bigAPE

Providing your television has a SCART or Composite RCA sockets (Yellow Video, Red & White Audio) then you will be able to connect up a Digital Set Top Box, which you can pick up dirt cheap in one of the big stores here, and watch all the regular channels in Digital quality on your existing TV without a problem.

The difference between UK (PAL) and Australian (PAL B/G) television is to do with a difference the sound reception. Some modern televisions are also mutli-standard and will work just fine (check your manual for PAL B/G support). However, most people seem to watch TV using the Digital service now much like Freeview in the UK.

Hope this helps.

bubblegum_babe

To be honest I don't watch much Television here in the UK neither does my son so I think one of those freeview boxes would be perfect. I've already had my Sky cut off in my drive to save money due to it hardly being watched and we don't miss it at all

I've already searched the threads on here and it seems there will be no problems with the PS3 or the PC's. These are the items we couldn't live without

Thanks for the info

dainty

Same thing happened to me watching the Chelsea v Liverpool match this past sunday.. and I still live in the UK!

TeresaG

We were wondering whether or not to get a new TV before we leave. The one we have is about 6 years old and ideally we'd like to get a HD LCD one. We don't want buy one in case it doesn't work when we get there. We are just going to put up with the old thing we have for a bit longer and will get a new TV when we arrive.

fly2hi

We dumped all our old tellys in a skip before we left. When we arrived, popped int Good Guys and bought a 50" plasma screen for less than $1k

bigAPE

They have TV's here. I would wait until you arrive. There are good deals to be made.

brissyboyds

We have a panasonic tv with built in digital/freeview,it's got scart plug and all that.Told that if we get sound chip(what dat?) changed everything will be ok,any ideas.Fred

bigAPE

This is because the UK Freeview DTV decoder operates at 8MHz instead of the Australian 7MHz standard. You could upgrade the internal decoder providing it's possible but you might also have other issues. It could well be cheaper to just buy a cheap DTV decoder here and plug it in.

linloo

Less than a $1k??????? for a 50" wow....... Does it work??

the greens

If you buy a digital set top box in Oz does it give you extra channels (we currently have ABC, 7,9 and 10). Or does it just enhance the picture/sound quality of the existing free channels ?

DadAgain

Digital Free to Air TV has teh following channels:

ABC1
ABC2
SBS
SBS-WorldNews
Ch7
Ch7HD
Ch9
Ch9HD
Ch10
Ch10HD

HD channels are only available to those with HD equipment - and most of the time have the same content as SD channels (and most of the time not even in HD either - just upscaled SD)

TV quality is extremely low - and schedules are more of an approximate suggestion of what *might* be broadcast rather than a firm indicator of what will be broadcast. Adverts are ubiquitous and segued into without any warning. Typically a 60 minute show (on the 'big 3' commercial channels) will contain 20 minutes of adverts spread unevenly over 8 or 9 ad breaks.

Increasingly the only way to achieve a satisfactory viewing experience in Australia is to use FTA tv as a "sampler" - if you see something you like then go striaght to BitTorrent and get the full series in good quality. If you try and wait for broadcasts you will:

1) Watch HOURS of adverts
2) Get inferior picture and sound quality
3) Miss episodes due to unannounced rescheduling
4) Have to put up with large and opaque watermarks in the middle of the screen (instead of small translucent ones at the edge of the 16:9 screen)
4) Watch episodes in the wrong order - Networks only care about "Ratings period" so after a few weeks (whilst ratings are measured) of showing something watchable they then shelve future episodes and play repeats when ratings are not being measured before returning to air 'new' episodes once ratings periods start again. This makes the chronology of watching a series unfold almost impossible....

dazah

dont bring your tvs they wont work here

DadAgain

Your TV will work... but your tuner probably wont!

Australian FTA Tv is DVB-T (like UK) - but broadcast over VHF frequencies and not UHF frequencies. So the Tv will work - but wont have any channels. A set top box for $50 can fix that - and any STB/DVD player/PVR/Games console should be able to output a signal down one of composite video/Svideo/Component/HDMI cables and get you going....

Amazulu

Some will, some won't.

bigAPE

7's service is worse than Ten's. At least Ten are buying source HD with the packages from the US, where as 7 are only buying a couple of bouquet packages in HD like Greys and Lost and the rest are SD.

Worse of all is 7's Footy coverage. Pitifully upscaled SD on their 7HD service. Ten's is outstanding 1080 HD and the quality of games is just awesome.

You're too used to UK scheduling. Australian TV follows a more North American scheduling schema. It's nasty but something you just have to get used too. I'm more angry with the blatant sponsorship. Sponsorship regs in the UK are pretty tight, but here it's just insane, like watching US daytime scheduling all the time.

You're suggesting that quality of DivX Torrents are superior to SD broadcasts on DTV here in Australia ?? Don't get me wrong the quality of a Torrent viewed on a PC/Mac or via an HDMI Upscaling DVD/DivX player is excellent but can't compete to even the SD service here. When you move to HD DTV here the quality of even shows like Lost, House and BSG are off the scale. I work in broadcasting and I've seen some quite remarkable stuff in my time (e.g. Ultra-HD from NHK in japan), I'm still amazed every time I watch the Ten HD service.

The networks here don't ship EPG Delta's so the set-top-boxes aren't updated. By the time 7's sponsored Tivo arrived later in the year the full cross-network 14 day EPG publishing agreement will be in full effect and delta's will be provided.

Some of the shows I watch on torrent have massive watermarks across them. The use of on-screen "bugs" in US broadcasts is rampant. Some networks like The CW even employ half screen full-colour animated promo's halfway through an event!

If you're referring to US shows being broadcast over here, this is more to do with the scheduling in the US than here. As an example while House is taking a break for a couple of weeks (trying to smooth out the release schedule after the production downtime from the WGA strike) Ten have started showing Season 2 episodes from S02xE01 to fill the void. What annoys me and you obviously is that they don't tell you what they are doing. I have always felt that EPG should have have the Series and Episode Version ID's visible for episodics like House, etc. We did this in Europe (not the UK) and it worked really well.

My advice on this one is keep a track of the upcoming US schedule of your favorite shows using tv.com. The shows picked up here on the "Streamed from the US" type packages where they are broadcast "as they are shown in the US" are offset by a week, so add a week on the next scheduled airing of the show you like and that's when it will be aired.

e.g. Season 4 Episode 9 of Lost will not air in the US until 24th April (thanks to the WGA strike) so it won't be shown in Australia until 1st March. However, if you're one of the ~24,000 people who fell for the April Fool on Torrent yesterday, it's out now

Al