A snap decision has been was almost made, sort of - anyway the advertising of a free installation by foxtel works. Well okay, the drivers are that we are in a dodgy reception zone - too close for comfort I think the problem is and this make us very aware of the weather - rain, humidity, storms and, we loose certain channels, usually SBS. We don’t watch a lot of TV, but when we want to, it is infuriating not being able to. We had also held off on buying a Digital Hard drive because of poor integration with the digital receiver, could not record two channels etc. It seems that the Foxtel IQ may resolve this, but before I call up, I am doing a bit of due diligence.
Following are the notes:
- Cnet.com.au has a 2005 review of the IQ box, with a bottomline comment:
Great if you love your Foxtel, but it’s not the “ultimate�? personal digital recorder solution Australia has been waiting for.
- Recording of movies only last two days before automatically being deleted - well that’s not helpful - it takes us longer than that to get around to watching, and some movies cannot be recorded.
- You never own the box or the content. If you stop foxtel and the box goes, the content goes (even free to air stuff). No way of getting the content (even free to air) off the foxtel.
- There is no Electronic Program Guide via foxtel for channels Ten and Seven.
I then spoke to our friendly HiFi Home theatre experts Len Wallis about alternative options. It seems that our digital box may just be old (it is!!). So first step would be to replace that. Options there are:High Definition Topfield (approx A$ 1300 - anticipating a TV upgrade) or a Standard Definition Topfield (approx A$1000). Pete reckons the Topfield quality is excellent - no problems. This review here is an early model, but seems to echo the sentiment.
Then one could look at upgrading the antenna,but hopefully this is not necessary.
Another question is how to handle the situation of a second TV viewing area. The issues are the same with both options, more on this maybe later - with Foxtel you also have to pay another $14.95 per month.
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