It is too easy to blame the clients - and not very savvy business practice either - I am a professional electrical engineer with many years in the game along with the usual techo-head approach to all things technical (getting a little long in the tooth tho!) - I've been with FV since it's conception using a real doolally Strong receiver that jumps channels when other remotes are used or in bright sunlight.
Only recently, after a fair bit of reading from a number of sites, including TMe, did it become apparent to me that HD is only available from UHF land based sites. Previously FV was satellite, digital and used a dish. Do I have access to a land based uhf TV repeater? YES - yippee - whoa, wait a minute, it is not FV/HD/digital - oh bugger.
Many advertisements make a great play on recording one, watching another ... etc ... then they splurge on about HDMI, watch HDMI Freeview - upconversion, to 1080 da da da ... even now that I know the detail, it is difficult to find anything that says land based uhf only - usually I have to trawl through the specs to find that. Sometimes it is shown in a little tag somewhere on the page - but mostly not.
Then we have FV satellite boxes that output in HDMI - back to basics lads, if it don't come in in HDMI, upconversion etc is just plain misleading - sure there are some improvements in resolution between the box and the TV but the program is NOT HDMI resolution and can't be upconverted.
Imagine a member of the public asking for an HDMI receiver box from a pimply face at your favourite furniture store . "Sure we have one here at 4 quadrillion dollars" - client brings it back cause it don't work - he/she wasn't asked where he/she lives (not within range of the uhf site)! Lambs to the slaughter.
I'll rant on - next we get into PVR - this is a talk-fest of confusing detail - Panasonic have a USB port - one has to download their very comprehensive and mind-blowingly confusing manual first, then trawl through it to find out if one can save or record to it. And please NB - it is almost impossible to find out from a manual, what a function will NOT do - they rarely tell you that - I rely on you fullas - can you save or record to it? No you can't. But brand WhackWhack has a PVR function for USB - whoa - it is not NTFS tho - oh and another trawl though another manual says that it only saves in some obscure format although it will play any format known to God, AND as it is a linux box and the files won't load into M$'s Windows (someone on GeekZone pointed this out to me- thanks).
I won't mention the supa-helpful sales sites that promise a reply ASAP - then don't or do and don't answer the questions, some just send back a link to the manual (more trawling)!
Put Freeview into a TMe search - and try to make sense of it the blizzard of replies -who the hell, except you fulla's, can deal with this stuff?
Yeah, I got to say, its not that clear really. I sorted out my parents a month or 2 ago and it was really hard to explain what was happening. Dad thought they would have to get a satellite dish after talking to a sales rep, but I explained that they had a perfectly good UHF on the roof, so they could get TV in HD just the way they had it now.
I got them a Sony TV with freeview built in for the lounge and dad was a bit sad because not all the analogue channels were available on freeview. He likes his triangle tv because of dueche vella and aljazeera. But it looks like that will go to an internet streaming service now. Thankfully the Sony can still get analogue TV so he can watch it there for now. Trying to explain that later on they will need to buy another box to stream internet TV was just too hard.
I also got them a zinwell PVR to replace the broken tape recorder they had. Much nicer and is easy to use thankfully, but does not get analogue TV at all so they can only get freeview channels on the 29 inch tv in the bedroom unless they use the tuner in the TV. Oh well, they seem to finally have gotten used to it and like the series link and all the rest of it which makes life easy. My parents would never have worked all this out by themselves. They would have just been watching TV in 2013 on their 29 inch tv and rung me up to try and get the tv working because suddenly it no longer picked up a picture.
Its nice when it works, but there needs to be better documentation on the freeview site. Maybe a flow chart with boxes and yes/no questions so people can follow it through and get the right service for their needs. Also reps and sales people need to have things explained clearly so they can give customers the right products.
And just with the OP, yes, ditch the rubbish ads, they turn me right off freeview.
Try Vultr using this link and get us both some credit:
paulmilbank: I got them a Sony TV with freeview built in for the lounge and dad was a bit sad because not all the analogue channels were available on freeview. He likes his triangle tv because of dueche vella and aljazeera. But it looks like that will go to an internet streaming service now. Thankfully the Sony can still get analogue TV so he can watch it there for now.
The quality on the Korida mux in Auckland has suffered after Horseside was added so another channel is going to make things worse unless they close the Freeview test channel.
I think most of the confusion over Freeview comes from the name "Freeview|HD". If they had called it Freeview Terrestrial people wouldn't have the constant confusion between UHF, satellite dishes and whether Freeview|HD works with SD TVs.
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