New freebox

I bought myself a new Digital Box today, a Philips DT1500.

So far its not bad, the sound quality is better than I expected.

I am not impressed with ITV 2 though, all I've seen so far on it is bloody Victoria Beckham!

 

welcome to the Philips DTR1500 club AT!!

just one tip- turn off the automatic updates, they have a habit of making mine crash. just do a manual scan for updates every month or so and leave the box on all the time.

cheers

Rozzar

 

Yep - got one for Xmas - very impressed, great picture quality, nice menu's, fast software and a digital co-ax out which is going straight into my Tag AV32R.

What more could one want?

Matt.

p.s. I like the way you can switch between radio and tv channels.

 

I have been very pleased with mine so far. I am glad I paid a bit extra I was going go for a £50 bush thing but then I thought I would only end up upgrading it.

Also the Philips has co-axial digital out which will be handy if I get a DAC.

I have too many Philips things now, my amp (which was kind of Philips when it was made (marantz)), my headphones, my TV and my digital box.

I have found that QVC and Price Drop to me so funny, I can't believe people fall for some of the double glazing style tactics they employ.

As for sound quality the radio is not as good as my analogue Sony STE300 but its not bad, its certainly listenable even though the bass is a tad boomy. i could easily do without my analgoue radio now though. I doubt it is worth selling though as I could probably only get £30 for it on ebay, I would rather keep it.

All I have to now buy another scart lead so I can connect my VHS, DVD and digital box together.

 

Just another thing, the specs are quite impressive:


166Mhz Processor
16MB RAM
4MB firmware

6 years ago I was using a 166Mhz PC with 16mb RAM! It was state of the art as well at the time.

I am quite impressed with that Magic station. All the old classics I could only get on AM before I can now get in stereo.

 

But it simply won't pick up UK History (which my wife watches a lot) so I've had to sell it - I would have taken it back but the box got thrown out with all the other Xmas boxes! It might well be an ariel problem (mine's pretty old) but my little Pace box picks up UK History with no problems.

I was about to get the new (£70 ish) Pace when I noticed that the Pace Twin is now down under £200 so I got one of those instead. This is the one with twin tuners and the inbuilt 20Gb hard drive - enough for recording 10 hours of TV - more than enough for me.

The picture seems a bit softer than the Philips but this apparently has been fixed by a software upgrade - just need to wait for the next download. Other than that it seems great - found all the channels and to record something you simply highlight the programme on the prog guide then hit record. Because it has two tuners you can watch and record two different digital channels.

When you have made recordings they appear in a library list giving the title of the programme - you simply select the one you want to watch and off you go.

Can't see me recording with my VCR much in the future - unless I'm copying something from the Pace's hard drive.

Matt.