Thomson PVR10UK & Freeview setup

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29-08-2010, 05:26 PM
fairyland

Thomson PVR10UK & Freeview setup

We're looking to upgrade to Freeview HD signal and are looking for suggestions or recommendations.

We have a Thomson PVR10UK and a newish Panasonic Viera TV (TH-L19X10Z). Currently we have RF from the aerial on our building in to the Tivo and RF out to the TV. Is it possible to make use of the better quality SCART connections? Should we try to find a Freeview Terrestrial decoder with SCART connections eg. http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/List...x?id=313547395

While I'm at it - could we also use a SCART output from the Tivo to the TV? Perhaps a SCART to Component connection?

Any suggestions very welcome!
30-08-2010, 02:05 PM
catdog

Your Thomson Tivo can only record (and output) a SD signal, so if you want to upgrade to HD then unfortunately that also means replacing your existing Tivo. While using the SCART (RGB) connectors can give slightly better picture quality, it is not HD, and is not worth spending the money on a RGB to component converter.

Some HD PVR options include getting a TivoHD, a magicTV, or building a media centre PC. All of these options seem to have bugs/limitations, so it depends on exactly what you want as to which is the best for you. Since you will be familiar with using a Tivo, Telecom are currently selling the TivoHD for $499, but the home networking package is not included ($129 from mytivo.co.nz), and there is no guide data for Prime/Maori.
30-08-2010, 08:06 PM
Skolink

We have both a S1 with VHF/UHF analog tuner, and a S3 TiVoHD. Both are connected to our older CRT TV via s-video, yet the picture quality from the TiVoHD is significantly better. So there would probably be some advantage in plugging a Freeview terrestrial receiver into you Thomson TiVo. Our S1 horizontal resolution iis set to 544, not 720.
02-09-2010, 07:32 PM
fairyland

Thanks for your replies.

I guess we're just looking to improve the picture we receive through our S1 rather than upgrading to a full HD setup. After we bought our TV, which has a Freeview decoder built-in, we realised how rubbish the analog signal was (the switch to a digital TV made a big difference also I imagine).

We've looked at the S3 TivoHD but without programming data from Maori & Prime it seems to be somewhat crippled. Perhaps adding a Freeview decoder will improve picture quality but it seems the question is how much given the drama of an extra device and cabling etc.

This might be a swear-word but is it possible to use the emulator with a S3 TivoHD? so it's possible to access Maori/Prime programming data?
02-09-2010, 08:12 PM
Skolink

Quote:

Originally Posted by fairyland

We've looked at the S3 TivoHD but without programming data from Maori & Prime it seems to be somewhat crippled. Perhaps adding a Freeview decoder will improve picture quality but it seems the question is how much given the drama of an extra device and cabling etc.

The only drama with a Freeview box might be finding one with working IR codes. The S3 is also a bit buggy at this stage.

Quote:

Originally Posted by fairyland

This might be a swear-word but is it possible to use the emulator with a S3 TivoHD? so it's possible to access Maori/Prime programming data?

The NZ emulator doesn't even support S2 properly, let alone S3. If the official service ceased then there might be cause to do something about it.