Add a TV Tuner To Your Xbox (In Europe) 81
jfruh (300774) writes "The Xbox one isn't just a game console: it's also a nifty media set-top box, and it interacts very well with your TV service — as long as you have cable. Cord-cutters will soon be able to attach their Xbox to an antenna — but only in Europe." The peripheral that Microsoft will soon release allows you to integrate over-the-air content into the Xbox One system. From the images Microsoft released it looks like the tuner is a small box with a port for an antenna cable on one end, and the USB cable on the other. Unfortunately for my readers in North America, as of now, the Xbox One Digital TV Tuner is only scheduled to release in Europe. Microsoft says it supports DVB-T, DVB-T2 and DVB-C television channels, which I hope means something to my European readers; Wikipedia tells me these are European over-the-air cable standards. The TV Tuner will be available in late October for 24.99 in the UK, and for €29.99 in France, Italy, Germany and Spain.
Broadcast standards in Europe (Score:5, Informative)
Only DVB-T and DVB-T2 are for over the air. DVB-C is for cable service. So Xbox One users in Europe are going to be able to use it with both over the air and cable service. In Europe using cable (DVB-C) is a common form of getting television and often it is part of the rent that people pay.
DVB Tuners (Score:5, Informative)
USB DVB tuners have been around for a while now and are amazingly cheap. Like $9.99 cheap. Besides receiving compressed DVB signals, most of them also have a general-purpose tuner mode for broadcast, etc. reception, and they make dandy Software-Defined Radios (SDR) that can tune from 50-1000 MHz or more, and translate an entire 3 MHz segment of the RF spectrum for software decoding.
The cheapest ones are based on the RTL-2832U tuner chip. They are a cable-TV tuner IC coupled to a USB soundcard IC internally. Check out rtl-sdr.com [rtl-sdr.com] for more info. The PC software to receive radio is free, mostly open source and quite sophisticated, rivaling several-thousand dollar conventional radio packages. Check out sdr-radio.com [sdr-radio.com] and sdrsharp.com [sdrsharp.com] for a couple of the many software packages out there. Cool stuff!
T vs T2 vs S (Score:5, Informative)
DVB-T is OTA SD television content branded as "Freeview". You get over a 100 channels but, to be honest, only about 30 of them are any good. There are all the major stations (BBC 1 and 2, ITV, Channel 4 and 5), their additional channels (BBC 3, ITV 2 etc), some +1 hour channels and some Freeview only channels. Whilst these are all subscription free, there is a small amount of subscription content and it's not essential to subscribe to these. You don't get many of the Sky channels.
DVB-T2 is the same as T but with the inclusion of 10 or so (I can't remember the exact number) HD channels. It's branded "Freeview HD". Again, subscription free for the majority of the channels. It's nice to watch Top Gear in HD.
DVB-S is the same as T2 but, I think, has a few more HD channels. It's branded "Freesat" and requires the installation of a satellite dish on the side of the house - which often fails the WAF test. It arrived before Freeview HD and so was the first way to get HD channels, although I'm not sure whether that really is the case any more.
For those that are wondering, "YouView" is actually a STB with a DVB-T2 tuner and a range of additional catch-up and VOD services bolted on.
The majority of people will probably get DVB-T2.
Re:Old tech (Score:4, Informative)
This is incorrect. -T can carry HD channels, albeit with heavier compression of the video/audio signals. -T2 increases the channel bandwidth from 24Mb/s to 35Mb/s and allows less compressed HD channels.
Spain, Italy, France, Taiwan, Panama, Colombia all do HD over -T.