Freeview > Reviews (62)

I JUST REALISE THIS IS IN THE WRONG CATEGORY.

PLEASE DO NOT RATE, OR IF YOU DO RATE AS IF IT WERE IN THE CORRECT CATEGORY.

I AM EAMILING CIAO NOW TO MAKE SURE THEY MOVE IT AND CREATE A CATEGORY FOR THIS DIGITAL SET-TUP BOX, THE PACE DTVA>

THANKS.

IF YOU DO RATE I'LL COME LOOKING FOR YOU TO RE-RATE ONCE IT's MOVED.

SORRY!

You've probably seen the adverts the BBC especially are running so you can get extra TV channels without needing to pay a monthly subscription. Well, in order to receive these channels you need a digital addaptor, or "set-top box". The model I am covering is the Pace DTVA althgouh there are many different makes and models. The Pace DVTA is one of the cheaper ones around.

We recently moved house and used to have cable TV with about 50 channels, but our new house is not cable-friendly, in other words no cable companies can provide this service in our area (supposedly as the infrastructure is not in place, no cables!) We wouldn't bother but our lovely 11 month old daughter has become addicted to CBeebies, or rather "The Tweenies", "Teletubbies" and other such delights. My wife and I also enjoyed the music channels we used to have which was another reason for wanting more channels. I should point out that our TV is not used as a babysitter to pacify Amber (our daughter), but it is handy to keep her entertained every now and then for example when we need time to eat, breathe etc.

The Pace DTVA Freeview box cost £68.99 from Argos, I was attracted to it as it was one of the cheapest, had the interactive feature (not all do) and I have heard the name Pace before. In fact I own shares in Pace, through a share-club I am in but I promise this is not a biased review in a forlorn attempt to ramp their price upwards! Pace Micro is also a local company being based 5 miles down the road in Shipley, West Yorkshire, ee by gum lads! I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark and say DTVA stands for Digital TV Adaptor, I can't actually find this anywhere to confirm the fact!

First things first, not all areas in the country can utilise Freeview, the coverage is still not 100% but it is getting there. You can check if you can get Freeview in your area at this web-site - http://www.freeview.co.uk/

I was a bit rash and didn't even check if it was available which was a bit silly, but I thought we'd be OK living in a fairly densely populated area, not meaning that the people are dense of course! Some areas can get Freeview with no additional equipment other than the box, some may need a special digital aerial.

Anyway, as the package was handed to me at Argos, the first thing that struck me was how small it was, the cardboard box itself was less than 12 inches by 8 inches, not much bigger than a thick hardback book and it was very light, I'd guess 1-2 kilos.

Unpacking the unit shocked me even more, the Pace DVTA is tiny, about 8 inches wide, by six deep and only two inches tall, roughly speaking. If you really don't understand the olde stylee measurements then multiply by 2.

5 for centimetres if you must, being born in the early '70s I am bi-lingual but prefer Imperial for most things. So it's a small thingy, but size isn't everything, it's what it can do that matters!

As well as your box, which is a light grey colour and slightly tacky looking, you get the connecting leads and power supply unit and the remote control, which is also small but a nice handy size and not quite so tacky as the box itself. The good thing about the box being small is you could hide it away, it doesn't have to be on top of your telly if tackiness bothers you, I find that when you are sitting down watching telly you can't tell the box is a bit tacky from that range. Of course if you do hide the box you need to make sure the remote control can be pointed at it to good effect.

The box is pretty empty of features, from the front it looks pretty rectangular but it curves if you look from above in quite a sexy way and there is a light (LED) on the front so you know if it is on, in standby mode or if it is responding to the remote control.

Is it just me or have you noticed that we now seem to get batteries free with remote control operated stuff? Maybe it's the law today but it's nice to see the two AA batteries were included, no need to rush back to the shops to get them after forgetting.

Setting up this beast is really simple, plug the lead into the back of the TV, it's a SCART lead but you can buy the old fashioned RF leads for £24.95 if you can get past the dinosaurs roaming around outside your house. Next you plug the power supply in and finally the TV aerial plugs into the SCART connection from the box itself. The weird thing is that the power goes into the SCART connection and not into the box, well I thought it weird. The advantage is you don't get loads of wires all over the place, clever guys they are at PACE, I wonder if they have designed non-slip clogs yet?

Then you simple switch it all on and sit back and relax, as the little beauty does it's stuff and finds those lovely free channels for you! I was a bit worried as the bar moved across the screen and zero channels were found until about half way across, maybe my area wasn't covered after all?

Not to worry as soon the number of channels found zoomed up and two minutes later the screen announced it had finished and 59 channels were now ready to watch - yippee! I should point out that this includes radio stations, you get radio channels included as well as TV, but there are over 30 free TV channels so that's pretty good.

You can find a list of the channels you get here: http://www.freeview.co.uk/whatson/index.​html

For me the highlights are CBeebies, I love watching La La and Po cavorting around you see, also two free music channels, UK History (Yawn), all those BBC spinoffs and ITV 2.

So now you just need to watch TV like a true couch potato, the remote is easy to use, you enter the channel number and press OK - the box is pretty future proof I think as you can go up to channel 9999. If you are not sure which channel number corresponds to which channel, there is a "list" button which shows all those tuned in and you can navigate easily with "cursor keys".

Also you can press another button to see the TV listings (although this doesn't work 100%, sometimes you get bits missing from the schedules) and it shows what is on the various channels as well as more info about individual programmes if you need it.

The interactive button is quite neat, it's sort of like glorified Teletext, press the red button when they tell you to on TV and you get more information regarding whatever they were spouting on about.

One really good feature if you watch a lot of the gogglebox is the ability to program in up to 12 "events" where the TV turns itself over at a preselected time to another channel of you choice. Let's say you are off sick from work (pulling a sicky) and you have set yourself up for a day of worshipping at the altar of John Logie Baird. Get out of bed after a nice lie-in, watch some Trishia and whilst doing so you check the TV listings using the PACE DTVA. Pick out your favourite programmes and then set the machine up so it turns over for them at the right time, so you don't forget to do so as really they aren't all that good and a nearby patch of grass/paint is more interesting. I wonder how many working hours will be lost due to this brilliant invention as workers are lured into the delights of daytime TV? Not many I suspect.

One other thing with Freeview or Digital TV should I say is the quality. The pictures are superbly crisp, no more fiddling around with aerials (or maybe there will be depending where you live) and the weather doesn't seem to make a difference either. I know sometimes if you get very high pressure areas they can degrade analogue picture quality, I suppose digital solves this problem or at least reduces it.

Overall I think this is a great gadget and well worth the money. For the same price as about two months Sky subscription, you get a lot of channels and better quality pictures. Probably not enough channels for the die-hard members of the TV cult, or those who are big sports fans (no sports channels) but for the majority of people it is a good investment in my opinion. The slightly tacky look of the box shouldn't put you off at all and I consider this money well spent. They might come down in price over the coming months but not by all that much I think.

If you are thinking about buying a new TV then you may want to consider holding off a bit as many new TVs have the digital gubbins built in so you would probably save money buying an all in one unit.

It's worth bearing in mind that eventually we'll all need digital as they will be switching off the analogue signal, but that's a few years away yet.

Sorry to let you down at the end like this but to date I haven't found any Porn channels, Channel 5 being the nearest thing I found so far but I'll keep looking and let you know how I get on.

Update: 19th September 2007

I received an email from Ciao asking me to change the title of this review from "Free Porn Movies", so I duly obliged!