what kind of TV digiboxi is suitable for cable TV?

travelfish · Post by **travelfish** » Sun Jan 04, 2009 8:05 pm

Hi,

I got a 10-year old TV and am looking for a digiboxi to receive the free-to-air channels. What kind of digiboxi is suitable for cable TV? DVB-T,DVB-S,or DVB-C? I guess DVB-C, but please kindly clarify for me.

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Rabs · Post by **Rabs** » Sun Jan 04, 2009 8:27 pm

travelfish wrote:Hi,

I got a 10-year old TV and am looking for a digiboxi to receive the free-to-air channels. What kind of digiboxi is suitable for cable TV? DVB-T,DVB-S,or DVB-C? I guess DVB-C, but please kindly clarify for me.

as far as i know, it's either terrestrial/antenna or cable that you should have at your apartment. if you don't know, ask your landlord and ....afterwards it's like buying chocolates
T for terrestrial
C for cable
DVB-S is meant for some satellite stuff.. i don't know about it

Edit: forgot to add, you have mentioned old tv, hence this suggestion but in future if you are thinking of buying other TV, you might wanna go into varieties of these digiboxes as the prices range from 30 euroes to 300 euroes meaning it's wise to know what's your future's requirement gonna be!

Mark I. · Post by **Mark I.** » Sun Jan 04, 2009 11:08 pm

I'm interested about buying a new telly (if I could afford one), and had to find out about different standards. Now, TV sail adds tell your "flat screen TV to your cable connection" or "...antenna connection" or " hybrid". Ok, but as I figured the situation, when (and if) I have a digibox (for cable), it does not matter about what kind of TV I have. Many times the best offers are for an antenna-tv - why paying more for a cable one? Dunno about picture quality, though...

Actually I'm still learning about these stupid different standards which were imported here in order to make life more difficult, so if anyone has better info, feel free to response...

travelfish · Post by **travelfish** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 10:15 am

Thank you! I believe that DVB-C should be Ok for basic usage, e.g. YLE, BBC and other free-to-air channels. I may bid one on huuto.net.

Mook · Post by **Mook** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 1:17 pm

Mark I. wrote:Iit does not matter about what kind of TV I have.

Mark I. wrote: Dunno about picture quality, though...

You'll end up with the same or similar quality.

travelfish wrote: I may bid one on huuto.net.

well, you can pick up a new digibox for 60 Euros, so it's hardly worth it

travelfish · Post by **travelfish** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 6:33 pm

One more question, some digiboxit equiped with a Ethernet socket. I am just not sure what it is for, for software update or internet/computer connection to watch e.g. movies?

Mook · Post by **Mook** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 10:12 pm

travelfish wrote:One more question, some digiboxit equiped with a Ethernet socket. I am just not sure what it is for, for software update or internet/computer connection to watch e.g. movies?

There was one topfield that had wireless lan for programming it's timers, but I've never seen any with ethernet. The socket is probably just a serial port in disguise...

Saying that, some have USB ports that let you copy recorded programs from the hard disk.

travelfish · Post by **travelfish** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 10:24 pm

thank you! then a fairly basic one is enough for me

travelfish · Post by **travelfish** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 11:36 am

BTW, if I connect the tv to my notebook e.g. watching movies, is a scart-VGA cable OK? Need I have a digi/analog convertor?

MTB · Post by **MTB** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 12:14 pm

The connector you've seen on some digiboxes is actually for the phone line, not for ethernet. It's ment for pay-per-view channels, but also the network should implement this (you should see pay per view channels in their offer).

If you want to connect your laptop to your tv, you need first need to see what kind of video-out plug you have on your notebook.
Some new lcd-tv-s have d-sub, the same input as normal PC monitors.

riku2 · Post by **riku2** » Wed Jan 07, 2009 10:33 am

Mark I. wrote:Many times the best offers are for an antenna-tv - why paying more for a cable one?

it is down to market forces, there is less demand for DVB-C in europe, DVB-T is far more common (UK digital TV market is by far the largest in the EU). In Finland there is also an MHP layer on top of DVB and MHP is not as common in the rest of europe either. So less demand -> higher prices.

Jukka Aho · Post by **Jukka Aho** » Fri Jan 16, 2009 3:42 am

travelfish wrote:One more question, some digiboxit equiped with a Ethernet socket. I am just not sure what it is for, for software update or internet/computer connection to watch e.g. movies?

There are some DVB receivers / HDD recorders on the market that allow copying the recordings from the internal hard drive to a PC over an Ethernet connection. Some even do not require an internal HDD at all but can record directly into an NFS or CIFS (Windows networking) network share, if that is more preferable.

See, for example, the Maximum T-8000 and C-8000, or the various Dreambox brand models from Dream Multimedia.

I do not have any experience with the Maximums, but the Dreamboxes have nifty features like the above-mentioned recording and playback to/from a network share, a web interface for setting up timer/EPG recordings remotely, the ability to telnet or ssh into the box (into a Linux command-line environment), installing 3rd party hobbyist-made plugins, writing your own plugins, hacking the original software (it’s open source), listen to Shoutcast radio channels, etc.

Jukka Aho · Post by **Jukka Aho** » Fri Jan 16, 2009 3:56 am

riku2 wrote:
Mark I. wrote:Many times the best offers are for an antenna-tv - why paying more for a cable one?
it is down to market forces, there is less demand for DVB-C in europe,

Not sure of that, but the DVB-C deployments in the bigger European markets are usually following a “closed” business model where you can only buy (or rent!) your box from the cable operator, and it is rigged with some semi-proprietary features that built on the top of the “normal” DVB-C system. The operator does not really support or allow “rogue” boxes on their network and tries to prevent this by pairing the viewing cards to the boxes or using a proprietary encryption system/variant for which CAMs can’t be legally bought on the free market, etc., which all leads to that the market for general-purpose, “open” DVB-C boxes, such as those used in Finland and allowed by the Finnish cable companies, is rather small.

riku2 wrote:In Finland there is also an MHP layer on top of DVB and MHP is not as common in the rest of europe either. So less demand -> higher prices.

Actually, not any longer. They stopped sending MHP content about a year ago (I think), because the market just never went to that direction. There were only a few boxes / tv sets that featured any MHP support, and they were a kind of a weak show, anyway – too slow and bug-ridden to be usable in any meaningful way, which just drove people away from the whole concept. (Not to mention the ridiculous “return channel” / “modem” debate, even though the MHP platform also supports Ethernet as a “return channel” and many MHP applications could work in a useful way without needing any two-way communications at all.)

If I’m not totally mistaken, there have been some semi-successful MHP deployments in some other countries, though (Italy, I think), but I’m not sure how they’re doing these days.

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