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“I bought the ECHOSTAR T-105 Top Up TV To Go pack...”

Written on: 29/12/2004 by The Truth Is Out There (1 review written)

Good Points
Good looking well made unit. Self tuning & easy setup. Very fast channel switching . Excellent picture. straight forward Remote control. Two SCART sockets. RF Loop Socket - this allows BBC1&2,ITV1,CHNL4&5 to a second TV in Analog only)Interactive (Press the Red Button) Service

Bad Points
Channel (09) Teletext Channel locks the unit up and the only way to get it back working is to unplug at the power socket, wait for 10 seconds plug back in and quickly turn over the channel off 09 before it locks up again. Volume display sometimes doesn't show on screen. Top Up TV company don't make it clear how they charge for until you've bought the product. No Telephone number supplied to cancel subscription. You Can't record one digital channel while watching another. You can however watch any of the five Analog channels while recording a Digital channel(if you connect the RF Loop to your TV)

General Comments
I bought the ECHOSTAR T-105 Top Up TV To Go pack (£89.99 Argos No 16 day return) as a Christmas present for my 70 year old father in law - He has no real problems with it. After reading all the bad reviews the THOMSON DTI2300 & 2305 have received I was worried about buying a freeview/Top Up TV set top box and couldn't find any views on the ECHOSTAR T-105 so this should help all who need to know. The ECHOSTAR T-105 is an excellent unit. The digital quality TV pictures are very crisp, The Freeview channels offer a reasonable selection of alternative viewing. The 8 day TV guide is an real advantage for easy checking what's on. The Interactive (Press the Red Button) ads another dimension to viewing and works fine on the channels that transmit the service. In my opinion Top Up TV is not worth the £7.99 per month extra, (but I still went for this option to be future proof) Only any 4 of the 10 channels are transmitted at any one time. That said, if you want Cartoon network or Boomerang (Cartoons) for the kids or the Discovery channel and can't afford Sky it's probably just about worth it. The one thing I'm not happy about is the way Top Up TV fail to inform how they work until after you've purchased the product. When you register/Activate your Top Up TV card (Telephone number given inside the box)You have to give them your credit card or Bank account number. They then direct debit (one month in advance!) your subscription. Even if you have bought the Top Up TV To Go pack which includes the first month's subscription they will still deduct another month money. If you want to cancel - you can - but have to give 30 days notice. I have no problem with any of this but, Where's the telephone number to cancel? and I bet you don't get through as easily as when you activate? Hopefully Top Up TV will bring onboard more channels making their service better value and will stop the need to cancel. Hope you find this useful - Enjoy