bit of a wierd one

paradisiac

paradisiac

paradisiac

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my dad is after something to get his tv/dvd viewing expierence better. he has got a 42" hitatchi tv which through its own tuner is rubbish, but they have a freeview hdd recorder that is better, but not great. the picture quality is poor and when they try to record something using the epg it either gets the time wrong, or if they do a series record it gets confused with repeats and either records nothing or fails the recording before the program ends therefore nothing is viewable.
now while i was up there this weekend i set his pc up to his tv and the picture was better (a cheap nova-t usb tv tuner) but still blocky in places (mainly blacks were pixelating and contained blues).
so he is in two minds whether to buy a low power pc to run his tv, dvds and record programs, buy a better branded freeview recorder and see if that helps, or get freesat.
we have sky hd and the picture is a lot better than theirs, we also use my pc (see sig) for watching films. so im guessing freesat will be close to the sky hd quality. as for freeview recorders, i dont know if the tuners in the more expensive ones are better or not. which leaves me with the final option, a media pc. i dont really have any experience with the low powered ones (atoms) so i have a few questions:
1. are they a lot cheaper to run?
2. can you get tv cards that will output high quality (or is this down to the gfx card)?
3. can you get atoms with hdmi out?
4. are they pretty good at this, or is there a better alternative?

cheers. sorry forthe long post.
 
Probably better have a look at the aeriel. If reception is a problem with his current setup it is unlikley a media PC will be of any help, and will cost more to run in leccy, be more prone to failure and will be more expensive and complicated to set up/use.
 
d_brennen said:
Probably better have a look at the aeriel. If reception is a problem with his current setup it is unlikley a media PC will be of any help, and will cost more to run in leccy, be more prone to failure and will be more expensive and complicated to set up/use.
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his reception is fine, everything show signal of 90-95%. its the same on dvds too, blacks are pixelated and seem to be a mixture of blacks and blues, like really bad dvd rips are.
 
Probably better to try a better DVR/tuner then. They way I read it was you were getting shoddy picture quality because of reception! Have you got a freeview box (that you know is spot on) to try on his telly?
 
d_brennen said:
Probably better to try a better DVR/tuner then. They way I read it was you were getting shoddy picture quality because of reception! Have you got a freeview box (that you know is spot on) to try on his telly?
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no unfortnatly, he bought a cheap freeview hard drive recorder and it does give a better picture than the built in reciever, bit its still not great. he also bought a cheap dvd upscaler, which again, has helped but still not great. thing is, is it because the stuff was cheap, or is it going to be the same with anything? i know its hard to say without seeing it but on peoples experiences with freeview any advice would be handy, we have been with sky for nearly 2 years now and sky HD for a good 6months so been a while since i have had freeview myself. he does have other freeview boxes in the house and they are all cheap ones, dont think he has tried them though, so is worth a suggestion.
but overall you dont think the internal tv cards are much cop?
are the atom pcs not that cheap to run?
 
chipps101 said:
what is the av equipment connected to the tv with ? scart, component or hdmi ? or god forbid composite :(
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the freeview is with scart, the upscaler dvd player is hdmi, the pc was also hdmi.

oh, and the wii i think is connected by composite, and that picture is perfect.
 
what about a virgin v+ box, i have one and it upscales everything to 1080i and it has the built in hard drive recorder

and cheapness of the dvd upscaler may be the cause of the poor picture, my toshiba hd ep30 gives great results when upscaling standard dvd's.
 
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well sky do the hd box with a hard drive and bt do the watch your tv when you want kinda thing so either of them are a good option also.
did you try dvd's through your pc at theirs ?
 
chipps101 said:
well sky do the hd box with a hard drive and bt do the watch your tv when you want kinda thing so either of them are a good option also.
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ok kool, well cheers for that, must admit if we could get virgin down here then that would be the only think that would make me consider not having sky hd, but could never go back to freeview.
so the general consensus is the media pcs are not very power saving and not great for upscalling?
 
no they should be good for upscaling depending on the software, power dvd's upscaling is quite good and something like the atoms sip not to much power, probably less than the tv.
 
Having a pc hooked up to the tv constantly, just to watch tv sounds a bit extreme. Investing in a nice HDD recorder with a HDMI out, and possibly a good quality HDMI cable should sort out the problem. We've had an LG recorder for years, hooked up to the new 42" tv (with HDMI), probably looks better than the onboard freeview. Also check that your HD devices are outputting the right resolution.
 
just spoke to dad and his ariel booster appears to of been causing some sort of interferance as he removed it to test another freeview box and the picture is as expected, not upscaled unfortunatly, but just checked and they are due to get freeview hd in august, so he is probably better hanging fire until then and getting a freeview hd box. thanks for your help.
as for the dvd player issues, he has plugged in his old dvd player that doesnt upscale and the picture is fine, so must be an issue with either the dvd upscaler or a setting somewhere.
 
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