Mac Mini vs Play TV (PS3) - UK Freeview HD?

[steveOooo]

Sony have let their once amazing Play TV UK Freeview Hardware / Software turn to ******!! -
http://community.eu.playstation.com...p/Play-TV-Auto-Off-crashing-PS3/td-p/16858898

So I'm now looking at the possibilities of alternatives.

Youview/Humax - looks like its slow and buggy as per other unreliable boxes.

Mac mini with hdmi out.... Hmm I could get a second hand Mac mini for a couple hundred £'s and just use it as a PVR.

Qs- Is it possible to receive, watch, pause and record Freeview HD on the mini? What's needed? Twin tuners?

When watching freeview / other videos via hdmi, is it the same as watching via a dedicated PVR/ PS3 or is there settings that will do this? I've watched before via my mbp17" mdp-hdmi and it does look a bit different...

 

[OllyW]

Qs- Is it possible to receive, watch, pause and record Freeview HD on the mini? What's needed? Twin tuners?

I don't think you can get a Mac compatible Freeview HD tuner.

 

[rbrian]

There are no Freeview HD receivers available for either Mac or PS3, because the UK uses a slightly different standard than the rest of the world. This makes the market too small to be worth the development costs. The existing receivers, like the Play TV and Elgato stuff, get HD in most of Europe and the US, but not here. I don't expect that to ever change - internet TV is the future, and just about everything works with that without needing special UK focused development (except software- and the BBC is all over that!).

I've had a Humax box for about 3 years. It had some bugs to begin with, but firmware updates have squashed them and added new features, and now it works perfectly well. It also has a stronger tuner than my TV. The interface is a little bit clunky, but probably no worse than a computer - it feels a lot like Linux, which is what it is based on. This also means there are various custom firmwares available that add features - I haven't looked very far into that.

The new YouView stuff looks amazing, but like anything new it'll likely have some bugs to begin with, which will be fixed.

 

[steveOooo]

Yeah I've been looking into youview.

After some reading, DVBT2 will be used in mainland Europe - France from around 2015. So perhaps the UK was wise to go with it to start off with.
We may see something from elgato from around this time as apparently, their chip manufacturer is based inFrance and its currently not possible to make a dvt2 USB powered device (I think!)