Metropol

ok so i bought a freeview box for my mum and dad a couple of christmases ago, during which time it's been replaced twice under warranty and now it's broken again.

i can't remember the brand off the top of my head - it was from argos, but it cost about 50 quid, so not the cheapest nastiest thing they do.

but i'm just wondering if you guys know of a freeview box around the £50 mark that will last more than year? i know my friends at work seem to have the same problem, so any help would be greatly appreciated!

Welcome to the world of buying things from Argos.
Either it's junk, totally dead or dies exactly 366 days after you bought it. Anyway one of the most redeeming features of buying anything from Argos is the length of the queue to take stuff back.

With regards to the Freeview box, I don't see why you want to spend £50. Tesco currently do one for £17, http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.207-3253.aspx and at that price, as far as I'm concerned, they are a throwaway item.

Anyway when the Freeview HD and new broadcasting methods come along, all the current boxes will be obsolete anyway.

I have no idea about current Freeview boxes, but I do find that the old ondigital boxes are quite solid.

I've had my Nokia mediamaster 9850 for years now, I must've got it in 2001/2002 (even then, second hand, so it must be about a decade old) and it still is going strong now, albeit with the odd random crash here and there. Moving from home to uni, and then back again, and rooom to room, it's been a trooper for the princely sum of a tenner that I shelled out for it.

I think it'll be a big ask to find something that's not cheap, disposable junk these days.

P'raps i'm getting a bit old in my age, but they don't seem to build a lot of stuff to last a few years. Anyone agree?

Even Sky boxes now feel like cheap tat, especially the normal white box.

We've got an Asda/Duraband one thats lasted four years now, the ultra cheap ones can be hit and mess, some are good, some are sh*te. My grandma has a Asda Smart Price STB and that does the job, although her TV packed in a week before the Granada area switched to Digital, so she ended up getting an IDTV instead, but she still uses the SP as a second box.

I think we've gone past the point now where the big manufacturers are making DTT STBs, due to the fact alot of people are upgrading TV's which have DTT built in, so it tends to be quite easy to find any own brand/Vestel nonsense you find in Argos and the supermarkets.

I gifted my onDigital Nokia box (same model as above) to an ex-colleague a number of years ago, and its still working away, and will be about 10 years old I reckon.

Its like any new tech. Our first VHS was a massively heavy top-loader (Ferguson Videostar) and was first in use Christmas of 1979 in our house, and I used it through college over 10 years later. Don't think it ever stopped working, actually, I just stopped using it. I've got tapes that have lasted longer than some of the machines that followed it.

As technology goes into mass production the components get cheaper and the build quality becomes poor - almost irrespective of the price point you buy at.

Buy a couple of £17 dealies, and leave one in their cupboard as a spare. You'll still be £16 better off.

I've always been a great believer in Pace as a brand for these kind of things. Never had any trouble with anything from them. For some obscure reason, they don't market a Freeview box in their own name, but the Philips box is actually made by them, so I'd recommend it.

We had a Pace OnDigital box for years and years with no problems at all. Only got rid of it in April when Mendip went fully digital and some of the muxes went to a higher rate of bicycles per second and it stopped working simply due to that.

We've currently got a box from Currys, branded as Metronic, and it freezes up about every three days, so is destined for the bin very soon. We'll then go for the Philips/Pace box.

I guess Chris' OnDigital box is still okay simply because Surrey hasn't been through DSO yet, so the muxes are still at the low rate of bicycles. I'm afraid, Chris, that you'll get forced into a change when DSO hits the Guildford relay, or whatever it is you watch from.

I have an Akura LCD telly with a Freeview capability already onboard that I've had nearly two years. I like the fact that it's not died yet and it does the job with a built-in DVD too.

I find that Freeview build in to a TV works better then boxes for some reason but you might want a box to record stuff

Lightoftruth wrote:I find that Freeview build in to a TV works better then boxes for some reason but you might want a box to record stuff

Yes, but if the TV is working fine, why replace that?

My Phillips OnDigital box has stopped working for a similar reason to Nick - Wales has been through DSO. It won't even detect channels any more, let alone show them.

I wish there was a Freeview type system here-there's not much of an advantage towards digital in the US-no EPGs greater than 24 hours, no added channels of value-the extra channels are usually local weather channels, Spanish language channels, or low-budget movies. I wish we could get good news channels, and decent additional channels from the networks here. [/Irrelevant American ranting irrelevantly]

Of the cheap boxes, I've never had any trouble with those Turkish ones which carry a number of different brandnames (Goodmans, Digilogic, Matsui etc.) - really speedy, but the lack of front panel controls is a bit annoying. The remote isn't great either, but for under £20 they're fine!! I bought a couple of Goodmans ones (which were actually returned to the Co-op "Grade A" stock from Ebuyer) about 3 years ago for my girlfriend's parents and they've never had any trouble.

In my parent's house we had a Philips ONdigital box (which eventually died of cat wee) followed by two early Philips 'Free To View' boxes which still work as far as I know.