Digital TV setups

[OLLIE 26]

with NZ TV going digital and me thinking about giving sky the flick for a while, I'm interested in what set-ups people have or know of for set top boxes, recorders, apple TV's etc ....

there are quite a few options avaible and I'm interested to hear from peoples experience or knowledge the Ins and outs of them all.

I've always been keen on an apple TV because I am an iphone, itunes, apple user .... I'm wondering how best to integrate with digital freeview or sky ...

[Driftit 2079]

I just have a reasonably new TV with freeview built in. Then a Asus media center connected to my PC. Cheap. No Subs.

Streaming TV in NZ is always iffy. Have to download the shows first. Especially in HD.

[mrad01 0]

I've got a pretty sweet setup using a AppleTV (jailbroken) to access media from various computers around the network in my house, play avi/mp4/mkv files from the USB drive plugged into it and also have it signed up to iTunes USA with an account.

Best thing about the US account on the AppleTV is direct access to all the latest movies and TV shows which appear on the AppleTV just 1 day after they screen in the US. So sweet. Yes, I pay for the stuff I watch.

There is a way to get Netflix working too - I haven't done anything with that yet - but a mate has it going at his place.

Jailbreak on the AppleTV was simple. Here is a link to the product I used. Watch the video on this page: http://firecore.com/atvflash-black

[antil33t 90]

Serviio running on a Server upstairs, with 10TB of storage..

Serviio works on my two flatmates Sony TVs, and XBoxes... Simultaniously... obviously the limit is on how good your network/server is. all it is is a dualcore AMD.. so it's not that overpowered.. and three of us were pulling HD movies off it at once. (we have Gigabit, but I doubt the TV's have it)

and a Samsung TV with networking. freeview ect ect built in.

Will Pass 5.1 Sound via the optical port on the TV to my amp for surround.

my Media PC is just some random pos I've made up from bits...

has a USB tuner for Freeview HD, but if you had two identical ones, or a dual tuner card you could record/watch like expensive PVR's ect.

but it's upstairs cause' the TV Upstairs isn't freeview built in.

Edited January 10, 2012 by antil33t

[Guest Simon*]

I've got a Seagate HD media player I like. I have a 1TB hard drive plugged in and it's all on the home network. Plays all video formats and has app remote for iphone etc. Can show you

[m325i 709]

Streaming TV in NZ is always iffy

This and the fact there are no actual services in NZ is the problem.

I was using a POS hacked together HTPC with XBMC, but I am ditching that and going to run a Jailbroken ATV2 with XBMC.

ATV2 has some good features; iPad mirroring looks pretty cool and air play is nice for audio. You have to be running an itunes PC to stream from though. I'm not sure you can make it work just off a NAS?

Even if you got sport from internet streaming, it can't match OTA HD sport. Tennis, cricket and ice hockey especially look fantastic. So I would want sky for this alone.

I'm desparate to cut the cable too, but if you want sport, I think you are stuck.

A super fat pipe with Netflix, Hulu, Rdio and decent on demand freeview (like iPlayer) and I would consider it.

[Neal 545]

Have Ski MyHDI (acts as PVR ) mainly because I cant get Freeview HD reception.

For digtial content I have a HT PC setup up with a bunch of file shares and currently 4tb of storage. HT PC will drop into low power mode when not being used for content and will spool down the drives for longevity

Shared content can also be streamed / downlowded to PS3 (which does blu ray duties as well) PC's , Squeezebox audio streamer, iphones and CarPC

[deeveus 81]

Freeview HD is the way to go if you have a full HD TV and are concerned about picture quality. If you have a reasonably high end TV I find the MySky broadcast even on 1,2,3 channels is sh*t compared to a FreeView DTV broadcast. So if we are watching 1,2,3 I switch the TV from Sky to DTV.

For computer stuff, I have cables throught he walls & roof to the laptop for instant viewing, or a 1TB network storage HDD and because my TV has wireless I access the media from the Samsung remote. I also have a 64GB flash drive in the back of the TV as an option.

Bit hard to see how clear things are as the pics were taken with my phone.

I've settled for a Samsung LED TV which is nice and thin. Samsung seem to have one of the best picture qualities especially in the higher end of things.

Edited January 11, 2012 by The Diesel Guy

[cliffdunedin 8]

Freeview HD is the way to go if you have a full HD TV and are concerned about picture quality. If you have a reasonably high end TV I find the MySky broadcast even on 1,2,3 channels is sh*t compared to a FreeView DTV broadcast. So if we are watching 1,2,3 I switch the TV from Sky to DTV.

I agree, Freeview does appear better than Mysky!

I don't have anything fancy... have MySky hooked up to 2 tv's, freeview on another and a couple of full hd media-players.

[deeveus 81]

I agree, Freeview does appear better than Mysky!

I don't have anything fancy... have MySky hooked up to 2 tv's, freeview on another and a couple of full hd media-players.

Because I'm on the hill, I only have rabbit ears in the wall behind the TV connected and I get a freeview hd reception, same with our other freeview TV haha, yet in Mosgiel they have to have the full blown terrestrial aerial and in most cases with amplifiers!