Bought a TEAC HDB849 over from Australia

Forums › Freeview (DVB-T/DVB-S) › Bought a TEAC HDB849 over from Australia - doesn't work in NZ

danepak

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#193812 25-Mar-2016 00:49

As the subject suggests, I can't get this to work here.
Is it just not made for NZ? I can't choose NZ either as a country in the setup.

I just need a cheap set top box to connect a harddrive too, so I can record stuff now and again. What's my best bet? DishTV?

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#1519435 25-Mar-2016 07:32

It's probably a good idea to tell us what this TEAC device is...

Assuming it's a DVB-T TV or something with a TV tuner in it, then it won't work unless it can be reconfigured for NZ. Various different standards between here and Australia.

SATTV

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#1519438 25-Mar-2016 08:02

I just had a look at the manual and it should work here but wont get the full EPG.

Try setting the country to Singapore as they have a similar band plan to us from memory.

Also set the IF bandwidth to 7MHz

John

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Behodar

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#1519439 25-Mar-2016 08:05

SATTV: Also set the IF bandwidth to 7MHz

I thought Australia was 7 and we were 8... or am I mixing things up?

danepak

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#1519479 25-Mar-2016 08:51

Sorry Running Man, I'm a bit of a novice in this area. Yes, it's got a TV tuner and I can record onto a USB drive. Furthermore, it can play various video formats like AVI and MP4.

sbiddle

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#1519490 25-Mar-2016 09:02

DVB-T in Australia is totally different to everywhere else in the world. Unless it can be adjusted to support 8MHz channels like those used outside Australia it won't work. Even if it does it's likely it won't have an EPG.

danepak

665 posts

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#1519494 25-Mar-2016 09:13

SATTV:

I just had a look at the manual and it should work here but wont get the full EPG.

Try setting the country to Singapore as they have a similar band plan to us from memory.

Also set the IF bandwidth to 7MHz

John

I can't set the country to Singapore.

The available countries are: Slovenia, Luxembourg, Norway, France, Czech, Italy, Sweden, Poland, Austria, Croatia, Greece, Romania, Finland, Bulgaria, Russia, Australia, Spain, Portugal, England, Netherlands, Serbia, Germany, Belgium, Hungary and Denmark.

Would any of these have a similar band plan to NZ?

mentalinc

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#1519498 25-Mar-2016 09:23

only 24 ways to find..

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danepak

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#1519503 25-Mar-2016 09:31

Bingo!

Set it to Norway and voila!

Got roughly 32 channels. Does that seem like the right amount to pick up on Freeview?

(I'm becoming a massive fan of Geekzone. Someone also assisted me reg. setting up Fibre internet here in NZ).

mm1352000

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#1519530 25-Mar-2016 10:27

Behodar:

SATTV: Also set the IF bandwidth to 7MHz

I thought Australia was 7 and we were 8... or am I mixing things up?

Yeah, we're 8 and Aus is 7.

@sbiddle

I'm wondering why you consider Australian DVB-T so unique (?). The only differences I'm aware of are:

The 7 MHz bandwidth. Considering that the DVB-T standard specifies 6, 7 and 8 MHz, this should not be a problem for a compliant receiver. AFAIK 7 MHz is also used in Italy and Sweden. That's not intended to be an exhaustive list - just what I'm aware of off the top of my head. The point is Australia are not the only ones.
The frequency plan and/or offsets. Lots of countries have quirks in their frequency/channel allocations, and not only for TV broadcasting.

You mentioned EPG. Australia's broadcasts carry a standard DVB EIT, and that's very standard...

sbiddle

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#1519539 25-Mar-2016 10:48

mm1352000:

@sbiddle

I'm wondering why you consider Australian DVB-T so unique (?). The only differences I'm aware of are:

The 7 MHz bandwidth. Considering that the DVB-T standard specifies 6, 7 and 8 MHz, this should not be a problem for a compliant receiver. AFAIK 7 MHz is also used in Italy and Sweden. That's not intended to be an exhaustive list - just what I'm aware of off the top of my head. The point is Australia are not the only ones.
The frequency plan and/or offsets. Lots of countries have quirks in their frequency/channel allocations, and not only for TV broadcasting.

You mentioned EPG. Australia's broadcasts carry a standard DVB EIT, and that's very standard...

Australia's DVB-T all started as VHF rather than UHF. While they have UHF usage now the vast majority of DVB-T rollouts around the world are UHF, not VHF.

The reasons for both are because Pal B used 7MHz, hence Australia opted to use 7MHz DVB-T so it could co-exist in VHF with existing analogue content. In Europe they stuck to UHF for DVB-T so there were no compromises required as they didn't need to use overlapping frequencies and UHF is far superior for densely populated cities than VHF.

As for the EPG yes Aussie uses EIT - but unless a device supports MHEG5 or Huffman coding for the EIT then it's not going to be able to display an EPG in NZ.

SATTV

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#1519546 25-Mar-2016 11:04

Behodar:

SATTV: Also set the IF bandwidth to 7MHz

I thought Australia was 7 and we were 8... or am I mixing things up?

Woops - Sorry about that, it has been a number of years.

I remember I used to bring set top boxes over from Australia to play with as there was a test transmitter on Waitarua for a number of years, it was only MPEG2 but there were a couple of extra channels like RT, NASA TV and al jazeera.

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littleheaven

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#1519621 25-Mar-2016 13:30

danepak:

Bingo!

Set it to Norway and voila!

Got roughly 32 channels. Does that seem like the right amount to pick up on Freeview?

(I'm becoming a massive fan of Geekzone. Someone also assisted me reg. setting up Fibre internet here in NZ).

Yeah, there's 35 in total (see here for full Freeview channel guide: http://www.freeviewnz.tv/tvguide/whats-on/) Incidentally I find that site really helpful for setting my recording - it has a good search function. If I type in Kirstie Allsopp, for example, it'll give me every instance of every show she's in for the next couple of weeks. Much easier to get a holistic view from than the EPG.

Edited to add: I am also a massive fan of Geekzone - the assistance I've received here has revolutionised my home entertainment and saved me heaps of money.

Geek girl. Freelance copywriter and editor at Unmistakable.co.nz.

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mm1352000

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#1519628 25-Mar-2016 13:41

sbiddle: In Europe they stuck to UHF for DVB-T so there were no compromises required as they didn't need to use overlapping frequencies and UHF is far superior for densely populated cities than VHF.

You're right about UHF propagation being superior for cities. However with the greatest respect, Europe hasn't actually restricted itself to UHF. I mentioned Sweden and Italy earlier. They use 7 MHz VHF channels and 8 MHz UHF channels as explained here (for Sweden):

https://www.dvb.org/news/commercial-launch-of-hdtv-using-dvb-t2-in-sweden

As you say, Australia has 7 MHz channels for both VHF and UHF, which is a bit unusual. However again, 7 MHz is included in the DVB-T standard. There's no band restriction on that. Further, most DVB-T tuner chipsets support both VHF and UHF. Therefore this shouldn't be a barrier to compatibility.

sbiddle: As for the EPG yes Aussie uses EIT - but unless a device supports MHEG5 or Huffman coding for the EIT then it's not going to be able to display an EPG in NZ.

True. However these are quirks of our implementation, not Australia's. I thought your point was that Australia was the odd one out?

Either way, Aussie's implementation of MHEG 5 is very similar to ours. So, if our UK-compatible, Huffman-compressed EIT is not supported, the MHEG 5 should be.

danepak

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#1524382 2-Apr-2016 00:27

littleheaven:

danepak:

Bingo!

Set it to Norway and voila!

Got roughly 32 channels. Does that seem like the right amount to pick up on Freeview?

(I'm becoming a massive fan of Geekzone. Someone also assisted me reg. setting up Fibre internet here in NZ).

Yeah, there's 35 in total (see here for full Freeview channel guide: http://www.freeviewnz.tv/tvguide/whats-on/) Incidentally I find that site really helpful for setting my recording - it has a good search function. If I type in Kirstie Allsopp, for example, it'll give me every instance of every show she's in for the next couple of weeks. Much easier to get a holistic view from than the EPG.

Edited to add: I am also a massive fan of Geekzone - the assistance I've received here has revolutionised my home entertainment and saved me heaps of money.

I just had a proper look at all the channels, which the box found:

1 TV One

2 TV2

3 TV3

4 Four

5 Maori Televison

6 TV One plus 1

7 TV2 + 1

8 TV3 Plus 1

9 Four Plus 1

10 Prime

11 The Edge TV

12 Choice TV

13 Duke

14 Te Reo

15 Al Jazeera

16 The Shopping Channel

17 TVSN Shopping

18 Yes Shop

19 Parliament

20 Firstlight

21 Chinese TV

22 TV29

23 TV33

24 Apna Television

25 Radio NZ National

26 UnknownChl001 (TV One)

28 UnknownChl002 (Shopping Channel)

30 UnknownChl003 (Nothing)

31 UnknownChl004 (Shopping Channel)

32 UnknownChl005 (Nothing)

Not sure about these Unknown channels. Am I supposed to receive more channels than these displayed here?

Batman

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#1524425 2-Apr-2016 09:09

My 7 year old Samsung Plasma tv works on DVB-T both in NZ and Australia ... that's about all I can tell you ... interesting ...

Involuntary autocorrect in operation on mobile device. Apologies in advance.

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