Early digital TV

[i.h]

I also know like seven people ( including me ) that got Sky+HD at 2006 launch then got rid of it ( not just the package but the actual box ) later ? What’s up with that too ?

You want us to guess why you and your mates got rid of Sky+HD after having it from launch? Can't you just tell us?

On Digital was pretty nifty, a family friend had this, and it was pretty impressive by late 1990’s standards. The concept behind it was good, but it was never going to be a success when you could pay the same amount for Sky Digital.

Not sure that it was the same. I had it (when it was still ON digital) and the nice thing was that it had the most desirable channels and it was still cheaper than Sky (especially on the prepaid deal). We had Sky too, but not in my room. Of course Sky didn't come out with multiroom until shortly after ITV Digital collapsed and then I got that.

That Nokia box was ridiculously slow - how generous of Carlton and Granada to give them away! My brother got it too, again prepaid, and the Pace box was so much better. Still got the Monkey somewhere, a gift for carrying on after the prepaid deal.

I also didn't have the famed reception issues - despite living in a rural area, my parents' place has perfect LOS to a main transmitter that just happens to be in the other direction to the road

The lottery with STBs was a feature of early digital TV.

With ON/ITV Digital the Pioneer box was supposedly the one to get in later years, but I seem to recall that one only being available with prepaid boxes purchased from branches of the John Lewis partnership. There is also a rare Sony STB - I don't know if that was just desirable because of the brand or if it was actually any faster.

We had a Philips box which was somewhere mid-field IIRC.

NTL, Telewest and later VM have constantly swapped between issuing machines from Pace, Samsung, Scientific Atlanta/Cisco, depending on what the engineer happened to have in their van. Samsung boxes always tended to be better, everything else being equal. I've no idea who manufactures the current 'V6' box?

Sky similarly varied between the very bottom end Grundig and Amstrad products to the desirable Samsung and Sony boxes, until they effectively went in-house by taking over Amstrad.

Believe the Sony Sky Digibox was also similarly rare - a relative did have one, though. Notable for how thin it was (bested only by the Pace Minibox, though it had fewer features like no RGB output). It was amusing that Amstrad went from the brand to avoid to actually pretty good after Sky took over, though it wasn't much longer before there wasn't a choice anyway.

I suspect the retired digibox mentioned is the Thomson HD box - already notorious for power supply unreliability (we re-capped ours) but finally put out to pasture once Sky moved to a new Linux based platform that it would not be receiving, so Sky offered to swap out the boxes of any affected subscribers. I don't think they've ever done that with SD boxes? (I wonder how many SD box *subscribers* there are?)