Prove a product thats worth its money to me ... !

Forums › Freeview (DVB-T/DVB-S) › Prove a product thats worth its money to me ... !

Dom007

53 posts

Master Geek

#92727 4-Nov-2011 21:27

Right - here it is. About a year ago I decided i'd had enough of Sky's rubbish channels and cancelled my $49 per month subscription and went DVT and got a Vantage 6000t.

So I paid 499 for this plus the installation fee to the man. All well and good. Of course now I get slightly less amount of channels of cr4p to choose from.

More and more I notice cooking programs and other such junk .... nothing interesting ... more repeats of ancient films ....

Now the past few days my picture is starting to freeze for a couple of seconds periodically all the time on all channels.
I try reinstalling, rescanning to no avail.

Do I now go and buy yet another receiver to watch more channels of rubbish ...... oh the pain and anguish I feel ...

I'm toying with DV-S this time but of course when I research it I see that almost every box I research has some sort of problem. WHY IS THIS ???? What is so difficult about creating a set top box ? Why do we seem to get inferior products ? I don't get it - apart from maybe the answer is "because they can" (get away with it).

I've spent a lot on these products to watch inferior tv and hate the thought of having to pay a few hundy for another seeming high-spec'd product to find I will have to do it again in a years time.

Jaxson

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#541327 4-Nov-2011 21:43

Does your unit tell you signal strength and quality values?
There has been some rough weather the last few days and aerials don't stay perfect for ever.

Periodic freeze/pixelation of DVB channels typically indicates poor signal.

Dom007

53 posts

Master Geek

#541330 4-Nov-2011 21:53

Hi - yeah it seems to flick between 65 and 70. I did think about the weather as the winds are pretty strong here in Welly at the moment.

I was gonna wait a few days to see if it changes.

Dom007

53 posts

Master Geek

#541331 4-Nov-2011 21:56

Are you saying if the picture doesn't improve when the weather settles to get someone to look at the aerial ?

cheers

Jaxson

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#541334 4-Nov-2011 22:06

Yeah I'm saying that if you feed any box a weak signal it will have issues.

All the channels on freeview come via one of three streams , so you have to check the signal and quality of all 3 streams. TVNZ, Mediaworks and Kordia all provide a stream, so do the signal and quality checks on: TV1, Prime and TV3. This should give you an indication of how your aerial is performing across all the frequencies it needs to be good at.

If your box has worked well before, chances are an aerial clean/alignment/re-termination of ends etc should get it all going well again. It's a good place to start.

bfginger

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#541351 4-Nov-2011 23:14

You paid $499 for a single-tuner receiver without EPG or HDD? :(

The poor choice and quality is because NZ adopted the UK Freeview model which was designed for a country of 65million people. With NZ's DVB-T requirements being unique, costs associated with approval and the small size of the market means it isn't economical for many models to be sold here. Those that are are usually from minor companies that don't have a QA culture.

Have you thought about a HTPC?

Dom007

53 posts

Master Geek

#541371 5-Nov-2011 07:59

Hmm ok I will get the aerial checked and if that still doesn't work I'll consider my options.
Thanks for all your help.
Cheers

HP

Shop now for HP laptops and other devices (affiliate link).

Jaxson

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#541379 5-Nov-2011 08:23

Dom007: Hmm ok I will get the aerial checked

As above, can you please check/post the actual signal quality and strength values on channels TV1, Prime and TV3?

freitasm

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#541407 5-Nov-2011 09:43

Dom007: Are you saying if the picture doesn't improve when the weather settles to get someone to look at the aerial ?

Read this. Actually people should read all entries in that blog.

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Jaxson

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#541427 5-Nov-2011 11:42

freitasm:
Read this. Actually people should read all entries in that blog.

Ha I actually have that exact same unit at the moment.

When we moved into our new house the previous owner had installed a mast head amplifier. This gave perfect reception but we didn't need to distribute the signal to as many outlets as the previous owner. I removed the mast head amplifier, tidied up the cabling and now we still get 100% signal/quality on the same original aerial.

So yeah, point is, get a good signal, and only look to amplify as a last resort, or if you genuinely need to boost the signal.

Dom007

53 posts

Master Geek

#541445 5-Nov-2011 13:32

OK - vaguely embarrassing this but I'll share it anyway as I guess a few other ppl will have the same problem (especially ones that don't frequent this forum !).

I took the unit back to the shop I got it from and they saw it was tuned into Kau Kau transmitter when it should have been tuned into Baxters Knob. They have retuned it and as i'm typing this so far I have had no freezes.
When you do an Auto Scan it picks up the strongest signal apparently - in this case Kau Kau whereas I reall should have been pointing to Baxters Knob as my house is nearest to that.

As I say, Joe Public won't know this as it means knowing the frequencies of the transmitter.
Anyway - big thanks to the guys at DTVS in Tawa !

Cheers