Alba STB Questions

Roger Mills · 2006-05-16T21:44:47+00:00

This is my first skirmish with Freeview since, technically, I live in a non-freeview area.I've inherited an Alba STB2NS from my son, since he has no signal at all in the flat where he lives - in Cambridge.Despite Freeview not being 'available' where I live (just outside Warwick, a long way from the Sutton Coldfield transmitter, on the wrong side of Hatton Hill) I can actually get quite a reasonable signal, and can get all the channels except those on Mux D. [And that's with a standard Group-B aerial rather than a wide-band jobby].I have a couple a questions which I hope that owners of the same model of STB may be able to answer. At the moment I have it connected to a single TV - using a Scart cable - and also have a co-ax cable from the RF loop-through socket to the TV's aerial socket.If, with the STB running, I select a normal terrestrial channel on the TV, I get a picture divided into 4 with a big black cross in the middle - plus all the symptoms of vertical hold not working. If I put the STB on standby, the terrestrial channels are ok. Is this normal, or is something wrong with it? I had assumed that the signal coming out of the loop-though socket *should* be ok, even with the STB in use - because you may want to record a digital channel whilst watching a terrestrial channel. Am I missing something?I haven't yet tried to record a digital channel, or even to connect a VCR to the second Scart socket. But I note that the remote control has a button labelled DTV/VCR. The only explanation in the manual says "used to switch between digital TV and video". What does this actually do? Currently, when I press it, the STB goes onto standby (allowing terrestrial channels to be viewed). If I had a VCR connected, would it stay in the 'run' state (green light) when this button was pressed - but allow terrestrial channels to be viewed? How would I select the channel to be recorded? [The manual says SFA about recording from the second scart!]TIA.

May 16, 2006 21 Replies

Rate this thread:

mike 20 years ago

"Roger Mills" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@individual.net:

I think you're righ, although I can't find those options ATM. But I did a special reload of the tech-tv group, and they all came back!

Perhaps I should crosspost to software newsreadrs, (but I don't think I'm up to that!)

I suppose it's all right if you're ready for it; but I wasn't.

I also felt a bit of a pratt advising you to post in another group, and then found out you had, already so soon. I'm not really used to checking headers that carefully

mike

Vote

Christian McArdle 20 years ago

Yes, it means it doesn't need to be PAL encoded, so you don't get the encoding artifacts that are caused by putting the colour information down the same bit of bandwidth.

Christian.

Vote

Join the Discussion

Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.

Didn't find your answer?

Ask the community — no account required