Whats the best satelite HD tuner with an easy to use EPG for a Pioneer KRP

[RobGardner]

I've tried a HumaxFoxsat HD receiver and a Technomate HD receiver and neither have been a patch on the satelite tuner on my Pioneer KRP plasma. The pictures from the external tuners are comparitively grainy and lacking in depth and richness of colour. The problem is the EPG on the Pioneer is incredibly slow and clunky. It takes ages to change channels, but the picture quality, even on SD is sublime! Has anyone found a HD tuner thats has as good a picture as the inbuilt one in a KRP with a great EPG that doesn't require a subscription.

 

[daveh75]

Hmmm, i've never directly compared a KRPs internal sat tuner to either the Technos or Humaxes. I'm surprised you think their outputs are grainy and lacking in depth of colour though.

Technomates and Humaxes are regarded by 'sat enthusiasts' and proffesionals within the sat industry as having excellent PQ, especially for HD viewing...

I've installed lots of Technomates for motorised/multi-LNB set-ups, over the years and also done lots of Freesat installs with the Humaxes as well as owning a Humax HDR (which is connected to a LX5090) and i certainly don't find PQ grainy etc....

If you want a 'great EPG', you are limited to platform specific boxes i.e Freesat/Sky, i'm affraid, simply because although the DVB standard includes a full 7day epg, no UK broadcasters use it and only broadcast now/next EPG data (because they choose to pay Sky/Freesat to provide their proprietry EPG services).

There are an ever increasing number of Linux based receivers that can provide a full EPG either by pulling down data from satellite or using online EPG data servers and have decent SD/HD PQ like AZbox, Dreamboxes and Vu+ for example.

However, these boxes come at the cost of user friendliness and require a lot of setting up (they're not plug 'n' play), and even then the EPGs don't really compare to Sky/Freesats.

I wouldn't recommend one of these receivers unless you are prepaired to put in the time/effort of learning how to set them up, as it's quite a steep learning curve and requires lots of patience

...

 

[RobGardner]

Thanks for the info. I was surprised at the difference in picture quality and I have tried various settings to try to make sure that the output from the external tuners is set to the opitmum picture quality. I'll have another play with the tuners and see if I can up the quality with a bit of tweaking. I am too lazy to put the time in to set up a linux box (and probably not technically minded enough!)

 

[RTL]

This solution may be obvious (it wasn't to me!) but worth a mention as I had a similar experience after buying a panasonic freesat recorder /blu ray with picture quality was far lower than the freesat tuner in the panasonic TV. I eventually solved it by
matching TV picture settings for HDMI 1 input to what I had set for TV input. I
thought TV controlled everything - anyhow both inputs settings identical and picture quality the same for both.

 

[RobGardner]

Hi and thanks guys,

I have re-set the output from both the external tuners (fox and technomate) to output at 1080i and while they are both better on this setting at hd , neither hd nor particularly sd broadcast quality is as good as the in built tuner, so I will carry on with the clunky channel control but sublime picture quality. I am interested to hear that tuner in the panasonic blu-ray recorder is as good, and that may be the way to go. I want to record the live coverage of the tour de france in the summer and after being spolit by the tvs natural picture output, i wouldn't want to watch anything of a lower quality. While there is a difference between sd and hd broadcasts, its not actually that big a difference provided the sd was shot with hd equipment.