Putting HD to one side though, as that’s not what my whinge was about, I just can’t believe that I’ve yet to see a digital (non HD) TV signal that beats my old analogue TV picture. My parents have digital, other friends too, and me and my flatmate have it here in Spain, and the pixelation problem seems to be the standard, not an intermittent thing caused by a passing bottleneck. Besides, digital terrestrial signals don’t use internet/phone lines, so aren’t subject to bottlenecks. I wonder if there are more people reading this in the UK who have recently switched to digital and think the picture is much worse?

@Neil Wykes: I’ve never encountered channel restrictions with my DVR.

@Pepino: The pixelization you observe maybe due to overcompression of the digital signal and is avoidable at the transmission source. It seems like too much data is being squeezed through not enough bandwidth. Otherwise, the image quality of digital, especially if the content is provided and received in HD can be quite stunning and will make you forget your analogue sets.

There are disadvantages though, when buying TDT boxes it’s often unclear which boxes offer the most features. The first box we owned was just a digital decoder, but didn’t let you change language soundtracks on every channel. The DVR model we now use lets you choose the language, but only of live television. It refuses to record House or Rome, for example, in English even if you can watch it live in this language. This model has also pretty unresponsive menu system. There are lots of annoyances like these, presumably from a disregard of European standards by broadcasters and manufacturers alike. Despite this it’s worth every cent as it makes the unbearable, bearable by watching only those thing I want to watch and my Spanish comprehension improves

We have that in Spain too. Digital Plus sells it under the brand name ‘I Plus’, I think.

@ Pepino : “watching some ugly footballer and his equally toothy mother advertising Colacao for a lot longer than you would otherwise like! (If you’ve seen it, you’ll know who I mean!)”

You mean Ronaldinho?? Isn’t it Natillas Danet what he advertises??

Talking about TV Series, has anyone seen the tv series ‘Rome’, produced by HBO??. Great quality entertainment.

In Spain it was aired Canal Plus, still I never got to watch it from tv, instead I followed some reliable and trustworthy recommendations and got the whole dvd-package at ‘El Corte Inglés’. Great stuff.

Strange as it may seem, we have had it for some time! But I still haven’t found the need to buy one yet. Guess we will one day, but for the amount of TV I watch, you could bin the lot.