Theresa asked

9th November 2010

I have a Freeview/HD Ready TV and want to buy a DVD player/recorder to go with it. What do you suggest? I really don't have a clue.

A DVD recorder is probably a good budget option as it should get you a DVD player, hard-disk recorder and Freeview tuner in a single package relatively inexpensively. For a little more money you could choose a dedicated Freeview recorder that would likely give you dual recording/playback capability and team that with a separate DVD player. If you already live in an area of the country where Freeview HD is available or will be in the near future (and you will want to watch/record it) the next step up would be a Freeview HD recorder. Again this would likely have dual tuners and would allow you to watch Freeview HD if your HDTV doesn't already contain a high-definition tuner and would be the most expensive but likely to be more useful for longer in the future.

James asked

8th November 2010

I'm going to buy a new HD LED TV and not sure whether to buy one with Freeview HD built in. I also have a pioneer DVD/HDD recorder but also thinking about replacing that and I see that I can buy a Panasonic one with built in HD Freeview tuner. I'm thinking I can watch all the tv in Freeview HD through the panasonic DVD recorder. Apparently this also will upscale all my original DVDs to a better quality too.

Do you know of any reason why I need to have Freeview HD built in the TV? I can save £100 on the TV model if I don't need to have Freeview HD built in!

The benefit of buying an HDTV with built-in Freeview HD is that it gains you an extra independent high-deftion tuner in addition to any others you may have. Most simply this might allow you to watch one channel in HD while recording another, although the usefulness of this will to some extend depend on your recoding device. If you but a recorder with dual HD tuners that will allow you watch and record simultaneously so if you think you don't/won't do that much recording you may be able to save a little on your HDTV purchase. If you do a lot of recoding having up to three tuners available to you for recoding and playback may be beneficial.

Ronald asked

4th November 2010

Is it possible to fit an HD Freebox to my non HD TV, in order to obtain stable satellitte pictures because Freeview reception in this area (Hailsham, East Sussex) is often very unstable. Obviously any Freesat pictures received would not be in HD, which is not necessary as my objective is to receive stable signals that will provide pictures of digital quality. My primary concern arises from advice received indicating that an HD Freesat box cannot be fitted a TV without a port indicatiing 'in from satelitte', which I do not have. My TV is a Toshiba 28/32Z44/47 which has scart inputs. Is there a Freeview box that is not HD compatible and which may resolve the problem.

Just about any Freesat receiver/set-top box will come with an analogue video output that you can connect to the SCART input on your television, but what you will need that it appears you don't currently have is a satellite dish on your home to which you could attach a Freesat decoder.

What to do really depends on the specifics of you location and situation but before abandoning Freeview completely and going to the expense of buying new equipment and installation it may well be worth you getting in touch with a local independent audio-visual shop to see if they can help. They may be able to advise you on reception issues specific to your local area and possibly check or help upgrade your existing aerial for better reception. If they can't help with that I'm sure they would be happy to sell you a Freesat installation as an alternative!

Lyndon asked

30th October 2010

I have fallen out with Sky and want to go with Freesat. I have a Panasonic 42 inch HD-Ready TV, the TV comes with a box which I presume is the hd box, attached to a old recorder, which works fine, my question is, can I replace the old recorder with a freesat recorder and receive freesat through the recorder still using the same tv and hd box?

Your existing Sky dish is immediately suitable for use with Freesat once you have the right receiving equipment. I'm not really sure what the box you call your 'HD box' does but it doesn't really stop me answering your question. I think you will struggle to make Sky's recorder work with regular Freesat (and although it may be possible with their own Freesat service, I doubt you'll be going with that). A new Freesat recorder will replace your existing recorder completely and it should just be a matter of connecting it direct to your HDTV.

Malcolm asked

30th October 2010

I would like to use my laptop to view HD TV when away from home in my motorcaravan. I have a freesat receiver in the motorcaravan, normally connected to a 9" DVD player through the AV connections. Is there a way to display HDMI output from the freesat receiver onto a laptop? My laptop screen is capable of diplaying high definition video (e.g. from a HD file on the hard disk) and the laptop has a HDMI port, but only for outputting HD content to an external monitor/tv screen.

I'm sorry to say I can't think of a way to make this work. You'll be hard pressed to find anything other than video outputs on a regular laptop and I can't think of a piratical way of getting a video signal in for display on the screen. I think you're looking at either new display for Freesat decoding hardware or more likely to continue with your existing set up.

Lawrence asked

30th October 2010

I want to watch some mp4 files via my laptop using an HDMI cable. The cable is in HDMI 2 on the HDTV as Sky is in No 1, however, when both machines are connected, all I get is 'no signal' on the TV.

This one's a little tricky to diagnose from afar and might even be tricky in person, but my best suggestion would be that the HDMI output on your laptop is not enabled. It may be disabled or more likely once plugged your HDTV will appear as a second monitor within your display properties inside Control Panel that hopefully just needs enabling.

Susan asked

30th October 2010

I have a 6 year old Hyundai LCD telivision and I have now installed a V+ HD BOX it is fine but after it has been on for 2 days the screen goes blue and the channel is lost, so I have to quickly press the source button to get it back to the HDMI and that is fine till the next time any ideas on this?

The first thing to check is your HDMI cable and it's connections. In the first instance try reversing that cable and making sure both ends are inserted fully. You might also like to try an alternative HDMI cable but if it's not an intermittent connection problem I'd lean towards the problem being one or other piece of equipment, marginally more likely seems to be your Virgin Media box as this person also seems to have had the a similar issue:

http://www.chetnet.co.uk/portal/forum/archive/index.php?t-8583.html

Roger asked

27th October 2010

I've been advised by a VirginMedia engineer that the VirginMedia V HD Box doesn't support HD Ready televisions that have a DVI interface instead of HDMI. Is this really true? I've tried to connect my Samsung model LE27T51B to a V HD Box, first with a DVI/HDMI cable and then with the supplied VirginMedia HDMI cable using a DVI/HDMI adaptor, but both produce a blank screen instead of an HD picture. Everything else works fine and I can even watch HD channels but only in SD. Surely the V HD Box is backwards compatible?

As far as I'm aware you can connect HDTVs lacking an HDMI input to Virgin Media's boxes but the DVI port on the television must support HDCP (High-Defintion Content Protection).

To be sold as 'HD Ready' in the UK an HDTV should either have an HDMI or DVI port supporting HDCP. In your case despite having tried a couple of ways of connecting the two, this suggests HDCP support is missing from your TV, indicated by the fact that you are only able to watch in standard-definition.