Don't be fooled by fake Freeview HD deals

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In the wake of Freeview HD's 'launch' this week, we've noticed few websites selling receivers which combine 'Freeview' with 'HD' in ways likely to mislead.

As Freeview made clear on Wednesday, the short supply of components for the new DVB-T2 transmission system means no receivers will go on sale until January.

Eagle-eyed Wotsat readers soon noticed a few 'Freeview HD' products on sale already, most notably on Pixmania, but other places too (feel free to name and shame them below).

These are not compatible with Freeview HD - at best they're designed for the French TNT HD service, which uses a different HD broadcast format; at worst they've just got an HDMI socket and aren't HD in any way.

The bottom line is that Freeview HD receivers need to have DVB-T2 - if it isn't mentioned then the product is bogus.

Comments:

Some weeks ago I did a trawl of all the TV stores in Norwich to find out how many would be willing to sell me a new TV capable of receiving Freeview HD signals and was dissapointed to find that ALL said that they stocked TV ranges that are Freeview HD ready. There was no chance that the assistants misunderstood my needs as I made it clear what I wanted. The only store that gave correct information was a small independent. New TVs can cost £1000 so how do you prove that you were lied to by a commission hungry idiot?

Posted by Bill Holden (127.0.0.1) on December 06, 2009 at 02:16 PM GMT #

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