Ondigital - more like OffDigital... (ITV Digital)

Member Name: Zahooga

Product:	ITV Digital
Date:	20/06/00 (25 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Accept as a last resort if you're not allowed a dish or in a cabled area

Disadvantages: See above - far too numerous to list!

Let's cut straight to the chase - if you can get either Sky Digital, or Cable - go for one of them, rather than OnDigital. No competition - the other systems knock the spots off OnDigital in every single way.

The advantage of Ondigital is that you don't need a dish. True perhaps. However whilst you may not need a dish, you need to have a very good TV signal if the picture is to be consistently watchable. Our biggest problem appears to be extremes of weather - too sunny = no picture, too wet = no picture, etc!

Mind you, the problems with picture quality pale into insignificance when you actually consider the content....

Firstly, OnDigital is expensive compared to Sky. For the same amount of cash with Sky, you get about 5 or 6 times as many channels. The best channels on OnDigital are the ones provided by, err, Sky!

Secondly, OnDigitals hardware platform is crap. The boxes crash regularly, the onscreen guide only shows you now and next (compare and contrast the 24 hour forward option with Sky), and the picture quality is poor.

The only channel you can get OnDigital (which you might consider watching) that you can't get on Sky is ITV. So if your life revolves around Corrie, and you can't be bothered to flick back to terrestrial TV, OnDigital is the system for you.

For the rest of us, Sky Digital is far and away better, given the choice of channels, the superior hardware platform, a great on screen guide, and a company who actually produces output!

Summary: