RMD: A cheap FreeSat box

[IronGiant]

Can anyone please recommend the best FreeSat box for under £50? Nothing flashy required, just needs to be very easy to use and setup. It's to be used by my ageing mother so must have an easy to use remote.

No recording facilities required.

Must be reliable!

As an aside, will an HD box work fine with an SD TV? I'm thinking of a bit of 'future proofing' you see as the current TV is SD.

Thanks.

[pocketfun]

Not sure how good it is, I use a Win7 MCE for mine, but Argos are selling a Bush SD box for well under £30

[IronGiant]

Ta. They seem to be out of stock of the cheap Bush.

Am now looking at this one:

http://www.argos.co.uk/webapp/wcs/store ... ms=5321571

[Firefox]

They seem to be out of stock of the cheap Bush.

[IronGiant]

I was waiting for that ................

[Bubba]

I've got the Bush HD box (I paid £40 odd for it a few months ago) and it's ok. Seems to work fine for watching BBC HD. The channel range on Freesat isn't wonderful though, and the HD part of Freesat HD is basically just the BBC HD channel and ITV occasionally.

Cheers

Bubba

[IronGiant]

Thanks. Freesat has all that mother wants, namely all the BBC channels plus ITV and Channel 4, so she'll be happy.

[gumboot]

Must be reliable!

Hah!!

As an aside, will an HD box work fine with an SD TV? I'm thinking of a bit of 'future proofing' you see as the current TV is SD.

My monitor loses sync with my Foxsat HD when I tune it to BBC HD, but otherwise its s-video output seems just fine. But if you don't want to confuse your mum, then sync-loss may be a factor.

That said, I have a ... something by Philips for DVB-T, here, and that loses sync when the OSD isn't up after it's had a bit error in the transmission. Needs regular power cycling or a rock-solid signal.

[Bubba]

No sync related problems with the bush - it's never been turned off. Well, apart from over Christmas when I was away. Had it connected via HDMI to my TV. Not tried the scart output, but I know a few people who have the non-hd version who've not had any issues.

It's cheap and cheerful, if there's no freeview or poor freeview reception and your mum already has a dish then go for it!

Cheers

Bubba

[IronGiant]

Thanks for all the useful advice chaps.

[seanyseansean]

A bit late but -

I bought one of the Bush HD boxes from Argos and it's fantastic. In 3 months it's locked up once and i've seen bizarre lip sync issues on some of the minor channels after a while, but nothing a quick channel change can't sort out. Recommended.

[IronGiant]

Not to worry, still worth knowing. Ta.