Less Radiation

In the next two weeks the Winter Hill transmitter (up north) will start to transmit HD content over the terrestrial TV network.

The really amazing thing is that the UK will be pioneering the new DVB-T2 standard, but the really annoying thing is that there is no hardware available yet. Humax are going to demo a set top box capable of receiving the signal, in December, but it won’t be available to buy in the shops until early 2010. Humax lead the way in set top boxes – the last two I bought were both Humax.

I just moved house and have had a dish put up for BBC HD over Freesat. I waited a while before buying my Freesat box, and I waited a whole while longer before getting a 1080P TV – my 3 years sat on the fence meant I avoided being seduced by a 720P set.

Pundits on the Digital TV forums reckon that the first DVB-T2 boxes and decoders will cost £300+, although by Christmas 2010 they’ll be more reasonably priced.

If you want subscription-free HD channels at the moment I’d stick with FreeSat. You can get a Humax HD Freesat receiver at Amazon.co.uk for £122 or a PVR version with a 320GB hard drive for £243. Both boxes connect by HDMI and give great results on SD & HD channels.