Is it just me, or is anybody else surprised by the lack of a digital tuner from DVD recorders, or even humble VHS machines?
To record a true 16:9 picture I have to set a VCR timer AND set top box tuner, plus make sure other bits are configured OK, AND of course can't use set top box for anything else.
If a "box" was produced with DVD recorder, hard drive recorder, and digital tuner (or two :) ) I'd buy it like a shot. A case for a CV campaign?!
quote:Originally posted by infocus:
Is it just me, or is anybody else surprised by the lack of a digital tuner from DVD recorders, or even humble VHS machines?To record a true 16:9 picture I have to set a VCR timer AND set top box tuner, plus make sure other bits are configured OK, AND of course can't use set top box for anything else.
If a "box" was produced with DVD recorder, hard drive recorder, and digital tuner (or two :) ) I'd buy it like a shot. A case for a CV campaign?!
a sky+ box is only missing the dvd recorder from your request list.
to make a box that worked for everyone , you would need to make it both sky and terrestrial digital capable , some houses cannot install sky dishes (or don't want to),so everyone would have a partial redundant circuit in the box they bought.
having seen that sky still don't have stable firmware for the sky boxes i'd be really worried about the stability of a dvd recorder with built in sky decoder.
quote:Originally posted by infocus:
Is it just me, or is anybody else surprised by the lack of a digital tuner from DVD recorders, or even humble VHS machines?
No it's not just you! I like you am becoming increasingly frustrated by the lack of a digital terrestrial tuner in any of the currently available DVD recorders. It seems like a very odd decision by all the major manufacturers to offer only a analogue tuner in their DVD recorders in this increasingly digital world.
Personally I would willingly pay an extra £50 on top of the price of an analogue tuner model to enable proper widescreen recording & the ability to record from a selection of digital channels off air as well as from my digi cable box. I just hope that my prayers will be answered soon so I can free up some space under my TV!
totally agree...
sky+ costs far too much money, and i don't really want a hard drive recorder anyway, but i don't see why my VCR couldn't have a freeview decoder in it - you can buy a set top box for about £60 these days, so fitting one in a VCR is only going to be an extra £40 or so...
mark.
I think the problem is, how many countries in the world have free-to-air digital broadcasts? and how may of them use the same system as us?
Maybe Mr. A. Roberts of the BBC might know?
After the last post, and having started the thread, can I throw in another twopennorth?
Not many countries use PAL-I (UK, Hong Kong, a couple of African countries & ?), but it's still worth making PAL-I only gear. Admittedly the differences between that and other systems aren't as marked as those between analogue and digital, but from a manufacturers point of view, digital broadcasting is supposed to be the way of the future. Anyway, I understand that the move towards digital on the same basic system is certainly Europe wide anyway, even if many countries aren't broadcasting yet. In fact, I've heard that being one of the first has given us a disadvantage (bit like America, colour and NTSC) in that we have a less robust 2,000 carrier system as opposed to 8,000. Can anybody enlighten further?
That aside, imagine if analogue transmissions WERE switched off in 2006, as initially hoped for. Many people struggle to set their VCR's as it is, and with no VCR's with inbuilt tuners even on the horizon, and lets say most households by then MAY have got just ONE settop box, can we dream of the looming chaos?!
Frankly, I think it should have been mandatory for all broadcast receiving gear on sale in the UK (inc VCR's) to have had both analogue & digital tuners from a given date, with switch off a set period later. The current situation is little short of a fiasco - a straw poll of friends and acquaintances finds the selection of extra channels (possibly excluding the BBC's News 24) to be less than overwhelming, and not enough to drive the uptake of technology by themselves. The only reason I have a box at all is as a source of true 16:9 pictures of the main channels.
Personally I would be happy to ditch BBC3,4 et al and use the freed bandwidth for High Definition - but now we're on to a different argument..........! :)
Ahem.....
If you go by head count in the countries concerned, you'll find that SECAM broadcasts to the greatest population, the PAL, then NTSC.
If you go by number of receivers in the countries concerned, you'll find that NTSC brioacasts to most sets, then PAL, then SECAM.
PAL gets into an awful lot of countries, many more than NTSC, but the density of recievers is lower.
The problem with having DVD or tape recorders with digital front ends, is less to do with the market size, than with the licencing arrangements. It's less than a year since terrestrial digits in the UK went free, but there are about 2 million receivers of it if you include all the older ITVdigital boxes. That's not a huge market for anyone to address. Yet.
But, when China goes digital next year, you can expect to see some changes, because China is a PAL (i.e. 625/50Hz) country, and currently China is the market leader in manufacturing costs. So we can look forward to some sort of explosion of new boxes in abotu 2 years time. With luck.
quote:Originally posted by infocus:
If a "box" was produced with DVD recorder, hard drive recorder, and digital tuner (or two :) ) I'd buy it like a shot. A case for a CV campaign?!
See the Fusion FDTRR100 at http://www.fusiondigitec.com/
More general info at http://www.pvruk.co.uk/
Cheers
Paul
This afternoon, having a few minutes to waste, I wandered into a branch of Dixons. On display was a DVD Player with a built in 'free to view' digital tuner. Manufacturer was Grundig.
Make of that what you will.
Bit of consumer choice in there as well; i.e. which digi-freeview box do you want.
I had to return a Grundig as it just couldn't quite handle my ricketty aerial, (freezing, no sound, no sync, artifacts) the replacement Nokia box has no real problems- a minor bit of freezing here and there, but nothing I would go out of the way to fix.
Rb
Been on holiday - no e-mail for a week!
Reading the last few replies to my last post, I have to say to "Alan Roberts at work" - read posts CAREFULLY before replying!! Read it again, and you'll see that I talk about "PAL-I", NOT just "PAL"!
If you work for the BBC, I trust you understand the significance of the "I" - for readers who don't, an analogue broadcast TV signal has three attributes: line standard (625 in UK), colour modulation system (PAL in UK), and transmission standard (I in UK, on UHF). The crucial difference between the few "I" countries and most of the rest of the PAL world is in the vision to sound carrier spacing, 6Mhz for system I. In practice, take a UK TV or VCR to most of Europe, and you'll probably get good pictures, but no sound, and vice versa.
That said, I stand by my earlier point that the market for "PAL-I" equipment (NOT "PAL"!) is globally very small - but is still catered for by manufacturers. Similarly, if (as in my original post) "....(it) should have been mandatory for all broadcast receiving gear on sale in the UK (inc VCR's) to have had both analogue & digital tuners from a given date", the market is not a million or two, but the entire UK TV market!
I think Mr Roberts scatches on the truth when he talks about licensing arrangements - when DTV was originally proposed broadcasters were blinded by the prospect of new channels, ignored common sense, and that's why many of the problems have come about. In practice, not that large a percentage of people are at all bothered about lots of extra channels - and those that are are better served by having a Sky dish!
The situation is comparable in radio. I was lucky enough to witness one of the first trial demonstrations of DAB, when the main benefits promoted were higher quality and for in car reception. Then the non-technical people within the BBC took charge, decided to promote it on a "more channels" basis, which meant bitrate reductions and a received quality worse than FM. Other factors have reduced it's benefits for in car use, and taking away these two target markets, the poor sales have shown that the "more channels at any cost is the way to market" philosophy doesn't make sense.
Sorry to rant at length, but I really feel that digital TV (and radio!) was a fantastic opportunity messed up by the broadcasters. On a positive note, thanks for the info on the Fusion box, perhaps things are going to get better..... now how about HDTV.... :)
Point taken, I do indeed know about the transmission systems, I've got all the specs in my office draw. But don't undersestimate the size of the PAL I market, over 2 million boxes watching terrestrial digits and about 4.5 watching Sky, that's not a small market for any manufacturer to aim at. It's about 5 times the size of all the HD markets, worldwide, put together. And that's just for the UK and Eire PAL market.