[opendtv] Re: Viewers 'confused over VCRs and switchover'

  • From: "Nigel Dallard" <nigel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2007 12:52:42 +0100

From: "Albert Manfredi" <bert22306@xxxxxxxxxxx>

Strange piece. I don't understand how DTT users in the UK have been doing their time-shift recording all these years. Have DVB-T recording devices been selling like hotcakes over there?

Let me respond as a UK resident who bought a non-PVR Freeview STB 15 months or so ago, and replaced it with a Freeview PVR nine months or so ago.

My VCR is connected via SCART (baseband video and audio) connector to the Freeview box, which is then connected via SCART connector to the TV. All three devices have a feed from my UHF aerial.

I can watch any of the 5 analogue PAL channels direct off-air via the TV and can record then directly on the VCR. By switching-on the Freeview box, it "takes over" the TV courtesy of the SCART switching signal, allowing me to watch any of the Freeview channels simply by using the Freeview box's remote control. If I wish to watch analogue PAL TV whilst the Freeview box is powered up, I can simply select the appropriate channel on the TV remote and this over-rides the SCART switching signal.

By pressing "play" or "menu" on the VCR remote, courtesy of the SCART switching, once again, it's output over-rides that from the Freeview box and is presented on the TV, so I can watch any video tape simply by pressing "play". And I can program the VCR to record by pressing "menu".

It is possible to record from Freeview to VCR by setting the VCR to record from the SCART input, rather than the UHF input. Obviously, the Freeview box needs to be pre-tuned to the right channel. On the non-PVR Freeview box, I could set up to 4 timers which allowed the on and off times and the Freeview channel to be pre-selected. On the PVR, this functionality doesn't exist, as the equivalent function records the required programme to disk in the background, without even the need for the box to (as far as the user is concerned) come out of standby mode.

Before I purchased the PVR, in reality, because of the complexity of setting up two devices, if I wished to record a programme from one of the 5 channels available via analogue PAL, I would record it directly from UHF on the VCR. Only if it was a digital-only channel would I bother to set-up the Freeview box and the VCR to record via the SCART connector. And, of course, if I was at home, I could only have access to a single digital channel, which I could either record or view (or both simultaneously). I had no means to record one digital channel and watch another. I suspect that it is this latter issue which the original article was talking about - folks over here are used to watching (say) BBC1 and recording (say) ITV1 at the same time. To do the same after analogue switch-off still using your PAL VCR, as there are no dual-decode non-PVR Freeview boxes available, you'd need a separate Freeview box connected to the VCR input. I suspect that this would simply be far to confusing for the average British family, who have to get the kids to set up the VCR to record PAL directly off-air, let alone do anything as complicated as setting-up a separate Freeview box as well!

Cheers,

Nigel



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