Freeview boxes and recorders for the uninitiated

[jmp]

Hi all, well having got a nice new aerial, I am now in the position to get Freeview at last. Our region doesnt go digital until next April along with London, but the aerial is now picking up the digital signals anyway, sooo, for someone who hasnt got a clue what to do next, I need a bit of advice please.

At the moment I have a bog standard analogue TV, as I understand it I can just get a Freeview box and plug it in and away I go, but I also want to be able to record as I understand video isn't supported. So what should I watch out for, and also can you get just a recorder of some description to record onto DVD because it occurs to me that if I get Freeview box and recorder combined then if something goes wrong with it or I upgrade it in due course then I lose all the recordings stored on the harddrive. I like to keep films and some series for sometime so a bit like video I would like to keep them seperate on some sort of removable disc if at all possible.

Also I assume that I will need a freeview box for the TV upstairs as well as downstairs and I wont be able to access the recorded programmes on the machine downstairs from the upstairs TV direct is that correct ?.

I know these are really silly questions and I have googled quite a bit but am now getting myself confused, so any help in simple terms would be very gratefully received. 

Many thanks
Jackie

PS I am not bothered about HD as I believe I would need a whole new TV for this.

[c-side]

Hi Jackie,

I'm no techie either but I do have a freeview box/digital recorder and I couldn't be without it.

If you go down this road it should have twin tuners so that you can record one programme while watching another or record two together while you are out.  There's masses of storage space so it's easy to hold onto things for some time.  Mine allows folders to put different types of recordings in so they're easier to find.  Maybe they all do that.  Some but not all have a usb port to download recordings too.

Usually they also have the facility to pause live TV or to rewind and watch something again if you missed a bit!  All clever stuff.

I could be wrong but I don't think you can record onto DVD any more than you can to video unless the TV has built in freeview.  No doubt someone who knows more will confirm/deny this.

Hope this helps

Christine

[jmp]

Thanks for that Christine. Twin Tuner I will look out for, this is the sort of thing I need explained to me in words of one syllable  I didnt know that about USB ports either, so presumably you can record on a USB stick and then convert to DVD via your computer ( if I can figure out how to do that too  )

Thanks again
Jackie 

[andycand]

Hi

If you want to record in one location and watch in another you need a DVD Recorder that records to individual disks and not a harddrive. I've got an LG Recorder that does this but you would need to check what is available in your location (I'm in Australia)

Assuming that what we call a Set top Box is the same as Freeview Box then the way you connect it all up is from antenna to Freeview Box, then you connect the Freeview Box to your DVD Recorder and then your DVD Recorder to your TV. That is a brief description of how you do it. You would need a seperate Freeview Box and DVD Recorder for each location you wish to record in. We have this type of setup in 3 rooms in our house and often record things in one room to watch in another. For example my son follows car racing so might record Nascar overnight in the lounge and an Indy Car race in his bedroom.

Andy

[c-side]

We used to call them set top boxes too, Andy, but the seem to have been renamed along the way!

You're right, of course, about the DVD set up - I do have one in another room but rarely if ever record to it because it will only record the channel which is showing on the TV and that seems to defeat the object somehow - for me at least.

USB port - you can't record to it Jackie but you can download stuff recorded on the hard drive and then copy it to computer and then put it on a DVD.

Christine

[jksdelver]

Look up the Humax range

[PaulineJ]

Yup, we've got Humax.

We have one PVR (freeview + hard disk ) in one room and a Humax "HD-Fox t2" which allows us to watch programmes recorded on the first hard drive in another room, (over the ethernet). The T2 will also decode from aerial (and save to a memory stick).

Pauline

[mshrmh]

Jackie - I'm someone who has gone through the digital changeover and retained an analogue TV until recently. We've had a Humax PVR for around 4 years now with no problems whatsoever & have many family & friends who have the same or more recent models also without problem (no I'm not an employee or on commission) so I think reliability is unlikely to be an issue.

We've got to the stage that we rarely watch "live" TV  - we record most things and whizz through the adverts & the endless "coming up" and "reminders" of what you saw a few minutes earlier so that a commercial TV station hour programme takes around 40 minutes and a BBC one 50-55 minutes.

The twin tuners mean you can record two different programmes at the same time and have the chance of watching a third (depends on the "multiplex" the various stations are on) - this and the "+1" variations on some station are great for those times when there are several programmes on you want to watch, but all at the same time (and nothing else all evening often).

I'm not sure if I've understood correctly, but if you have a VCR you may still be able to record Freeview on it - you need it to take the feed from the Freeview box so it depends on the settings/connections you have (I know we did this but it was several years ago before the Humax).

We're a single TV household so I can't comment on that issue.

[jmp]

Thank you everyone for your comments so far, I think I am getting the drift. I have to pop out now though as Sis and I are going to the crematorium to put some flowers on Mums grave, she would have been 94 today, so will read through everything carefully when I get back this evening and come back to you, if I may, with any queries once I have done some surfing of the net about those various products

Have a nice day all and thanks again for your help
Jackie