[WillPS]

I do remember in the On/ITV digital days, the signal was notoriously awful in many places, I know some people who bought the prepaid boxes and couldn't get a decent signal. When Freeview launched they changed the encoding of some of the multiplexes which made the signal more stable (but reduced the bitrate) which improved things a bit. Though it still took until DSO for them to significantly increase the power.

They also moved to a much stronger signal didn't they? (The ones vacated by the analogue transmissions ceasing, hence the overnight outages following DSO)

[Technologist]

I do remember in the On/ITV digital days, the signal was notoriously awful in many places, I know some people who bought the prepaid boxes and couldn't get a decent signal. When Freeview launched they changed the encoding of some of the multiplexes which made the signal more stable (but reduced the bitrate) which improved things a bit. Though it still took until DSO for them to significantly increase the power.

This is the BBC report in the two modes that the ITC mandated
downloads.bbc.co.uk 
The BBC used 16Q on its two muxes …. Giving quite a bit more c/n Morgan.
But of course at DSO it changed to the current modes and an 8K FFT
…… and more power on better frequencies

[Stooky Bill]

They also moved to a much stronger signal didn't they? (The ones vacated by the analogue transmissions ceasing, hence the overnight outages following DSO)

Yes, the original DTT transmitters were lower powered than the post DSO ones, although the power levels were of course nowhere near as high as the analogue ones they replaced.

Some of the pre-DSO transmitters were re-used for COM6 and COM6 - Arqiva managed to squeeze a bit more use out of them

---

I got a Philips Ondigital STB right at the end of 1999, so I was quite an early adopter. My then employers the BBC had a discount on them and as I was working on the content it was good to be able to see it too. Plus there's no way that I could have a dish.

I remember later sharing a house with someone who had an integrated TV, think that was a Philips too. I think back then it wasn't so much integrated but just had the STB innards tacked on inside. The menus were the same, but gaps where the 'on' branding should have been. The card slot took my subscription card, which was one benefit of their system.

Certainly I remember the picture quality looking like mine did when set to composite rather than RGB, which looked great. Worked on a set top aerial too, in North West London... although broke up when a badly tuned motorbike went past

[cable]

I vaguely remember when I got my Pace DTR730, from Courts in summer 2000, the loft aerial we had at the time did not pick up anything at all (Digital radio a few years later was perfect!), I recall ONdigital gave us a subsidised aerial upgrade for £40 - installed by Berkshire Aerial Services, This gave us all 6 Muxes reliabily but there were still times it broke up, the central heating control sometimes triggered it off and there was still times a tree nearby could cause signal issues when it had leaves leaving a pixellated mess and sometimes the black screen and red dot. That aerial still is used for receiving DTT Today.

[nwtv2003]

Unfortunately I no longer have the tape, but I had a recording of an episode of The Bill from ITV2, quite early into its existence. We were watching ITV2 via Cable & Wireless (analogue) however the ITV2 signal was from DTT as for a couple of bits within the episode the screen went black with the red square. This happened a few times back in the day. Digital interference took some getting used to.

A family friend had On Digital, and we went to a millennium party at their house, me being much younger was pretty transfixed with the system. (Almost had use of the set to myself that night.) They had a Philips STB which in fairness was pretty robust. I liked that there was the option to have 4:3, 14:9 or Letterbox/16:9 which was there on the remote.

We didn’t get Freeview until 2005 on a second set (main set was cable, by this point NTL Digital) but I recall the first box we used was a Pacific STB bought from Asda for less than £40. It was just nice having the novelty of Sky News and Sky Sports News on another TV. We managed to convince some of our older relatives to convert to Freeview using the same box as they seemed impressed by the low and simple cost of conversion. One relative did struggle with the SDN multiplex, but quite often got the BBC multiplex from Moel-Y-Parc over Winter Hill, despite the latter being much closer.

Having worked in retail around this time, the basic boxes got cheaper each year up to switchover. And yes some did sell in supermarkets for as low as £10. That didn’t last too long though.

[James2001]

This is the BBC report in the two modes that the ITC mandated
downloads.bbc.co.uk 
The BBC used 16Q on its two muxes …. Giving quite a bit more c/n Morgan.
But of course at DSO it changed to the current modes and an 8K FFT
…… and more power on better frequencies

And it was the change to 8k that turned my Nokia box into a fancy doorstop!

[JexedBack]

I had a Pace Twin recording set-top box.
You could record one channel and watch another.
It was brilliant but the hard disc recorder was so loud!

[Spencer]

Having worked in retail around this time, the basic boxes got cheaper each year up to switchover. And yes some did sell in supermarkets for as low as £10. That didn’t last too long though.

If my experience was typical, I’m not surprised. I bought one of the Asda £10 boxes, and it simply wasn’t fit for purpose. It froze up several times a day, and to get it working again, it required a full factory reset including a rescan every time. I returned it to the store and got my tenner back, and I bet I wasn’t the only one.

[agemame]

Those Onn branded ones? Yes, they basically didn't have a PSU worth the effort so they'd just latch on. I bought it, and returned it within the weekend, as I recall. Funnily enough the Tesco Technika branded ones were ostensibly the same intrinsic design in terms of the decoder, but reasonably decently built in comparison, albeit with some strange audio crosstalk in standby and a tendency to 'blip' the SCART source pin when switching off which confused those TVs that were set to autodetect external sources.

[WillPS]

The Vestel rebadged £30-50 ones were the sweet spot I found. Not fancy in any respect but pretty robust.

I was given an early Philips FTA STB (not Freeview branded) for Christmas, I think in 2003. I think it was some kind of deal at Boots (back when they still had a small selection of cameras, walkmans etc), maybe £60 if you spent £100 in store. It was speedy compared to the ONdigital box I was used to but prone to having random artifacts which could only be removed with a plug-pull. I think it was a Philips DTR1500:
www.manualslib.com 

Philips DTR1500/05 Manuals | ManualsLib
Philips DTR1500/05 Pdf User Manuals. View online or download Philips DTR1500/05 …
  Source: www.manualslib.com