Digital TV

[Guest Jan V]

funny, that, Elton. We record stuff all the time. You guys must need to carry more American TV (we record mostly sports)

[Elton]

funny, that, Elton. We record stuff all the time. You guys must need to carry more American TV (we record mostly sports)

 

That's just it, Jan - your gear is already set up for digital. I don't understand all the techy stuff (and, frankly, don't want to), but there's an ad campaign just started on TV over here that is telling us that when the UK switches over to digital - (remember, most of us are on analogue) - then the equipment that was designed for analogue will not be able to record channels other than the ones being viewed.

 

Modern recorders *should* be okay, but they need to be digital compliant in some way.

[chesters1]

They will, as long as they're connected via a SCART cable or similar rather than via the RF (ariel) socket.

The problem you might have is that your VCR probably has an analogue tuner in it and you won't be able to use it to record following switchover.

 

you will but instead of forking out for a digital recorder as they say a £16 set top box for the use of the video is needed ,luckily with the arial in/out you can have 2 or more boxes.

you can use the scart in on your video for the box and scart out to go to the telly or if your vid is scart hungry tune it in via the arial conection.

a second sky box can also be plumbed in the same way and with a dual LNB will recieve all the free channels but ofcourse a second card will be needed to get murdochs stuff

 

unfortunately at the moment our freeview is very poor so i use a sat reciever (not a sky box) but this has a feed through for a second reciever if needed ,we can plumb a sky box in there for the free stuff to record it .the living room will get the same setup if needed.

 

if freeview doesent improve then according to the digital switch over site i can only receive the dig TV signals via Sky ,i believe this statement to be illegal as it suggests the government is recommending a monopoly (no cable here)

 

make sure the set top boxes are a different make trying to make one watch one channel and the other one for recording would be fun as they both responded to the same remote

 

the only channels we cant see (that are available via the freesat card) are channel 4 & 5 which are encrypted for use via the sky box and freesat card ! everything else and more is viewable on our sat system.theres more channels on your sky box too which you can get but not part of the murdoch deal unfortunately sky box makes them difficult to tune in useing "extra channels" or whatever its called and the channels exact parameters need inputting ,luckily non sky sat systems do it all automatically.

 

those with seudo HD TV's that use freeview (not real HD they are just coming in the less than top brand TV's) will ofcourse have wasted their money HD will never be on freeview (the governments selling/sold the extra bandwidth freeview needs to transmit it) so only those with sky HD or HD dvd players (or playstation3 etc) will enjoy the full HD experience! if ofcourse the DVD's are in HD format ,ordinary DVD's may look to be in HD but ofcourse they wont be in reality and non HD transmissions also.

HD this is the difficult part to record not digital TV as such! you will be forking out £300 x 2 + 2 sky subscriptions to record one channel while watching another ,murdochs on a government backed winner there

and ofcourse DVD recorders with digital tuners will just be recording freeview if connected through the arial so will not record in HD if it has a HD recording function (if its possible) or not and non HD digital recorders will just record in the old 625 line medium we have now whatever source they are plugged into.

Edited November 21, 2007 by chesters1

[mr motorola]

The main reason HD cannot be recorded as such is simply that HD contains almost four times the information that normal digital does. The space required would be phenomenal , such is the reason that blue ray / HD blank discs were introduced. And on the other side of the coin , HD was introduced for the ever growing size of televisions. Normal digital can cope to some extent with the bigger sized screens but only so much.

 

When the full time switchover does eventually take place , the digital power can be turned up to its full running potential (it's only running at just over 50% at the moment) and when this takes place the full digital television world will benefit from it. Digital transmissions rely heavily on signal QUALITY not STRENGTH.

[snakey1]

toshiba are launching a stand alone hd dvd recorder with a 1 terabyte hard drive built in mind you it is scheduled to retail at about £2500, and sharp and various other compaines are launching the same sort of kit in bluray format for about the same cost.if you run your tv through your computer however pioneer already do a bluray writer that retails at a measly £575.00 by comparison and then of course you'll need the discs which are about £10.00 each for the rw type and about £8.00 for the single write variety.

Edited November 21, 2007 by snakey1

[spasor]

You will only be able to record a programme that you are watching :

 

Which defeats the object really

Not quite true Rabbit. I can already record a second channel, because my system has twin tuners. But this is only true for freeview. And having a pvr helps(not cheap though).

[mr motorola]

toshiba are launching a stand alone hd dvd recorder with a 1 terabyte hard drive built in mind you it is scheduled to retail at about £2500, and sharp and various other compaines are launching the same sort of kit in bluray format for about the same cost.if you run your tv through your computer however pioneer already do a bluray writer that retails at a measly £575.00 by comparison and then of course you'll need the discs which are about £10.00 each for the rw type and about £8.00 for the single write variety.

Aye,,,,,,,,,it certainly ain't gonna be cheap to get yourself future-proof to the extent of the above. But you can rest assured that once the 'novelty' of the new technology starts to wear off the prices will fall. But how long will it take?

[snakey1]

Aye,,,,,,,,,it certainly ain't gonna be cheap to get yourself future-proof to the extent of the above. But you can rest assured that once the 'novelty' of the new technology starts to wear off the prices will fall. But how long will it take?

Hopefully not too long Mr M, personnally i'm waiting to see who wins the "battle of the formats" between HD and Bluray, not much point in forking out a shed load of cash at the moment if the format you pick goes belly up. I remember reading somewhere that one of the deciding factors as to who eventually wins out will be what format the porn industry settles on as they produce far more straight to dvd films each year than the rest of the film industry

Edited November 21, 2007 by snakey1

[Guest sandpipper]

"funny, that, Elton. We record stuff all the time. You guys must need to carry more American TV (we record mostly sports)"

 

Hi Jan this is not personal, but one of the main reasons i do not watch tv is because we in the uk copy what the amerians do and the worse one is the amount of adverts we get when all we had was analog we only had 3 adds now we get on average 6/7 of them and they seem to go for ever.

Tony

[Big Jeff]

If you only watch recordings on your hard disk recorder you need never watch another advert again. Anything that I want to watch I will record now and view either 20 minutes after it has started or later when it suits.

 

Without adverts 30 minute programme becomes 20 and 1 hour gets down to virtually 40 minutes.

 

The only advert viewed is the Cadbury Gorilla - cool!!!

 

Jeff