BT Vision V-Box review

BT Vision's V-Box is a Freeview digital tuner that combines personal video recording (PVR) functionality and also offers on-demand TV like movies Tested at £30.00

What Hi-Fi? Verdict

It’s intriguing, effective and worth a look – adding some HD programming and some price reductions would help cement its case

Pros

  • +

    Affordable basic package

  • +

    easy to use

  • +

    good off-air performance

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    surprisingly effective ‘streamed’ video quality

  • +

    good range of content

Cons

  • -

    No HD or 5.1 (as yet)

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    some pricing seems too high

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BT's new Vision internet TV system combines free-to-air digital TV with access to a vast online library of movies, music videos and standard TV programmes.

The core component is the V-box, a Freeview video recorder with a 160GB hard-disk and twin tuners. It's free to BT Total Broadband customers (though installation costs £30), and includes both RGB Scart and HDMI outputs. There's also the option of a self-installation package for £90.

You can record one Freeview channel while watching another, set timed recordings to the hard disk and pause and rewind ‘live' TV. Off-air performance and recording quality are reasonably good, too.

Similar to renting a DVD
The V-Box includes an Ethernet port: link it to a BT broadband router – so it can connect to the internet – and so long as you've a minimum download speed of 2Mbps, you're away.

In-demand video content costs: new movies are £2.99, but £1.99 is too much for something aeons-old and and oft-repeated, especially when rental and retail prices are so low. But that's arguably better than paying a monthly subscription fee.

Picture quality is surprisingly good – there's very little of the digital noise and pixellation you might expect. You don't get 5.1 surround sound, but as broadband gets faster BT expects to add both that and high-definition content in time.

This is a remarkably clever piece of kit. It's good to use, performs well and offers something genuinely different. Given time, it could evolve into a real winner.

What Hi-Fi?

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