upgrade...
 

I was thinking of getting a slightly better TV set, seen a cheapish Digihome one with the inbuilt DVD I want; but it also, in fact they mostly, come with inbuilt Freeview, HDMI, HD readiness and god knows what. Don't need HD, or Freeview; just want to carry on with my VM cable package, it's fine.
Will the inbuilt Freeview interfere with the cable stuff? Can an ignoramus attach this newfangled object to existing V box (it does have an HDMI entrance, even if I don't know what HDMI is. Does it replace SCART?) Or do I need to get a techie in?
thanks to anyone who might know...

Re: upgrade...
 

They won't clash at all, the TV will treat them as completely separate inputs just like it does with say... your cable box and your DVD/Bluray player.

Yes HDMI replaces scart, it will let you watch the HD channels in HD if you want.

Re: upgrade...
 

Buying a TV with built in Freeview is no different than the way you used to buy a TV with a built in analogue tuner.

Re: upgrade...
 

Inbuilt freeview.. you need this for when the cable TV quits on you.

HDMI is the HD input, if you have a STB with HD, then you would connect that way in preference to SCART. If you don't have a cable for that, try 99p Store or poundland.

No difference in connecting a new TV, the only thing you may want to tweak is autodetection - if the Set top box keeps taking over from DVD when you don't want it to. I seem to recall there may be an option in the STB not to signal that way, or an option in many TVs to turn on or off the autoswitchover.

Re: upgrade...
 

thanks to Kabaal, Chris, Matth for that. Now I understand what HDMI is, needn't bother about it. Good tip about the autoswitchover too! I shall dare to go ahead.

Re: upgrade...
 

I would recommend bothering about it - pretty sure you can bump to a HD box for a small fee and the number of channels available in HD is increasing - only thing is, once some are HD, you may think SD looks bad

Re: upgrade...
 

Oh yes, actual Freeview HD tuners are as rare as hen's teeth on "HD" TVs, so on many, if you actually want to GET HD, it has to be from a box.

Not sure if "HD" versus "HD ready" actually means anything, or if it ever did (at one time, I think "HD" was reserved for 1080p, while 720p/1080i was "HD ready")

Re: upgrade...
 

It still means that. To be fair to the manufacturers, IIRC it is a decision of Ofcom that has resulted in the current mess with HD broadcast on Freeview.

Re: upgrade...
 

Correct.

Only TV's with the "Freeview HD" badge are DVB-T2 compliant, the rest require an STB.

Re: upgrade...
 

To be fair to the manufacturers, it was a flaming mess to build the current system on the wizened bones of "ondigital", when a lot of the old boxes ended up dying in the great split NIT cull!

Any fool could have predicted the HD future, by the time the analog switchoff was going to happen, could they repeat the same mistake as DAB (using a codec that would be obsolete by the time it was being deployed) - of course they could!

Re: upgrade...
 

You pay a price for being an early adopter. 'twas ever thus. There were no integrated DVB-T TVs in the UK for quite some time after digital services launched, because there were too few places in Europe where manufacturers could actually sell them. And now we have a situation where your 'integrated' digital TV probably isn't capable of receiving HD.

Over in the USA they paid the price for being early adopters of colour TV broadcasts. They settled on the NTSC* standard and endured decades of dreadfully mushy pictures as a result.

*Often referred to as Never Twice the Same Colour. :D