Zentack

Just wondering what television providers people use. As far as I'm aware you can chose from: Analogue Terrestrial (free), Digital Terrestrial (free), Fox (pay), Optus (pay), any others?

I only ask as I'm using analogue terrestrial and as I'm not a big fan of soaps / reality TV or CSI type shows I end up watching a bank screen or some bloke in a 4x4 driving through the outback on Bris31.

If you go the pay route how much do you pay per month and do you recon you get good value for your dollars?

Cheers

Papa Z

4lex

I recently bought a free-to-air digital tv receiver w/ hard disk recorder for all of three hundred bucks. Picture quality from a bog standard shared antenna in our block of units is flawless, and the unit has component video and digital audio outputs (some shows are even broadcast in 5.1!).

You'll be disappointed if your looking for extra channels - I get ABC 1&2, SBS 1&2, 7, 9, 10 and about twenty channels of crap, shopping stuff, christian channel, parliament - though there is some interesting material on NSW44, some travel shows, surfcams etc, but on very low bandwidth.

It does have a bunch of timers built in though, so if you can be arsed to tell it what to record (I tell it to get stuff that's on weekly so I don't have to remember to watch it then) it becomes very handy - just check through the log and choose what to watch at your leisure. It'll take about 30 hours of dvd quality broadcast.

For my money, about A$1k per annum for fox is far too much, better spent at the pub for watching sport or blockbuster for movies IMO.

madsad

foxtel is $70.00 a month and unless you want it for the sport, dont waste your money.

Sue from Manchester

[QUOTE=4lex]I recently bought a free-to-air digital tv receiver w/ hard disk recorder for all of three hundred bucks. Picture quality from a bog standard shared antenna in our block of units is flawless, and the unit has component video and digital audio outputs (some shows are even broadcast in 5.1!).

Sounds a brilliant piece of kit. If I bought one of them presumably the input would be through that box and therefore the UK TV would work? Where did you get it from?

The Hun

Yeah, I'd be interested to know if it works with UK TV too.

Mike.

Zentack

Digital Terrestrial TV for the UK and AUS use slightly different frequency ranges:

Australia http://www.dvb.org/index.php?id=232
UK http://www.dvb.org/index.php?id=229

So as I understand it, if the manufacturer hasn't just made a model of decoder capable of working globally you might find it won't work if you change countries. But then I haven't seen any posts from anyone who has actually tried.

There is a good forum for PVR's (Hard disk based video recorders) here in Oz:

http://www.dtvforum.info/

Cheers

Papa Z

MrsDagboy

Hiya Z, we have foxtel digital which we are quite happy with. Unless you watch tv 24/7, you should find something of interest to watch. If you watch a hell of alot of tv you will find stuff repeated over & over (eg. they usually run the same episode of a program at least twice in a 24 hr period). But there are a hell of alot of channels available & we dont even have any of the movie channels. We actually have 2 decoder boxes, 1 for the kids to watch in the family room & one in our main living room.

We also have a hi definition digital box as well, however our new house doesn't have a terrestrial aerial, so its sitting gathering dust until we get one installed.

I know that there is now a second ABC channel on digital, but Id be interested to know if there are the same number of channels up here in Brisbane now as Alex mentioned. Does anyone know?

JackTheLad

We have it, and use it for documentaries,national geographic, news, comedy channels, food and lifestyle channels, oh and sport.

It just depends how important these kind of things are to you. If you've had these channels in the UK you know what to expect. Probably after a year or two we will have seen every single programme, as they repeat them repeatedly.

We got it free for 6 months with the tv we bought, so are only getting the bills now. I think we are tied in for 2 years, and then we will decide if we want to keep it.

Cheers,
JTL

leanda

After having all digital channels in the UK we now just have the Aussie basic tv channels, 7 , 9 , 10 and ABC and to be honest I dont miss all the lifestyle channels, the cooking programmes and the Getting New Life things that were on, unless you are into sport I wouldn't bother, its nice to actually do things in the evenings rather than sit in and watch tv, and the kids don't miss it either, they have their ABC kids channel on for a while in the afternoon and then when thats finished and normally before hand they are off doing sports, playing outside and generally enjoying themselves without sitting in front of the box.

And this is from a once addicted Soap fan who now couldn't care less whats going on in the world of make believe. Dont waste your money.

4lex

Undoubtedly, assuming your UK TV has Scart, component video or composite video inputs. The box does not have an RF modulator, meaning it cannot pass its signal to the tv via antenna coax.

I'm of the understanding that the only problem bringing UK TV's is the PAL sound frequency is different, this is not an issue with this box as it decodes the sound too and passes it to your TV/amp as appropriate. Mind you, if you've not shipped the telly as yet, it seems Oz is importing boatloads of big LCD screens, saw a 32" widescreen for just AUD 2000 in an electrical shop recently.

Picked mine up from eBay for 270 odd plus shipping.