youview

Hi I am a talktalk customer and I have been told that they can give me a youview box (£299 according to them for free), They are charging me £5 a month extra for this on an 18 month contract. The figures don't seem to add up here but ..

Do I need to use there box or could I buy one. It would work out cheaper in the long run. I was understanding this has to be linked into the subscription and if I did not keep up the subscription it would stop working. However if I bought my own instead without the subscription would it work.

They said if I do not plug it in and use it for a long period then they may close this extra offer down and ask for the box back. Can they tell that I have one plugged in? If so I was thinking of buying a second box. Could I do that and would they see 2 boxes? Love to know this. I know it is not strictly a PC problem but it does connect to the router and the PC.

Desmond.

Desmond wrote:
Hi I am a talktalk customer and I have been told that they can give
me a youview box (£299 according to them for free), They are charging
me £5 a month extra for this on an 18 month contract. The figures don't
seem to add up here but ..

It appears to have tie-ins to Sky, and they expect suckers to
sign up for lots of Sky stuff. I think that's how they get their
money back. And of course they didn't really pay £299 for it.
That would be suggested retail. They bought those in bulk and
would get at least a 30% discount over what you'd get one for.


Do I need to use there box or could I buy one. It would work out cheaper
in the long run. I was understanding this has to be linked into the
subscription and if I did not keep up the subscription it would stop working.
However if I bought my own instead without the subscription would it work.

They said if I do not plug it in and use it for a long period then they
may close this extra offer down and ask for the box back. Can they tell
that I have one plugged in? If so I was thinking of buying a second box.
Could I do that and would they see 2 boxes? Love to know this. I know
it is not strictly a PC problem but it does connect to the router and
the PC.

Desmond.

There's a review here. It would appear to be a box that accepts
content from a couple of paths. It has an antenna for Freeview
(so some of the content is OTA), but also can do IP-TV. And perhaps
the TV it pulls over the Internet (from the router), is the
part where there could be extra charges for "packages".

http://recombu.com/digital/news/talk...ew_M10972.html

(This anchored frame contains more of the comment section...)

http://disqus.com/embed/comments/?f=...1375737634 #1

I was hoping to see a picture of what was inside the box,
to better understand it.

The review says the freebie DVR is the £299 Huawei DN370T,
while one you can buy separately is Humax DTR-T1000.

There is a take-apart article for the DN370T here.
Runs Linux. BCM7409 System-On-Chip. 2X BCM3461 tuner chips.
I see what could be an Ethernet connection (for IP-TV from
router).

http://stokie-ant.no-ip.org/

http://stokie-ant.no-ip.org/wp-conte...5/DSCF2720.jpg

This shows the 320GB hard drive, for holding the last week of TV.
I presume this is mostly for recording Freeview, as they're not
likely to rush to offer Sky that way. The stuff on the left appears
to be for the front panel or something. The SOC has a heatsink, and
the tuners have shielding on top.

http://stokie-ant.no-ip.org/wp-conte...5/DSCF2733.jpg

The £299 is sheerest fabrication. It's not really worth that much.
Might be worth about half that. (Remember that Google sells the
Chromecast for $35, and it's a Linux computer too. Think of the
pricing of Raspberry PI as another example.)

The Humax is reviewed here. Says "Some SD picture noise".
I wish they'd gone into more detail about how that manifests itself.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/humax-...top-box_review

What I do with my OTA set top box (similar to your Freeview),
is put the antenna on the other side of the house, use an amp
as a buffer, and run coax to the set top box next to me. That's
so the electrical noise in the computer room, doesn't get into
the antenna. The reason it's an amp, is I used to use it for
analog TV, before the digital transition, and just reused it
to drive the coax and compensate for cabling losses.

I don't understand the hodge-podge of features on the Youview.
Here, our OTA TV is dead weight, and hardly worth spending $100 on.
And large parts of the country can't even pick it up. We do have
IP-TV here, but for some reason, it's bundled with high-end
Internet packages. Getting cable would probably be less
of a hassle.

Paul

On Tuesday, 6 August 2013 12:00:52 UTC+1, Desmond wrote:
Hi I am a talktalk customer and I have been told that they can give me a youview box (£299 according to them for free), They are charging me £5 a month extra for this on an 18 month contract. The figures don't seem to add up here but ..



Do I need to use there box or could I buy one. It would work out cheaper in the long run. I was understanding this has to be linked into the subscription and if I did not keep up the subscription it would stop working. However if I bought my own instead without the subscription would it work.



They said if I do not plug it in and use it for a long period then they may close this extra offer down and ask for the box back. Can they tell that I have one plugged in? If so I was thinking of buying a second box. Could I do that and would they see 2 boxes? Love to know this. I know it is not strictly a PC problem but it does connect to the router and the PC.



Desmond.

I have installed it. Can't get any help NOW out of talk talk. I asked how many free movies can I get (I assume that this is constantly updated). They won't answerer that.

It seems the only stuff that is free is the free view that I had anyway. Tried to google what is free on you view but nothing comes up.

I think I will have to cancel this as I was under the impression that there were lots of free films that got regularly updated.