Built in freeview plus You View box

[amfisted]

I'm thinking of replacing my fairly old Toshiba Regza with one of those cheap jobbies from Tesco, a Technika with full HD and built in freeview. Experience has taught me to avoid supermarket "own brand" audio visual goods, but the reviews look pretty good.

I already have a "free" You View box through my Talk Talk contract; would connecting this to the new TV conflict in any way with the built in freeview?

Probably a daft question, but you only learn by asking.

 

[Lucid]

The short answer to your question is No, there won't be any conflict. The aerial connection should loop through the Youview box to the TV. When watching Youview you will switch to one of the TVs AV inputs (HDMI or SCART). When watching the TV's own Freeview tuner then you'll switch to DTV on the TV.

[TIP: Don't use the cheap moulded aerial coax fly leads such as this; they are poorly shielded and are often the first cause of interference and signal loss problems with TVs.

Buy some proper TV coax (Webro WF100, or Raydex CT100, or Triax TX100) and a couple of coax plugs. There are plenty of online guides of how to fit plugs. No matter which method you use, as long as you follow the method then your coax lead will be massively better than the moulded type fly leads.]


As for the TV, it's a long time since Toshiba made their own TVs. The same goes for lots of once-independent brands. The rights to use the badge were sold off, and now one of the three faceless manufacturing giants produce all but a handful of key brands. The Technika you are considering comes out of the same type of factory that produces Polaroid, Techwood, Bush, Techwood, Alba, JMB, Digihome, Goodmans, Luxor, Blaupunkt, Dual, Wharfedale and dozens of other brand names that sound vaguely familiar. The same goes for Hitachi, Sharp, Sanyo, JVC, etc.

Since nearly all are now made by Vestel or TPV etc then it's tempting to think that they'll all be the same quality and performance, but that's not the case in my experience. There's still a difference with some brands in picture performance. I have a 32" HD Ready Sharp in the house that knocks spots off the 1080p budget brand TVs I often come across when installing for customers.

The only brands where you're reasonably assured that it's made by the company whose badge is on the front are Samsung, Panasonic, Sony and LG. I say reasonably because both all of them have at one time or other used 3rd party major components such as screens or gone to other companies to have their products made under licence.

Bear in mind with reviews, and especially with buyer-written reviews of budget products, that their experience and expectations may be limited, and that they're often writing in the honeymoon period after buying a product when they're still in awe of this new shiny thing.

 

[amfisted]

So I simply change the "source" depending on whether I want built in freeview or You View? Excellent.

Very interesting information re the mass production by a small number of manufacturers of all those well known brands. A practice clearly not confined to audio visual goods, because my brother in law worked in a food canning factory years ago, and he told us that in his particular workplace they put the same produce in cans marked with both budget and prestige labels.

Also noted re cheap coax. I do have a moulded cable between this TV and the You View box, so I might change that to proper cable and plugs before buying the new telly, in case it improves the picture to the degree that I no longer feel the need for a new one.

Regarding reviews, I do tend to take them with a pinch of salt, but I don't totally ignore them either because if you buy online and have no personal recommendations to refer to, there's often little else to go on; except, perhaps expert reviews in magazines which in my experience tend to ignore the cheaper models. However, I would definitely acknowledge the dangers of being "dazzled by newness" that you refer to.

Thanks very much for all the info. ;0)

 

[Lucid]

So I simply change the "source" depending on whether I want built in freeview or You View? Excellent.

Yep. Simple as that.

Very interesting information re the mass production by a small number of manufacturers of all those well known brands. A practice clearly not confined to audio visual goods, because my brother in law worked in a food canning factory years ago, and he told us that in his particular workplace they put the same produce in cans marked with both budget and prestige labels.

It works both ways. I know people who work in meat processing and in breadmaking. Both companies produce own label and branded goods. It's the same production lines but different ingredient mixes in some cases. Other times it is as you say; sane product, different label. The moral is do your homework and test everything.

Also noted re cheap coax. I do have a moulded cable between this TV and the You View box, so I might change that to proper cable and plugs before buying the new telly, in case it improves the picture to the degree that I no longer feel the need for a new one.

Believe no-one who tries to tell you that a cable can improve picture quality.

All cables degrade signals. Better cables do it less, worse cables do it more. Price is no guarantee an of performance.

Webro WF100 does a better job of protecting the signal from external interference than those cheap fly leads. It also gets more of the signal from A to B because it is lower loss. For the signals for digital TV all that means is a bigger safety margin before the signal corrupts. As long as there's sufficient signal for the TV tuner to work then that's good enough.

If you want to improve picture quality then buy a TV Set-up disc and learn how to adjust the picture controls correctly. £30 invested in that today will save you hundreds of £'s in the future.

 

[amfisted]

OK, so for "improves the picture" I should have read "potentially improved signal". Still, I'll change the cable and see what happens.

Interesting to note that there are discs that tell you how to adjust picture quality. I've always thought that once you "plug and play" a new TV for the first time, there isn't much else you can do to improve the picture beyond a bit of minor tweaking to suit personal preference.

 

[Lucid]

So long as the TV isn't complete garbage then with budget and midrange sets it is possible to make up to a 30% improvement in picture performance. To put that in to more tangible terms, the TV you spent say £200 on could perform as well or better than the superior brand at £250. There's your money back and some extra in your pocket straight away.

Simply learning how to adjust brightness, contrast, sharpness and colour properly will put you ahead of the average TV shop sales person in technical skill. Every telly has these controls, but very few TV owners know how to adjust them to get the best from their purchase.

These skills aren't difficult to learn. It's what engineers in TV studios and old fashioned TV repair shops have been doing for 50+ years; nothing new or scary.

Once you have mastered the basics then you can move on to looking at what all the picture processing controls do and whether they help or hinder picture quality. [Big clue here: most of us that calibrate TVS for a living, or simply know what we are doing to set up a picture, turn off these features because 9 times out of 10 they do more harm than good]

 

[amfisted]

Thanks for making the effort to explain all that. Fascinating stuff.

My Toshiba might not be going in the skip at the recycling centre after all. ;0)

 

[ericmark]

I wanted a cheap TV for mother when she was temporary in a home, I also bought a TV at Christmas when they were going cheap, so both the 32" Asda and 43" Tesco cost me £150 so in both cases rather cheap.

The TV's as such work well, both have the HD channels, and both have internet connected, both have good picture, however it's the little things which make the two TV's very different.

The Polaroid TV Asda will record onto a hard drive or stick, but the program numbering is right up the creak, ITV3 is not channel 10 so using the paper to see what's on does not help. The Blaupunkt TV Tesco has standard channel numbers, but will not record, at to electronic program guide non of the TV's or set top boxes seem to work A1 with the exception of my Sky boxes, the Sky box does have a 7 day program guide which works all the time. Rest are hit and miss. In the main to record you need the program guide to work, other wise it's a real pain.

The old Panasonic I bought some years ago has a good electronic program guide however although it said HD ready it will not get HD programs, but it shows me the EPG system can work, it's the TV not the Freeview which either works well or not. I find with the Blaupunkt it does work better than with the Polaroid, but that could be down to aerial?

So to get TV they all work, it's the extras where they differ.

So may think the Polaroid channel numbering is better, I can put the channels in any order I want, so ITV, ITV+1, ITV2, ITV2+1, ITV3, ITV3+1 can be set, I find it is great just going up one channel to get the plus one hour version. BBC Iplayer seems to work OK on both, but as you look at other internet features that varies a lot. In the main the Polaroid is used as a computer monitor, rarely watch TV with it, the Blaupunkt is used every day, simply because where they are. The old LG was rather expensive in its day with built in hard drive to record TV, however it will not record from a HDMI input, not tried any other TV's. The EPG on old LG was not very good either.

I am not sorry I got the two £150 TV's, the Blaupunkt TV Tesco at 43" was very good value for money, but if you want all bells and whistles to work, then you need to pay a lot more. And reading what has been said about picture quality, I have noted the Blaupunkt TV seems to need picture type changing according to program being watched, maybe it is because I watch USA programs which were designed to run with never the same colour twice USA TV system not our PAL. I never touched the control with the old Panasonic, could also be due to size and light through window?

We had a small Aldi TV maybe 14" and we found with that old TV you had look straight at the screen, the Blaupunkt TV my wife sits at quite an angle to TV and can still see it. Biggest problem with Blaupunkt TV was it would not fit old TV stand so had to go out and buy new stand, lucky new shop by us called the Range and they had cheap stands, although not easiest to put together.

 

[amfisted]

Thanks for that.

Our TV habits are pretty straightforward: we use the You View box to record stuff and play it back, and we rarely if ever purchase any films, series or anything else through our subscription. The EPG is clear and reliable, the only problems being, as above, the occasionally woolly quality of the picture, and a rare but still annoying tendency for the signal to break up without any obvious cause.

The Toshiba that we have is about seven or eight years old, and apart from going for repair when the old fashioned teletext stopped working and it was still under warranty, its been fine throughout that time. I intend to make it last as long as possible, coz in the words of the song, "you've got to pick a pocket or two", but your observations about the relative qualities of budget TVs, Eric, are very interesting and I'll bear them in mind when we do eventually decide its time to send Tosh to the tip.