Hi, never had to before, always done for me, but must now buy now a new TV as mine is green! It's a Sony with Nicam so a rich sound.

I'm buying as basic a 32inch as possible from John Lewis. I have a Topfield Freeview box which I love, as it records two programmes while watching a third.

When the JL ad says, "Built in Freeview", can I still connect that TV through my box? I'd hate to give my Toppy up as it's foolproof for technophobes like me
Also I understand that the sound quality is rubbish on the modern TVs and require either speakers or a sound bar.

I don't like cinema type sound is it's unnatural, me liking reality and documentaries/news programmes, not movies.

However, I don't like "tinny" sound either. I have 2 redundant Aiwa speakers, could they be connected?

Last query. I see a device for steadying the TV to the table. which is great as I have dog. I'm not buying a TV table but plonking it on an Ikea £25 job. Do any of you know if that device is only suitable to custom made TV stands?

Any advice would be great, thanks.

It is totally and completely 100% of no consequence whatsoever what type of tuner your TV has or even if it has a tuner at all. The toppy doesn't care. In fact it doesn't care if you even own a telly!

All the toppy uses the telly for is to make it a bit easier for you to chose what you want to record and watch it back again. Once you've set the recordings up you could take the telly out into the back garden and smash it into a million pieces and it would have no effect on the toppy.

Similarly the telly couldn't care less about the toppy. It would be equally unconcerned if you took the toppy out in the garden and put it out of it's misery

They operate totally independently of each other. You can use the TV for all normal viewing which gives you total freedom over what three channels you can watch and record at the same time. I very much doubt the toppy will let you record and watch three channels on three separate muxes. It probably requires two of the three channels to be on the same mux.

As for speakers it is extremely unlikely the TV has any way to connect a pair of unpowered speakers. n fact it can be a real pain in the wotsits connecting audio on some TVs. It seems old fashioned analogue outs are becoming obsolete in favour of digital. Which is fine if you have an amp with digital inputs. However it requires extra digital to analogue converters if you have an all analogue amp to drive the external speakers.

If you are lucky the TV has a headphone jack you can use to connect to an amp. Or you buy a soundbar that has the appropriate audio connector to match the TV and it's own built in amplification to drive the speakers.

And the security device. This is probably a mounting point for a chain that you run between the TV and wall, TV stand or whatever. How you secure it at the opposite end to the telly is up to you. It basically is used to stop the telly toppling forward onto a small child for example. It probably wont stop the TV being pushed backwards.

Thanks for your reply chrisjr. It does matter surely that the FV box and TV marry otherwise what's the point of one without the other?

The Toppy does indeed record 2 while watching a third. No matter which channels. My favourites would normally be at 9pm, so record those with ads. Record 5 and 4 and watch BBC1. It's due to my devotion to Toppy that I won't subscribe to Sky and have their box which is inferior. I can delay live broadcasts too.

I love my Toppy and it has it's own website and forum where the members do clever things via computers, far beyond me.

All you need to check is that the new TV has a SCART input to connect the Toppy to. You can take the aerial feed out of the old TV and plug it into the new TV and all should work as before.

A TV is not necessary to the operation of the Toppy. All it is being used for is a display. If you had a computer monitor with appropriate interfacing bits it would work as well as a telly for using the toppy.

If by 5 and 4 you mean Channel 4 and Channel 5 then those two are on the same mux so can be received by one of the two tuners in the toppy leaving the other one free to watch BBC1.

Try recording and watching a combination of BBC 1, ITV 1 and Pick TV on your Toppy. I bet it won't let you as that requires tuning in three muxes, which is a bit difficult with only two tuners.

Having a Freeview telly gives you three tuners to play with so there are no restrictions on what combination of any three channels you want to watch and record simultaneously.

In general with PVRs ( the toppy) it generally ( IMHO) makes sense that you watch the output of the PVR 99% of the time.
and control your TV viewing from the PVR remote

This gives the max benift of a PVR , quick access to recording, live pause, rewind and replay to hear that lost 'important point' etc

I supect some 'technophobes' still operate them in VCR emulation mode where you only used to switch over to the the VCR ( or PVR ) to set up or watch a recording

Seconded.....The only time the TV tuner is ever used is when I'm recording two channels and can't switch to the channel I want....This is a rare event though. In fact, I didn't have the aerial connected to the TV for a year or so.....

Thanks gomezz, that's the very sort of thing I needed to know, I'll check it before ordering.

Agree with this but my control has been missing since I moved house two months ago. I've been coping with an awful "One for All" control. Even the aerial man couldn't fathom it until I showed him how.

I frankly wouldn't bother with a new TV but watch on the laptop. However, since switching to BT broadband watching catch up is impossible.