Recommendation for a Christmas present: Freeview HD settop box

[iMark]

Hi everyone,

I wonder if you could help me with a recommendation for a Freeview HD settop box. We will be travelling to the UK for Christmas and I think a Freeview HD settop box for my partner's parents would be a nice gift. They currently have quite a nice Sony TV in the lounge but it's a couple of years old so the tuner doesn't decode HD.

A box with a recorder may be a bit to expensive, so it will have to be a simple settop box. It would be nice if the box could also receive BBC iPlayer through WiFi, but that might be a step too far. There is no ethernet in the lounge, the BT modem is another room.

Since we don't live in the UK, I don't know which brands to avoid and what's on the market.

TIA

 

[relocated]

You won't go far wrong with a Humax, either simple set-top box or with a recorder built in. Mine has worked flawlessly for well beyond its warranty and outputs good picture.Enjoy the UK visit.

 

[iMark]

In the end we found the Humax box a bit too expensive for a relatively simple Christmas present.

It may come as a surprise that we found a simple Freeview HD box at Argos.

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/5323218.htm

We installed it at Christmas and they're really happy with it. Even the SD channels look a lot better than from the internal tuner of the Sony TV. The only criticism we got was the fact that the remote is a bit fiddly. A lot cheaper though than buying a new TV.

 

[professorhat]

Solve the remote issue with a Logitech Harmony remote for their birthday!

Swish, back of the net.