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Tesco Clearing HD Boxes for £30
Tesco appear to be clearing their stocks of two of their Freeview HD boxes for £30.
IN STORE
They have the Vestel T8300 clone badged as a Technika STBHDV2010 Note the important last letter which Tesco appear to use to indicate their supplier.
ON THEIR WEB SITE
They have a different model badged as the Technika STBHDH2010. This looks very similar to the Alba sold by Argos for £100 and which had very bad reviews in Which? It also looks similar to the Grundig and Goodmans HD boxes marketed by Harvard (who previously owned the Alba name). The customer reviews for these models are mixed to bad, several citing boot up problems, so you may wish to avoid.
IN STORE
They have the Vestel T8300 clone badged as a Technika STBHDV2010 Note the important last letter which Tesco appear to use to indicate their supplier.
ON THEIR WEB SITE
They have a different model badged as the Technika STBHDH2010. This looks very similar to the Alba sold by Argos for £100 and which had very bad reviews in Which? It also looks similar to the Grundig and Goodmans HD boxes marketed by Harvard (who previously owned the Alba name). The customer reviews for these models are mixed to bad, several citing boot up problems, so you may wish to avoid.
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Comments
None at my local when I popped up there this morning before the usual Saturday rush.
Too much of Tesco's own brand stuff is rubbish, I know, but I won't spend £120+ on a first-generation box.
So it wasn't a Vestal Virgin?
JO
Anyone know what the ethernet is used for?
Also, does anybody know what the latest firmware version is?
Well I thought it was funny anyway!
Errr the SCART lead outputs analogue signals. If you TV and box can both be set to "RGB", use that. Set the HDMI output to 1080i as this will avoid any down-processing within the box.
However the BBC and other broadcasters have not ported their catch up services to the Freeview HD platform yet. Some makers use this for their own IPTV services.
I have already set the box and TV to RGB, but when I set the box to 1080i the picture looks a bit soft.
When set to 576 or 720 it looks a lot sharper and much better than the SD channels.
I figure the box will HAVE to downscale on HD channels when connected to a standard TV, will it not?
I would be interested to know if there are five buttons on the right - possibly concealed by a flap - on the "Harvard" version. The only apparent difference between that and Argos's Alba appears to be the presence and non-presence or covering of these. Both have a "two level" front panel and no display.
The Grundig and Goodmans only have a blue LED on the centre of the front panel and not these buttons (I wonder if this is the cause of the concerns Which? had about the Alba) From the handbooks, the only difference between the two Harvard marketed models is the colour used on the menus and differing front panel designs.
Although the remote has a timer button, it does not seem to function and there is no mention of it in the manual.
There doesn't seem to be any other way of setting a timer or reminder in the epg, so if you wish to connect to a dvd recorder or vcr for timer recordings, this does not seem to be an option.
The EPG is fantastic, much better than the one on my Samsung TV. The only bad thing now is that I have 2 boxes and a PS3 all lined up, however, as soon as the Humax HD PVR comes down in price, I will get rid of both boxes.
Also, has anyone else noticed slight picture freezing on BBC HD? this is from Winter Hill
:D:D Wouldn't surprise me though if it had been...
Yes, on the STBHDV2010 anyway.