MyFreeview|HD Review: A high definition journey

Other features of MyFreeview|HD JCMatthew DVR-320T

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 05:06 +1200

In this post I will touch on some less common usage scenarios with the JCMatthew DVR-320T.

Software upgrade
The unit has a USB port at the back. When you want to install a software upgrade copy the required files onto a USB stick and connect it. The Menu => System => Information hides an option to trigger a Software upgrade. All you need to do is drill down into the menus mentioned above and hit the Red button. Now you are able to browse the contents of you stick and apply the software upgrade.

Ethernet port / Extracting the recordings
I was hoping to be able to use the Ethernet port to extract the recordings, but it didn't seem to work quite so well. That's not to say that the recordings can't be extracted. The 320-T comes with a standard 3.5" HDD therefore you can use an existing enclosure (or your Desktop PC) to get the job done.

Radio
Listening to the radio channels available from Freeview is easy. There is a TV/Radio button on the remote that switches between radio and TV. What surprised me was how fast it was to switch between the two. All my previous units took ages to flip to and fro but that was surely not the case with the 320-T.

RWD / FWD
When watching a previous recording you might want to skip (ads) or rewind and you should know there is a trick here. There is a lag of around 1 second until the command to stop rewinding/fwd-ig is actually processed. What this means is that you should push the play button just before the actual play time that you want. An easy trick when forwarding past the ads is to hit play when you see the promos that follow the ads. By the time the command is processed the promos will be almost over and you'll only have to put up with a few seconds of "undesirable" content.

The other things you should know is that pushing the RWD/FWD buttons will increase the speed twofold: 2x 4x and 16x. The faster it goes the less accurate you'll be with selecting the play start time.

Record and shut down
A feature I quite like is the ability to start recording a programme and then shut down the unit. The programme keeps recording which is very cool.

Pause vs. Record
The unit allows you to pause live TV at the push of a button. I reckon you should use Record instead as often as possible. But here are the differences I noticed:
- Pause does not persist the recorded programme to HDD and you cannot do much other than hit the Play button once you've Paused live TV
- Record allows you to change channels freely, shut down the unit and also keeps the recording on the drive for later viewing
- Pause is actually slow to kick in: once the button is pressed it actually takes 4 to 5 seconds for the programme to actually freeze...

About the author: Nick Parfene was born in Romania and emigrated to NZ in 2005. He is a consultant for a Wellington based IT company 4 days a week and spends most of his spare time building mobile solutions for a small start-up called Tmro. He adores his partner and his Goddaughter, loves playing adventure games on his PS3, sports, sci-fi, animals (has a dog called Haiduc) and travelling. He is slowly being drawn into the field of photography but has no regrets. You can follow Nick via his Twitter account @nicktmro or his blog http://www.tmro.net/blog.

Using the MyFreeview|HD JCMattew DVR-320T

Tue, 1 Dec 2009 23:29 +1200

Now that all the hurdles are over it is time to explore the JCMatthew DVR-320T.

Setting it up was easy as, scanning for channels was kids play. The remote is not the simplest looking remote but I got used to it fairly rapidly. It doesn't feel as good as my Viera's remote but I don't mind it too much.

Changing channels and volume is done with the central arrow buttons, as expected, and the response time is pretty good. (I feel like the unit is snappier to the DVB-TB01 I used to have.)

There are 12 buttons at the bottom of the remote organized on three rows but only the top row is useful really because it contains the EPG, recording schedule and available recording buttons.

Changing channels is easy, like I said, and the OSD (on screen display) is pretty useful too as it display the name of the programme, the quality of the broadcast (resolution, e.g. 1920 x 1080i), aspect ratio (e.g. 16 x 9), rating (e.g. PG), sound information, current time, and more... This information can be displayed at any time by pressing the Info button (bottom of the numeric pad). Pressing the Info button twice will also display a short synopsis of the current programme (same as the EPG I believe). But the piece of information I like the most is by far a progress bar that tells me how much I have "missed" from the current programme and how much more is left. On the right hand side it shows what time the programme is over and to the left when it started.

The menu is very simple but don't let that fool you. You can set lots of stuff: auto subtitles, favourite channel list, OSD duration and more.

The first features that stand out are Pause live channel and Record from the EPG. Let's take them one at a time.

Pushing the Pause button will freeze the screen and in a couple of seconds it will show a still image and a media-player like menu on the screen. Sadly you can loose your recording if you push the wrong buttons... You don't want to push stop as it will all be gone. Also if you fast forward and catch up to Live TV your recording will also be gone. The only thing you can do is push the Play button. Once you do that you can forward and rewind as much as you want. The thing that disappointed me is that, despite the fact that there are two tuners in this unit, I could not change channels and let the current programme record. To achieve this result I had to push the record button instead of the pause button...

The feature that I really liked was being able to browse the EPG and select the programmes that I wanted to record. It was as easy as pushing the red button on the remote. If the selected programme was a series (in my case Top Gear) I was offered the option to record the whole series. Now, depending on my answer the EPG would label a programme with [R] if a programme was a one off recording and with [S] for a programme that was part of a whole series I had selected to record...

This is it for now but I promise to get back to you with more details in the coming days. In the mean time I invite you to tell me what you'd like to know about this unit via comments on this blog or a message to my twitter account @nicktmro.

About the author: Nick Parfene was born in Romania and emigrated to NZ in 2005. He is a consultant for a Wellington based IT company 4 days a week and spends most of his spare time building mobile solutions for a small start-up called Tmro. He adores his partner and his Goddaughter, loves playing adventure games on his PS3, sports, sci-fi, animals (has a dog called Haiduc) and travelling. He is slowly being drawn into the field of photography but has no regrets. You can follow Nick via his Twitter account @nicktmro or his blog http://www.tmro.net/blog.

MyFreeview|HD JCMatthew DVR-320T setup problems? Check the antenna

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:41 +1200

In a previous post I tried to clarify some of the slang that relates to Free-to-air television in New Zealand. Today I will tell you about my first impressions of the new JCMatthew DVR-320T.

The DVR-320T packaging is simple and unexciting. I was a bit amused that the people on the packaging are holding remotes that differ from the one in the box (completely different button layout) but this is hardly a relevant detail. The actual printed information on the box seemed accurate and to the point.

Apart from the unit the remove and some batteries the box also included a component and a composite cable. For better image quality I would strongly recommend using the component cable (or an HDMI cable if you have only lying around).

Previously I was using another JCMatthew product: the DVBTB01. The TB01 was just a Freeview|HD receiver that has the ability to record to a hard drive connected to its frontal USB port while the DVR-320T is what we call a MyFreeview|HD product.

After setting everything up (very straightforward as all the ports are clearly labeled) I unplugged the UHF antenna from my old receiver and plugged it into the new one. I then started the unit and let it scan for channels. To my surprise the unit failed to tune in all the channels that its predecessor had no problems with. I was completely unable to see TV3, TV3 Plus 1 and C4. I tried scanning manually, I tried to fix the plug but to no avail. I plugged the antenna back into the old box and everything was okay.

At this point I went outside and checked my antenna and I noticed that it was not only old but also a little bit... broken. Still... the old box didn't seem to mind it at all.

My conclusion was that the tuners in the new box were more sensitive than the ones in the old unit. So I decided to email JCMatthew directly and ask them for their opinion and I also asked Freeview (via Mauricio) for help.

I have to say I was impressed with how responsive everyone was. JCMatthew replied to my email and confirmed that the two units were being manufactured in different factories and told me that the new unit should not be any more sensitive than the old unit. The response included suggestions and an offer to swap the unit if everything else should fail (which I thought was very nice of them). The other call for help resulted in Freeview sending Alistair from Scottstv to check my set-up.

In one word Alistair was awesome! It was obvious to him that the antenna was in really poor shape and that it had a big impact on the quality and strength if my signal. (He also had tools and gadgets to measure all this stuff). He replaced the antenna with a new one (which I thought was even smaller than what I used to have), changed the cable (15 years old...) and plugged everything in. I reset to unit to its factory defaults and let it scan. I was doubtful but also wrong: the unit tuned into every single freeview channel and even more, when we went into manual mode to check the signal quality we saw an incredible 99% on the screen! That was up from 38% that the old unit used to report.

Thanks to this "unfortunate" situation I did discover that the menus are very simple, intuitive and responsive. I also learned that an old antenna/cable can have a major impact on what a receiver is able to do. But probably the most important discovery was how good and responsive JCMatthew and Freeview were.

In the next post I will talk about the DVB-320T's menus and usability.

About the author: Nick Parfene was born in Romania and emigrated to NZ in 2005. He is a consultant for a Wellington based IT company 4 days a week and spends most of his spare time building mobile solutions for a small start-up called Tmro. He adores his partner and his Goddaughter, loves playing adventure games on his PS3, sports, sci-fi, animals (has a dog called Haiduc) and travelling. He is slowly being drawn into the field of photography but has no regrets. You can follow Nick via his Twitter account @nicktmro or his blog http://www.tmro.net/blog.

The Magic that keeps giving...

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:50 +1200

It's been a couple of weeks now and really I am loving the Magic TV unit. I find it simple to use and fantastic to just be able to record what I want and watch TV when it's convenient for me, not TVNZ or whoever. I have always found Friday night fantastic TV night and previously this has dictated me staying in a bit more than I would like, but having the DTR has allowed me to watch those shows whenever I want.

I have had few issues with this unit on the whole really. Although I think something funky happened last night as the picture kept cutting in and out – but I am blaming this on my television as after turning it off and on all was good in the world of Freeview again.

I have been trying to fill my hard-drive as quickly as possible to see how well it will handle it. Every time you go into the recordings it gives you the hours left to record in both standard and high definition, which is really handy. When full this unit will automatically start deleting old shows. First from your deleted items, which is really a recycling bin folder for your set top box. Once these are all deleted it will start deleting the oldest shows first. There are multiple options to save those shows you really love, so you can always protect that movie you just can’t get enough of, or a really funny episode of 7 days.

What else is there to say? I will keep testing this unit even if it means spending time watching even those terribly trashy shows, like Rock of Love, over and over again – all for Geekzone and not my own guilty pleasure of course. What I would love to know though is if there is anything that you fellow geeks are particularly interested in knowing? Let me do the testing before you decide whether this unit is for you.

About the author: Suzi Heath is a 20 year old university student studying towards a Bachelor of Commerce and Administration majoring in Information Systems and E-Commerce. As a retail electronics sales consultant, she has spent many an hour explaining the finer points of Freeview to customers, but up until now has not dabbled much in it herself. Suzi is looking forward to feeding her currently dormant trashy television habit and also showing everyone that you don’t need an abundance of testosterone and long career in IT to take charge of some technology!

Introducing Nick Parfene reviewing the JCMatthew DRV-320T

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:54 +1200

Despite the fact that I don't watch too much TV I was very happy when I was offered the chance to review a MyFreeview|HD product.

I have owned a Freeview receiver for quite some time now and moving to a MyFreeview|HD product was going to be the next step for me anyway for reasons that I will make more clear over a few blog posts.

For those who are not very familiar with the terminology around Freeview Satellite, MyFreeview Satellite, Freeview|HD and MyFreeview|HD here's a very quick reference:

- Freeview stands for free-to-air digital television. Free-to-air basically means there is no ongoing license/fee that you need to pay in order to keep watching.

- Free-to-air broadcasts (Freeview) can be received in two ways: via satellite (wherever you might be in NZ) or via UHF (terrestrial). The terrestrial broadcast is in High Definition (HD). You can check your coverage here to see what is available in your part of the country.

Regardless of which Freeview option you go for (Satellite or HD) you have the option of getting a "smarter" receiver, that can also record (even 2 programmes at a time) TV so that you can view it later. MyFreeview is the term used to specify such a device. In conclusion there are two more terms for you: MyFreeview Satellite and MyFreeview|HD.

Choosing HD (terrestrial) over standard definition (Satellite) should be an obvious choice, but it isn't. On Freeview|HD you (currently) don't have Cue, Stratos and Te Reo TV channels and George FM radio station. While on Satellite you don't get TV Central and Chinese TV. Refer to this list for up to date information. Having a satellite dish already or a working UHF aerial might also weigh the balance towards one choice or another.

Freeview (and me for that matter) recommend that you choose HD whenever possible. The investments seem to be going towards HD and the quality is much better (at least for TV One, TV2 and TV3). I have had Freeview satellite but once I installed my first Freeview|HD receiver I just knew there was no going back.

Truth be told, if you don't have a HD TV you are less likely to notice the difference, but one day you will be upgrading that TV and having a HD receiver will make your view experience a whole lot better.

But why MyFreeview|HD? The promise is that:

- you'll be able to watch your content whenever you want, rather than when it is broadcast
- you'll never miss an episode from your favourite TV series
- you'll be able to pause TV to open that cold beer that's been sitting in the fridge without missing a single beat
- you'll never have to choose between two programmes: you'll be able to record them both, or watch one while recording the other (actually, there are even more options)

Does it deliver? We'll soon find out. Stay tuned...

About the author: Nick Parfene was born in Romania and emigrated to NZ in 2005. He is a consultant for a Wellington based IT company 4 days a week and spends most of his spare time building mobile solutions for a small start-up called Tmro. He adores his partner and his Goddaughter, loves playing adventure games on his PS3, sports, sci-fi, animals (has a dog called Haiduc) and travelling. He is slowly being drawn into the field of photography but has no regrets. You can follow Nick via his Twitter account @nicktmro or his blog http://www.tmro.net/blog.

Testing the Magic TV DTR: grandparents

Mon, 9 Nov 2009 04:40 +1200

A couple of days in and so far the Magic TV is really awesome. Recording have a buffer/delay options so you can choose to start recordings a couple of minutes early and finish them a bit late too, which is perfect seems nothing runs on time. It's easy to access and play the recorded movies and I can also be watching a previously recorded show while recording two new ones!

I decided to bring in my mother for the “Grandma” test. I reset the machine, unplugged her and let her loose. She found the plug in instructions very easy and only got stuck on the part of the setup involving the video formats and admitted at this stage she would have asked for help. She then went on to have a play with timeshift and easy record which again she breezed through (Once I taught her what a pause button looked like)

Next we had a try at recording from the guide and here we had a bit of a hitch – the buttons they suggest you use on screen, and the actual buttons are different shapes – as you can see from the pictures below (see arrows) the record, next day and next week are in square boxes, but they correspond to the coloured circular buttons at the bottom of the remote.

Most of us here would work this one out for ourselves but this did have my mother stumped. Once we sorted out the button matchings though she was zooming through the guide and setting up recordings like a pro. This unit gets two thumbs up for me on the beginner users test, as my mum is very beginner and even she felt confident using it.

I must admit though there have been teething issues.

- The first autoscan did not pick up prime tv, the second scan try didn’t make it to the autoscanning screen but the third scan did it. Not sure why this happened but it did.
- A couple of my recording moved folders on me, they have been put in a user1 folder but I thought I had placed them in comedy. I can not be 100% sure on my folder accessing skills, but as they are series I will be interested to see where the next recordings end up.

About the author: Suzi Heath is a 20 year old university student studying towards a Bachelor of Commerce and Administration majoring in Information Systems and E-Commerce. As a retail electronics sales consultant, she has spent many an hour explaining the finer points of Freeview to customers, but up until now has not dabbled much in it herself. Suzi is looking forward to feeding her currently dormant trashy television habit and also showing everyone that you don’t need an abundance of testosterone and long career in IT to take charge of some technology!

The Magic MTV3600TD arrives!

Tue, 3 Nov 2009 21:07 +1200

So the Magic TV box has arrived… and at first glance this thing is, well sexy! I love how it looks, very sleek black box, which matches my tv and PS3 perfectly. The unit is run through the remote only, so no buttons defacing the LCD panel. Which brings me to an interesting point – this unit has one slight problem, if your remote is broken or MIA, you are unable to use it.

On Sunday I plug it in, very simple instructions for how to do this which even the least technical minded people could do, I may even test this theory on my anti-technology mother and lo and behold, my remote seems to be DOA. Bummer.

Today I had a lovely Scottish fellow (who is on Geekzone) come and set up an aerial, as I discovered my aerial only connects up to half the house… the wrong house. At the same time he managed to work some “magic” of his own on the remote, no idea what he did but it’s alive!

So onto the actual setup of the machine, to be honest this has to be the easiest setup menu I have ever seen. It is highly user friendly and very quick. Choose your language. Choose your viewing quality (options in both 50 and 60Hz). Choose your aspect ratio and then it auto scans all the channels in for you! What more could you want?

That’s the setup done really, 10 minutes and I am happily watching Freeview|HD either natively or upscaled to 1080p. The channels have ~3 sec delay when changing channels which seems pretty reasonable.

I wish there was more to say, but there really isn’t any more setup to it so nothing more to write! Time to begin the road testing me thinks! If anyone has anything in particular they would like to test chuck a comment and I will try my hardest to give it a go.

About the author: Suzi Heath is a 20 year old university student studying towards a Bachelor of Commerce and Administration majoring in Information Systems and E-Commerce. As a retail electronics sales consultant, she has spent many an hour explaining the finer points of Freeview to customers, but up until now has not dabbled much in it herself. Suzi is looking forward to feeding her currently dormant trashy television habit and also showing everyone that you don’t need an abundance of testosterone and long career in IT to take charge of some technology!

Reliability of the Homecast DTR9200

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 03:23 +1200

The Homecast HT9200DTR has been fantastically reliable*, with all recordings occurring as they should, graceful and quick recovery from power cuts, and 100% glitch free audio & video (as far as I can tell). I have been in hospital a bit recently, and it was nice to come home and find all my programs waiting for me, and a friendly on-screen reminder that the hard drive was 90% full (I have been deliberately filling the drive up with dozens of shows as part of the testing process).

The more I use it, the more I appreciate the simplicity of the unit. I am a bit of a gadget-head, and though I love tweaking and tinkering, the fact is, that Homecast have covered off 95% of functions you would expect in a device like this, for 95% of average ‘Joe Public’ users. If you don’t want to spend a zillion hours playing with it, and you just to use it, then it is a great choice.

The remote control has taken a little getting used to still – it works okay, but the button pushes need to be clear and concise, and you can’t operate it from extreme angles away from the unit. I will set it up with my Logitech Harmony 525 Programmable Remote soon, and see if that is better.

When I first set the unit up in a dead quiet room, I was a little concerned about the noise, but now I do not notice it. It is not excessively noisy, but if you like your devices to be absolutely whisper quiet, then you might not appreciate the low-but-discernible fan noise if there are no other sources of noise in your home. As soon as you have any content playing at any level of volume, it is unnoticeable.

Despite these few incredibly minor annoyances, I would definitely give this device a 99% rating for usability and reliability, which are two metrics that are going to be really important to most users, especially your mom and dad when you give them a new DTR for Christmas. (You know you can’t leave them using a VCR forever, with the analogue switch-off looming in a few years!).

* With the exception of a seemingly one-off freezing glitch that occurred the first time (but not subsequent times), that the hard drive became full. Please note though, that I received a pre-release unit, with a different model & size of hard drive to what is on sale in New Zealand, so this may have been part of the issue.

About the author: Tony Hughes is a self-employed financial & IT consultant, based in Hawkes Bay. As a busy, working parent of young children, I am enjoying the family & child oriented content available on Freeview, as well as the odd Sci-Fi series as well (Primeval for starters!). I often find I miss shows, as I do not glue myself to the tv every night, so I am looking forward to trying out the Homecast PVR from Freeview.

Freeview reaches 300,000 New Zealand homes

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 02:59 +1200

Just a pause in this review blog to announce that Freeview is now in almost 300,000 New Zealand homes - the numbers are split in 177,917 homes receiving Freeview (the satellite service) and 113.936 homes with Freeview|HD (the terrestrial service).
"The availability and popularity of Prime seems to have contributed to our growth and has brought the total number of channels on Freeview satellite to 13 and 12 on Freeview|HD." says Sam Irvine, General Manager, Freeview.
The availability of Prime on Freeview will also have an impact on driving New Zealand transition towards digital switch over as all national free-to-air channels are now on the platform. A final decision on the official switch over date, as indicated by Minister of Broadcasting Dr Coleman, will be made when digital television up-take reaches 75 percent of households, or in 2012, whichever occurs first.

Unpacking and Installing the Zinwell ZMT-640 PVR

Tue, 6 Oct 2009 01:24 +1200

The Zinwell ZMT-640 PVR unit that I received to review comes in a reasonably plain box with the standard red Freeview banner around it. The packaging is easy to get into meaning it can be retained for future safe storage and transport of the unit.

An HDMI cable is supplied, if you have an LCD or Plasma TV chances are it will have an HDMI socket and using this method of connection will yield the best results. If your TV doesn’t have an HDMI socket you can use the included composite video lead (with the yellow, red and white plugs on each end) but the picture quality won’t be anywhere near as good. There is a short (10cm) TV aerial lead supplied which you need to connect between 2 of the connectors on the rear of the unit, as indicated in the manual. Connect the lead from your aerial to the other aerial connector on the rear of the unit. Plug in the power, put the supplied batteries in the remote and you are away!

On pressing the power button for the first time the unit comes to life and after a short wait you are prompted on your TV screen to run through the setup of the unit. This only requires a few simple acknowledgements (made easiest by using the remote) and then the unit scans all available channels and stores them ready for use. Unlike the auto program feature on most TVs, another advantage of Freeview is the channels are saved in the correct order on the right channel number buttons eg TV1 is number 1 on the remote, C4 is number 4 on the remote, a very nice surprise!

The unit is now ready for use after a very simple series of steps. The above detail is probably a little longwinded but rest assured, this unit is far easier to install and get going than any video player I have ever had to deal with!

The Zimwell does take a short while to be ready to use when you power it up each time, much like a computer. This wait is however minimal, in the vicinity of 15s. I was impressed to notice that the unit changed its clock automatically for daylight savings time last weekend, another simple innovation that saves a couple of minutes of frustration and also saves any recordings being missed due to the time being set wrong.

Coming next is a guide to using some of the great features of the unit. Pausing live TV, scheduled recording and viewing the Electronic Program Guide (EPG) which tells you what programs are going to be on in the coming days, just to name a few.

About the author: Scott Palmer works in the emergency services field at a large industrial site south of Auckland and has previous experience in consumer electronics retail and IT distribution. As a shift worker he has plenty of time at home to watch TV but the shows he wants to watch inevitably aren’t on at a time he is able to sit down and watch them. Scott is looking forward to putting the MyFreeview|HD DTR through its paces and providing useful commentary to the readers of this blog.

Recording, Series Link & Wife Acceptance Factor (WAF) with the Homecast HT9200DTR

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:00 +1200

One of the simplest and most common aspects of using the Homecast HT9200DTR is recording. After all, that’s why you want one isn’t it? The EPG (Electronic Program Guide) is easy to navigate – fairly quick, and recording is a breeze.

To record a program, simply navigate to it (you can move program by program, channel to channel, or skip ahead a day at a time), and hit the record button (the red button!). If the program is part of a series, then it will pop up and ask if you would like to record the whole series, or just this episode. Easy!

Another nice feature was that if a program is split in two (for example a movie that is cut in half by Saturday nights lotto draw), you just select to record the first part, and the second part is automatically recorded as well – nifty.

There do not appear to be any options regarding recording quality, though I still haven’t read the manual!

The playback of recorded material appears to be in the same quality as the original broadcast – e.g. if you record an HD show, you will be able to watch it in HD – most excellent.

There does not appear to be a long list of recording features on this device, but it does the basics very well, and you do not have to get out the manual to remember how to record Coronation St. Once you have pressed ‘EPG’ (Electronic Program Guide) to see the listings, it tells you which button to push to record, and shows a little [R] next to programs scheduled to record, or [S] next to programs for which you have booked the whole series.

A lot of you might be battling the concept of “Wife acceptance factor” (or “WAF”) in regards to gadgets in the living room.

Of course the “WAF” concept can apply to flatmates, hubbys, kids, siblings, parents, and significant others - not just the proverbial technophobic wife, who demands uncomplicated and instant access to DH, Trinny & Susannah, Shorty, anything to do with doing up houses (or castles), anything with ‘makeover’ in the title, and anything hosted by Ryan Seacrest.

This stems from the fact that if your housemates cannot simply come in, sit down, turn the TV on, and start changing channels or playing recordings without needing a PhD and a ten page “How to watch TV in our house” manual, you WILL cop it, and the housemates will demand a return to simpler times, that will conflict greatly with your desire to have your new gagdet take centre stage in the room.

Wife acceptance factor with the Homecast should be at an all-time high. It ‘does what it says on the box’, doesn’t have a zillion menu options to get lost in, and the basics of watching tv, checking the guide, recording from the guide, and playing back are covered off with a really easy to use interface.

About the author: Tony Hughes is a self-employed financial & IT consultant, based in Hawkes Bay. As a busy, working parent of young children, I am enjoying the family & child oriented content available on Freeview, as well as the odd Sci-Fi series as well (Primeval for starters!). I often find I miss shows, as I do not glue myself to the tv every night, so I am looking forward to trying out the Homecast PVR from Freeview.

Introducing Suzi Heath, MyFreeview|HD reviewer

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 19:00 +1200

As you all know the lovely folk at Freeview have given us three MyFreeview|HD approved DTR devices to be reviewed. I was approached by Mauricio and jumped at the chance to be reviewing the high end Magic TV 3500 DTR model.

Freeview is the name given to New Zealand’s free-to-air digital television and radio service. There is a one off initial cost to this service though which is the setup of a UHF aerial, if your house is not already equipped, and a set top box. I will not go into any more detail as my fellow reviewers have already done such a brilliant job.

I love technology, but I sometimes feel like it’s a bit of a love/hate relationship. Up until now I have only had one (unsuccessful) attempt at getting Freeview. I tried going through a computer PVR (Personal Video Recorder) setup and after a confusing session of downloading software, codecs and goodness knows what else I discovered that half of my house is not wired for the UHF aerial! After this rather unsuccessful attempt I have been pondering buying a UHF aerial for my part of the house but never got round to it, and once Prime came to Freeview my better half laid claim to my unused TV Tuner card.

As a busy university student I always find that the programs I want to watch are on at the times you are never really home and am looking forward to having access to a program guide and pre-booking my shows.

Also Friday night television is fantastic at the moment, but there is always a dilemma at 8.30pm as to whether I should be watching Rove on TV3 or “Thank God you’re Here” on TV One. At the moment Rove normally wins, but once I have the DTR up and running I can watch one and record the other. Or if I feel so inclined record both.

I am hoping that the Magic TV’s “Step-by-step guided setup, clear menus, 8-day electronic programme guide (EPG) and 'at-a-glance' front panel display, all combine to provide easy operation for the whole family” will prove true. Although I have a couple of offers for help already (I think Sbiddle is eying up my unit already) I plan to go it alone from day 1.

The idea of set and forget time slot record option really appeals to me and I will be interested to see if it looks for the program name to record, or just the time slot i.e. if a program has a 2 hour special will it pick this up? This may be a hard one to test, so if anyone knows of any 2 hour specials, or changing of a television series time slot give me a heads up so I can put it through its paces.

About the author: Suzi Heath is a 20 year old university student studying towards a Bachelor of Commerce and Administration majoring in Information Systems and E-Commerce. As a retail electronics sales consultant, she has spent many an hour explaining the finer points of Freeview to customers, but up until now has not dabbled much in it herself. Suzi is looking forward to feeding her currently dormant trashy television habit and also showing everyone that you don’t need an abundance of testosterone and long career in IT to take charge of some technology!

Setting up the Homecast HT9200DTR

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 19:00 +1200

Even approaching the task of installation from the point of view of a non-geek, setting up the Homecast HT9200DTR was a particularly simple exercise.

The packaging was minimal (well done), and easy to get into. The unit included component cables, standard RCA ‘a.v. leads’, and importantly – an HDMI cable (note that Freeview certified boxes require HDMI to output HD content – even though component cables can support HD, Freeview certification removes this ability).

I made a space for the DTR in my TV cabinet, plugged the HDMI cable in the back of the unit, the other end to the TV, plugged the power cord in, and hooked up the aerial. (For the sake of simplicity, I will leave integration with my home theatre for another time).

The unit booted nice and quickly, and offered me a few options regarding languages and type of TV. I accepted all the defaults, and the unit then proceeded to automatically scan for channels. It found every channel available, and within 3 minutes of turning the unit on, left me sitting watching High Definition free to air TV.

The on-screen displays are easy on the eye, informative and friendly, and the remote buttons are clear and concise. Layout of the buttons is not overly impressive, but it doesn’t feel awkward either.

Simply labelled buttons like “Info”, “EPG”, “Play list”, “Exit” etc are a godsend in terms of being user friendly, and the manual has so far sat unopened on the tv cabinet.

Press ‘EPG’ and the MHEG-5 middleware pops up on screen, shows you a guide, and you simply select a program, and either press the ok button to watch it, or the red teletext-style coloured button to record it. But more on recording (and series link) in another post.

So that’s it for setup – if you have your aerial installed with the correct plug on the end, the Homecast comes with everything you need, and despite the fact that I am a card carrying member of Geekzone, even my mom could have set this up in the same time as I did - about 5 to 10 minutes from closed box to channel surfing.

The next time I post, I will discuss the user interface, and provide some screen shots too. For those of you looking to find specific capabilities, or avoid specific annoyances, feel free to comment below, and I will check up on your query.

About the author: Tony Hughes is a self-employed financial & IT consultant, based in Hawkes Bay. As a busy, working parent of young children, I am enjoying the family & child oriented content available on Freeview, as well as the odd Sci-Fi series as well (Primeval for starters!). I often find I miss shows, as I do not glue myself to the tv every night, so I am looking forward to trying out the Homecast PVR from Freeview.

Introducing Scott Palmer, second MyFreeview|HD reviewer

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:26 +1200

When I was approached by Mauricio from Geekzone a few months ago regarding trialling a MyFreeview|HD Digital Television Recorder (DTR) I jumped at the opportunity.

I have eagerly followed the progress of Freeview in New Zealand through its deployment, commissioning, public launch, new channel additions and marketing endeavours. Freeview has come a long way in its few years of existence and is providing a significantly improved replacement of our long-serving free to air analogue TV service (which will cease to exist in a few years.)

There are a number of terms incorporating the word “Freeview” which will be used through this blog, these are the main ones in a language I hope you can understand:

Freeview – The overall umbrella name for New Zealand’s new digital free to air TV service. This service is replacing analogue TV and is provided via both satellite and land based transmitters;

Freeview|HD – The service provided by the land based transmitters. This service provides a higher quality picture than is provided by the satellite service;

MyFreeview|HD Digital Television Recorder (DTR) – A “black box” which looks like a DVD player that you plug into your TV. You have to have one of these boxes to make the MyFreeview|HD magic happen.

Freeview have secured a wide range of channels including all the current free to air channels (TV ONE, TV2, TV3, C4, etc) plus many more channels which cater to a wide variety of interests. Prime was recently added to the lineup, an absolutely essential inclusion that took a while to appear. There has also been innovation in the form of TV3 PLUS 1, a channel which replays everything that appears on TV3 with a 1 hour delay (for example, the 6pm news is on TV3 PLUS 1 at 7pm). Full details of the channel line up can be found here on Freeview’s website.

The digital nature of the Freeview signal means that the picture quality is a significant improvement over analogue TV and the quality is consistent. Freeview|HD is not only a digital signal but a higher resolution picture, though this resolution does vary from channel to channel and program to program. To give you an idea, the difference between watching analogue TV and Freeview|HD is comparable to the difference in picture quality between watching a movie off a video tape versus watching a movie off a DVD (the specifications of your TV will dictate the quality of the picture you see).

The ability to be able to sit down and choose what I want to watch from the coming weeks scheduled programs is the main attraction of MyFreeview|HD for me. I want to be able to watch what I want to watch, when I want to watch it. I am not usually home when the shows I want to watch are on (Murphy’s law!) and when I am home and want to watch TV, I usually struggle to find something I want to watch. The addition of a DTR to my TV setup solves this problem. The DTRs also have the ability to record one channel while you watch another for those times when you have two programs you want to watch being broadcast at the same time!

Overall, the MyFreeview|HD proposition is a very enticing one. Great picture quality, more channels, the ability to easily schedule programs to record without having to muck around with video tapes or blank DVDs, the ability to record one channel and watch another, the list goes on! I’m off to set up my DTR, details to follow shortly ...

About the author: Scott Palmer works in the emergency services field at a large industrial site south of Auckland and has previous experience in consumer electronics retail and IT distribution. As a shift worker he has plenty of time at home to watch TV but the shows he wants to watch inevitably aren’t on at a time he is able to sit down and watch them. Scott is looking forward to putting the MyFreeview|HD DTR through its paces and providing useful commentary to the readers of this blog.

Be in to win one of three MyFreeview|HD DTR

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:53 +1200

While you read the reviews here you can too experience high definition TV broadcast!

All you have to do is enter the Freeview competition to be in to win one of three MyFreeview|HD DTR (Digital TV Recorder)! Just visit this page and follow the instructions.

Remember to come back for the next few weeks to keep an eye on how the reviews are going...

What I expect from MyFreeview|HD

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 04:10 +1200

A few weeks ago, I was approached by my friend Mauricio. The team at Freeview wanted to know if we were interested in trialling some MyFreeview|HD approved DTR devices.

Freeview is New Zealand’s free-to-air digital television and radio service. It is designed as a replacement service for the current analogue TV transmissions, that are going to be switched off nationwide in a few years (at which point you will NEED a set top box to receive either Freeview, or the transmissions of another provider, such as SKY's satellite service or TelstraClear's cable tv service).

No more snowy/ghosty TV1 and TV2 via bunny ears!

The platform currently has 19 television and radio channels, with more being added from time to time (including the recent welcome addition of Prime television). You can see a full list of Freeview channels here. Note that some channels are exclusive to the satellite service, the terrestrial service, or particular regions.

A DTR is a "Digitial Television Recorder". Similar to a PVR, DVR, MySKY, DVD Recorder, HTPC and other products.

I jumped at the chance to be part of this trial, as previously I have owned three Windows-based Home Theatre PCs (HTPCs), two different hard-drive based DVD recorders, and always really liked to have a PVR.

Previous HTPCs have been sidelined due to poor acceptance factor from non-geek household members (HTPCs can sometimes be difficult to deal with when things go wrong).

A few months ago I tried a Panasonic DVD Recorder, but with no HD capability and no EPG (program guide) to make recordings easy, the time and effort required to set a recording up was just not attractive - to name and set a recording was up to 30 - 60 button presses (Really! By the time you set date, hour, minute, channel, picture quality, name the recording, set any repeat flag, it really is that many buttons to push), and the end result was still only a mushy picture quality from the analogue tuner.

I disconnected my Sky Tv service early this year, as it was a luxury I just was not prepared to continue paying for, considering the bulk of my viewing was free to air ("FTA") channels anyway (TV2, TV3, C4 & Prime mainly), I felt a bit miffed at the prospect of paying per month to activate the HD capability in the reciever, and much of SKYs SD content appears to be of worse picture quality than the same SD content broadcast on the Freeview platform.

Currently my setup includes a Panasonic 50" High Definition plasma TV and a Sony 5.1 Home Theatre System.

So what do I hope to gain from moving up to a DTR unit?

Currently I watch hardly any TV. In fact, I watch less than I actually want to. I am a busy working single parent, and when most of the programs I wish to view are on, I am simply too busy to watch them - either spending the time with my children, or meeting other commitments.

With a DTR, I will be able to get back to watching "my programs" at a time that suits me - generally late at night, after 10pm.

I will be able to watch those recordings in HD, and hopefully it will be as easy to use as the MySKY I once had, AND maybe even have a few less annoyances (with the MySKY, if you activated the onscreen EPG, your picture and sound both disappeared - making browsing the EPG impossible whilst trying to watch a program, as well as a few other issues.

The DTR has arrived while I write this, so I look forward to having some time tonight to unpack it, and set it up. I believe they have sent me a Homecast HT9200DTR, and the Freeview crew (say "Freeview Crew" ten times fast!) phoned me yesterday to let me know it was on its way, and also to arrange an aerial install for me (not required, as I had a new UHF aerial put up before). Freeview seem to be paying good attention to detail - thats always a good sign.

I will run through the full setup later on, and discover how easy (or otherwise) it will be to get up and running.

I also have a Logitech Harmony 525 programmable remote control and hopefully the Homecast works well with it too.

And remember, aside from the cost of the box (and any cable, dish or aerial which you may or may not need), thats it! Freeview is exactly that - free to view. No sign up, no subscription, no payments. Just your regular free TV channels (plus many you cannot get via analogue) in high quality digital format.

About the author: Tony Hughes is a self-employed financial & IT consultant, based in Hawkes Bay. As a busy, working parent of young children, I am enjoying the family & child oriented content available on Freeview, as well as the odd Sci-Fi series as well (Primeval for starters!). I often find I miss shows, as I do not glue myself to the tv every night, so I am looking forward to trying out the Homecast PVR from Freeview.

Welcome to MyFreeview|HD Review on Geekzone

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 02:42 +1200

Welcome to MyFreeview|HD Review! It’s almost like a “reality show” online. For the next four weeks we are going to follow three people experiencing high-definition digital TV, recording (no pun intended) their experiences with three different MyFreeview|HD devices.

This blog is sponsored by Freeview but the blog posts are by no means influenced by the company. Here is how it works: I had to chose three people from the Geekzone community to try and report their experiences with the devices, broadcast quality and anything else related to using the service.

So I found my three candidates (Tony Hughes, Scott Palmer, Suzi Heath) and each received a different model, courtesy of Freeview. Where needed their home was fitted with an external antenna. They already have HD ready TVs so to experience the full service. And they have to write about it.

I will receive their posts and stick them into this blog so you can find out what experience to expect from the service from start.

Freeview is the way of the future digital TV broadcast in New Zealand. At some time in the not far future Freeview will replace the current analogue broadcast – like in other countries analogue TV broadcast will be switched off and digital TV will take over.

To enjoy digital TV broadcast now you can use your existing TV (any TV will do) and a set-top box that you can buy from many consumer electronics retailers. Already some new TV models come with built-in decoders so the set-top box is not always needed.

The MyFreeview|HD DTR (Digital TV Recorder) is a different kind of set-top box. They have the ability to record the digital TV signal on internal hard drives, pretty much like the old VCR used to do on tapes, but with a lot more “intelligence”. For example you can pause live TV while you go to the kitchen to get a drink, or you can program the recording of a TV series – regardless of the broadcaster changing date or time. Even though you can watch Freeview on any existing TV set, to fully enjoy high digital TV a high-definition TV is recommended.

One last note: there are two types of Freeview services in New Zealand: satellite (DVB-S) and terrestrial (DVB-T). Both services are digital, but only DVB-T provides high definition. There are lots of technical reasons for that, but this is what you need to know. That’s why in this blog we will always refer to Freeview|HD.

Subscribe to the MyFreeview|HD Review RSS feed to keep yourself informed of new posts on this blog, and remember to visit the Geekzone Freeview forums for discussions with our community.