Thread: free sat & tv hard drive thingy bobs?!

Soooooooo in princess Dizzy's castle there is no Freeview or "old" tv for that matter. This will not be changing until the new year thanks to rubbish reception and broadcasting area etc.

Mr D and I have decided we cannot go that long with no TV so we are going to sort out free sat. We think we have a dish and it is all still connected but we will have to see.

My question is when we buy the box should we get one with a tv recorder built in or just get the free sat box? answers on a postcard please

Well, from memory..... it depends on if your dish has one receiver or 2.

If it only has 1, even if you get one with a recorder built in, you can only record the channel you are watching, if you want to be able to record one channel and watch another, you need 2 receivers....

Because I went from 5 years of no TV, to having one (OH persuaded me it would be good to watch films on) I ended up with one without a recorder, I don't want to spend my time watching things I didn't have time to watch!

Plus some Freeview now have the BBC and ITV player options so you can catch up on some of the programmes afterwards if you really wanted to.

I have to say I have Sky+ and I really like the recording facility. I know it sounds bad but I don't think I could live without it now!! I really like the series link function as it means if I'm away, I don't miss the next episode in a series and when I'm bored and there's nothing on TV I have my recordings to fall back on.

However, as Feisty one says, there are some cracking shows on the 'on demand' players nowadays.

Guess it depends how much you want to watch TV? I have to say, it's my main way of winding down during evenings/weekends.

If you're going to get Freesat, definately get a recording box. Get it in HD if you have a HD-ready TV. We've had Sky+HD for years and having things recoded on the box is fabulous. Means we can watch things in peace once Rosebud's in her pit for the night.

thanks for this! I tried to convince Mr D to go for it but alas we just have a bog standard box- nothing in HD or recording or anything snazzy. Mainly because we arent sure the dish will work and if we have to go to the expense of getting that installed too we will need to watch the pennies

I will give it a test run tomorrow night so fingers crossed! We don't really live for TV. We watch DVDs mostly and tend to buy box sets and work our way through those on a rainy weekend. But apart from that its nice to have the option to turn it on.