA viewing card, then all FTA channels should be accessible.

 

[Neil]

Join the "I don't have a TV club" it's brilliant, you find yourself doing stuff again

yep go for it! i have just cancelled SkyTV and the licence runs out at the end of this month,will i miss it?

soon i will know.

You'll still get Freesat or 'FreeSat from Sky' as you have the sky box.

That's my setup. A Sky box with no subscription. I have an expired card in the slot and just get all the free channels which is plenty. The only annoying thing is I cannot get Dave despite it being a free channel on freeview :roll: (and I can no longer get sky3 and channel 5 they seem to be encryping the FTA channels one by one )

You should be able to get channel 5 by manually tuning.

FTV seems encrypted, but as far as I'm aware FTA is in the clear - are there definitely FTA channels being encrypted?

 

[Easy_Rider]

You should be able to get channel 5 by manually tuning.

FTV seems encrypted, but as far as I'm aware FTA is in the clear - are there definitely FTA channels being encrypted?

Yes, channel 5 sais I need a viewing card, not that I want to particulary watch it. There are a few others too.

 

[Easy_Rider]

I think you need to ask SKY for a FTA viewing card, then all FTA channels should be accessible.

Didn't know there was such a thing :?
I suppose I'll have to give them my name, address, sexual inclination, stool sample, DOB, DNA, when my house insurance is due etc etc so that they can record it on an open server for "security" puposes.

I wonder if you can get these on ebay.