Dion Freeview box from Tesco - I am not a fan

It's been years since I've done a product review on this blog (I don't buy many devices, admittedly) so this is a bit of an outlier I suppose.

About a year ago I bought a Dion Freeview box in the hope that I'd be able to get additional Freeview channels, such as Talking Pictures, some extra +1 channels not available on my current system and also the HD channels. A few weeks ago I swapped the two boxes over.

Since then I have discovered that as I have an old fashioned non-flat cathode-ray tube (CRT) television with one SCART socket and one aerial socket (and that's it) perhaps my options were probably always going to be limited - I don't get any extra channels.

Either the age of the television or the aerial means that it was a waste of money (it wasn't expensive) and I have the same channels that I already have, so I am going to switch back to the old one, perhaps when I've finished watching Pride & Prejudice. 

No extra channels is only mildly annoying, in that nothing's been improved, but there is something more annoying.

Since I swapped the boxes I've been irritated by an almost constant pop up alert on screen asking if I want to search. This appears randomly, but when it starts up it appears every 30 seconds (and stays on screen for 10 seconds). Surely if I do nothing the system should assume I don't want to search and dismiss itself, sadly this doesn't happen.

Online forums suggest doing a 'first installation' but clearly I did that when I installed it a few weeks ago. I've let it check for new channels (sometimes the message is 'LCN has changed') but this has made no difference.

The Dion Freeview box from Tesco is therefore unusable if you want to WATCH television (I often use Freeview to listen to Radio 4 (though you can't do that on this box) so don't care so much what's happening on the screen then) and so I cannot recommend it.

It is currently interefering with my enjoyment of Colin Firth's Mr Darcy so I'm mightily peeved, hence moved to write a blog post bleating about it.

I very rarely replace a product with a new one if the old one is still working (very glad I kept the old one!) so let this be a lesson to me. Next time I'll do more research :)

If you have a Dion DTR250SS10 or PSTB1AW09+ click on the links to read or download their manuals.

List of basic Freeview channels

As an example of filial piety I am providing my dad with a list of the best (OK bit subjective) Freeview channels and their numbers. In case it might be useful to you or your parents or other family members, feel free to pinch the below and format as you choose. I might add channel icons in a later version.

What I'd like is to print it, laminate it and blue tack it somewhere handy.

#    Channel        Notes
1    BBC One
2    BBC Two
3    ITV 1             33 = ITV 1 +1
4    Channel 4      13 = Channel 4 +1
5    Channel 5      44 = Channel 5 +1
6    ITV 2             27 = ITV2 +1
7    BBC Three
9    BBC Four
10    ITV 3
11    Pick TV
12    Dave
13    Channel 4 +1
14    More 4
15    Film 4
16    Yesterday
24    ITV 4
25    Dave ja vu
27    ITV 2 +1
30    5*
31    5 USA
33    ITV 1 +1
44    Channel 5 +1
80    BBC News 
81    BBC Parliament

Getting digital on older televisions without wasting money on fancy gadgets

minilink: http://is.gd/yqoc4O

About six years ago when I lived round the corner from where I live now I helped my then flatmate Phil plug in his Freeview box and TV to DVD, VCR, amplifier and speakers. Not knowing exactly how to do this at the time I spent a LOT of time on the RadioAndTelly.co.uk pages learning about the different types of cable connectors and sockets and the order in which one might connect up the spaghetti. I was deliriously happy :)

The site has information gathered by volunteer nerds on how to connect up various permutations of peripherals (fortunately I didn't have to contend with any gaming devices) and it also takes into account how many SCART sockets your television has, or hasn't.

It also has information on which types of Freeview set top box to buy depending on what socket options you have on the back of your television.

This was where I discovered it's perfectly possible to have digital / Freeview television if you have an old television that doesn't have a SCART socket. As long as you have an aerial / RF socket (I've never heard of a television that doesn't have such a thing!) you can get Freeview. It's possible to buy set-top-boxes that have a 'modulated RF output' which will effectively re-broadcast the digital signal into your TV via your regular aerial cable (RF co-axial cable).

I keep seeing adverts for offers to help people 'go digital' in time for the digital switcover happening in the UK in May 2012. I do hope people aren't being suckered into buying things that they might not really need... however if anyone knows that these remodulators definitely won't work after switchover let me know and I'll amend this post!

According to the site the Icecrypt T5000 device does the job if you have no SCART socket in your television and costs from £25 from Amazon.

I'm currently using an old CRT (cathode ray tube) television - mine does have a SCART socket though. I rent and it's what was here so I'm not really in a position to change it, but to be perfectly honest I've always found the picture on these to be better. I'm not sure if that's because my TV is a fair bit smaller than the massive ones and if my TV screen was bigger I'd see that a flat screen was better - but all the flatscreen ones I've seen seem to have what I can only describe as topographical / contour lines on everything. I will certainly avoid knowingly buying anything with a 'Painter IC' integrated circuit in it. Here's a forum post from 2005 in which I bleat about them ;)

Modern televisions are, I am led to believe, much less awful for landfill - however CRT ones seem to last well enough.