Digital TV via my laptop

castaway

castaway

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I just recieved a 'flyer' in with some ink jet replacement cartridges advertising a digital tv box to plug in to my laptop.

As I now have a laptop for navigation I thought that for £40 this might be a nice little extra.

Has any one got any experience of these things, are they any good?

Thanks Nick
 
Re: Digital TV via my laptop Licence required???

Of course, being all law-abiding citizens and aware that we have to fund the luxuries of our political leaders, (and their frigging pensions) we will all take out separate TV licences for our boats won't we?
 
I have a great little TV from Maplins which is HD and has built in digital freeview. At home it was getting digital TV but not the boat, checking the websites they all said freeview was not available at the boat, so that was that.

On board we have been using a multitude of set top type aerials with limited success. A few weeks ago we had our mast down to do some work and used the opportunity to fit a triax UFO aerial up top.

Back on the mooring, whammo, 30 odd channels appeared, clear as a bell. Didn't stand a chance with any of the other aerials at all.

So, if you do go for this, then you really will have to add a good aerial, up high too. Just before the mast came down I tested the UFO at deck level, well on the broom handle and although analogue was much improved, no digital.

Summary, good omni aerial up mast to get a decent digital signal.

Hope this helps.
 
Concur - though got 20 plus channels of freeview at home even with the little stick ariel it came with. For the boat we needed an applified flying saucer type up on the mast.
 
[ QUOTE ]
Concur - though got 20 plus channels of freeview at home even with the little stick ariel it came with. For the boat we needed an applified flying saucer type up on the mast.

[/ QUOTE ]

Which flying saucer do you have... Glomex or Status or something else.

I see that Mailspeed marine are selling a bigger Glomex for about £160.... I wonder if it is better than the smaller on, and why?

Cheers

Richard
 
I have just bought and installed a triax UFO. It is far smaller and lighter than the glomex, in fact it is ridiculously light, I was really impressed. The amplifier is a separate unit that you have in the cabin, it comes with two outputs, so one goes to our television and the other to the radio.

Have to say as well as TV reception as good as at home we now have crisp FM radio on the boat. As our TV also receives DAB radio stations, I am sure if I ever splash out for a DAB stereo on board it will also feed that as well.

I have no connections with the company, in fact I could not find anyone else on here who had bought this equipment either, I took a chance and so far it is looking good. Cheaper than the Glomex and it is British too.

Obviously, I can not comment on long term cruising with it yet, it may not stand up to the weather etc. But it seems very well made, simple design. The connections are well positioned and protected at the aerial end. The active components are inside the boat, so if the amp fails it is not a trip up the mast.
 
Unless your laptop comes with inbuilt TV as standard the probability is that the LCD will not have a wide viewing angle which makes watching very difficult unless you are close to direct 90deg to the screen. Try watching a DVD on it first to see if it's OK.

David
 
It's worth checking for Freeview reception using that Wolfbane web site as well. For example the Freeview web site simply says we can't get DTT at home.

In fact we can receive Muxes 1 and 2 perfectly. Wolfbane tells us that we would need a wide-band aerial to receive the other Muxes, but also that they are transmitted at significantly lower power, and from lower down the mast.
 
Concur with comment about accuracy of Freeview info website. It says we can't get it here, but actually we get perfect reception even with old aerial.
 
Sorry, can't remember. Sounds the same as Dogwatch. I really liked the extra output for radion. Looking forward to getting radio 4 accross the channel. It cost £45 from my chandlers (but he charges nice prices). The computer dongle thingy was £30 on ebay.
 
I've just bought a Freecom DVB USB stick, which is miniscule and just slots into the USB port. Better reception on board than at home. You do need a USB2 port in the PC or as a PCMCIA card. All the Freeview channels are there in a good reception area. About £40.
 
I don't quite understand this one.. (being a bit dim on the Digi Tv front)..is the signal being recieved via the PCMCIA card.?

I have the card for WiFi internet.

Trouble is that I have had cable TV for years via NTL, and never bothered to think about 'set top boxes' etc, so I'm only now having to catchup.

Any further info recieved with thanks.

Nick
 
Yes, what I meant to say was that a USB 2.0 port is needed for the DVB-T stick. My laptop has the older USB 1.0 port which is much too slow. The way around this is to get a USB 2.0 PCMCIA card which the dongle then plugs into. In fact this is useful anyway as many newer USB devices expect a 2.0 port these days. Hope this helps. For your info I got both card and USB stick from www.directusbstore.com. They were very helpful.
 
Okay so does this mean that you don't need the Digibox thing and that the UVB-T stick performs this function, or do you still need the 'box' but the PCMCIA card acts as the aerial?

You can see that I'm well behind on this..

Many tks Nick
 
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