Freeview Digital Television After moving house, I found myself with a big tree blocking my Sky signal. This means the only other option to get more than 5 channels and a bit of quality is Freeview. I bargained with the salesman at Dixons who gave me a Sony VTX-D800U for £99.99. There are cheaper boxes out there but this one seemed to do well in all tests. Here's how things went...
About Freeview
Freeview is the name for the UK's Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) system, currently
offering about 30 channels. It runs on normal TV frequencies in between the analog channels.
Each digital channel is in a multiplex (MUX), of which there currently are six, each with
about 18Mbps (16QAM modulation) or 24Mpbs (64QAM) bandwidth. Both TV, radio and text services
are supported and the bandwidth assigned to each channel is variable. There has always been
the "now and next" program information, but currently testing is being done on the full
"Sky style" 7 day program guide. Not many receivers support this yet, but my Sony does.
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The ERP (Effective Radiated Power) of the transmitters is much lower than that of analog TV;
London's Crystal Palace transmitter's digital channel ERP is a mere 20KW, compared to 1
Megawatt for analog! This makes it possible to put the digital channels in without
interfering with analog channels on the same frequencies from other transmitters, but also
makes for a weak signal. This is especially a problem with the 64QAM multiplexes.
Sometime in the future, all analog signals will be switched off; anything from 2007 to 2010
has been mentioned, but no real date yet. After that, many more frequencies will be freed up,
making room for more digital channels.
Taking it home
The first thing I did when I got home was connecting it to a crappy old set-top aerial to see
if I would get any signal. Since I live about 3 miles from the Crystal Palace transmitter,
it wasn't surprising that I got some signal. I just didn't image it would be this good!
Sky had been dropping bandwidth per channel for years in favour of more channels and it
was good to see Freeview hasn't and depending on the multiplex and channel it looks like it
is an acceptable 3-4Mbps. The image is crisp and contrasty with a lot less encoding artifacts
than Sky has.
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But it couldn't all be good. I quickly realized that the multiplex containing, amongst others,
Five hadn't been found at all. I tried in vain but no luck. Time for an aerial upgrade.
Aerial upgrade
Attempting to get all available channels, I went to B&Q and bought a completely over-the-top
18 element wideband MaxxView aerial to install in my loft. Better safe than sorry and it was
less than 15 pounds. After wiping the dust of my clothes from crawling around the loft,
I plugged the aerial in, let the Sony box retune. This time it found all the channels without
problems.
Unfortunately, as I found out while watching the final episode of Friends, all was not well.
The MUX carrying Channel 4 and ITV was breaking up intermittently. After a week of pondering
on what it could be, I replaced the cheap aerial cable that came with the MaxxView with proper,
satellite grade, CT100. That set me back £8.50 for 10 meters including postage from
SatCure. So far it seems to be a big improvement.
Update: The cable was indeed an improvement, but the problems came back. It was the tree. Luckily,
I could move the aerial to the other side of the loft where it looks just past the tree and signal
now always is as good as it gets.
Using the Sony
I can understand why this box does so well in tests, it is very well designed.
The menus are easy to navigate and look as smart as the box itself does. Setup
is child's play. It completely supports 4:3 (letterbox and full screen) and 16:9
televisions in Y/C ("S-Video"), Composite PAL and RGB. It has an annoying 3.5mm
jack that combines both stereo out and optical digital. I haven't connected this
as my SCART switchbox has an audio out that I connect to my stereo. There are two
SCART connectors, one for TV and one for you VCR. The latter only supports composite
video but does have "Smart Link", which can, if your video supports it, tell it when
to start and stop recording.
With the introduction of Top up TV there are more
channels than I can actually watch. That's a bit annoying, but the Sony lets you change
the order of the channels, so I just moved the to high channel numbers. Switching channels
is reasonably quick with it taking about a second and a half for the next channel to be
visible. But fortunately, you can just keep pressing up/down to get to the channel you want,
no need to wait for each one to appear.
The 7-Day program guide isn't as good the one on Sky, mainly due to the small font used. But
it is quite usable and one nice feature is that the channel you were watching remains visible
and audible in the background. It is easy to set reminders and record events. This is especially
handy for Smart Link compatible VCRs, but my dumber JVC can automatically record by detecting
the Sony box being switched on and off. Unfortunately this only works on the second SCART of
my video, which doesn't support playback. So until I do some fancy soldering to make a SCART
cable that splits it into one record and one playback plug, it looks like I have to stick to
setting timers for recording.
Conclusion
Freeview is much better than analog TV and with more channels. While you get fewer channels
than you do with Sky, the quality is better and it is certainly cheaper. Too bad that aerial
and cable can be quite critical. I have no doubt my big tree that stops me from getting Sky
is interfering somewhat, but it can't be that bad. And that is its downfall, if I have this
many problems while only living 3 miles from the transmitter with no terrain or high-rise
buildings in the way, how easy will it be for others? The only really reliable way of getting
it is an outside aerial with line of sight and high quality cable.
That said, it is certainly worth the effort and I can thoroughly recommend both Freeview and
the Sony VTX-D800U.
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