Anything under $80 has to be new territory for a HD STB right…
And remember, this is at your local Coles, not from some on-line entity + shipping.
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WOW! HD STB for under $50. Thats unbelievable value. Not too sure if getting an analogue TV is worth buying nowadays though, i mean, unless you get a STB to go with it, its gunna be next to useless in the next few years when the TV stations switch to digital. Better off looking for a tv with a in-built STB.

While Coles catalogues promote these electronic products, I’m yet to find a Coles in northern Sydney which stocks these products.

Can anyone advise if Rhodes or other supermarkets might have these (or other) items? I’ve tried to find the recent deals at Hornsby (nothing for months) and Chatswood (nothing last week).

Thanks for any local reports. :)

The image of the ad does say its not available on Manly pensinula, manly and many stores that seem to be on the north shore. Maybe the problem is that these people head to Chatswood and Hornsby to buy.

ozpete, since neither Hornsby nor Chatswood have had any stock, nor even had much of a section for these cheap electronics, I think that northern Sydney shops have just eliminated them as a category.

There may be insufficient interest here for the cheapie MTV/MXT products. ;)

Not a great loss, either. :)

Damn.. I’m guessing this isn’t available in WA?

Call Coles customer service check phone no from web site. I call last time make complaint. The lady can check the list which stores get them. But too late to call all got.

Thanks, afu.
I’m not interested in these items but the PVR would have been nice. My previous Coles ‘MTV’ PVR failed.
There is a thread on dtvforum.info on Coles’ MTV / MXT PVRs in the PVR forum.

Cheers,
Bizi

Are these units (HD STB & TV) discussed in the above thread on dtvforum?

afu… what do you mean by “all got”? Are you saying they’re all sold out?

since it starts from 12/03/2009. its not on sale yet is it?

heh I unloaded 4 pallets of these at work last week, was wondering what the special was that we would get so many in
thats 16x4 - 64 TVs at one store so plenty avail i guess - Canberra, Jamison

The lady told me most stores name not in my area (Sydney) only few are close to sydney (within 30km may be)
I call them and was told all sold (I said last time not this week).

Can I ask everyone a question, if you don’t have an HD television & you buy an HD set-top-box & plug it in - you can receive the HD channels, but they won’t be in HD quality?

Yup, as long as your TV has RCA ports it should work fine.

So, if my very, very old TV has only a RF input on the back, can I connect this STB to it?

You’d need a VHF video modulator (or UHF if it’s not THAT old).

Nice at this price I think I will grab a couple :)

I was in Coles Westfield Southland late morning today and saw the display of 34cm TV’s.
They had about 20 of them.
I did not see a HD STB in sight :-(
Hopefully, they’re being unloaded tonight.

At local coles they only had 7

Those stores that had any STB’s only got about 6. Some didnt get any at all.
Thost that I checked had sold out of these already.

Got two from Sebastopol store in regional vic, they would have had over 20 instore.

In Sydney, there’s heaps in the Coles in Broadway. I bought 10…!*

*(kidding - I only bought 2, which then left about 10 on the shelf)

Got one today, the lady said they were selling like hot cakes. About 24 arrived at my store and all went in the morning

I got 2 of these and both don’t work via the RCA (yellow, white and red) cables provided. Plugged it into 4 different TVs and its either no display or really jumpy unreadable menu. Going to see if I can borrow some HDMI cables to try, but looks like both of mine are going back. Couldn’t have been that unlucky to pick up 2 duds!

they aint duds Obs, you need to press the yellow button on the remote to change pixels/refresh rate so its compatible with your TV. it comes with the faster rate by default

Thanks for the advice. I found out the same from the net. In that case, they are absolute bargains.

i purchased on of the mtv hd set top box and i can’t get it to do anything the RCA(yellow,white,and red) cables provided don’t work not sure where the yellow goes and have tried the above tip about pressing the yellow button to change pixels/refresh and still nothing happens

Yellow is composite video; Red is right audio; White is left audio.
[ :- { )

thanks i have got them in the right connections now but still haveing problems the error light is on and nothing i do is making a difference do you think it might be the aerial that is the problem

can someone please help me otherwise i will have to take it back

thanks that is where i have it but it will still do nothing and the error light is on do you think you might know what that means(MAYBE IT HAS SOMETHING TO DO WITH THE AERIAL do you think)

can someone please help me or i have to take it back

Chris, May be this helps.

I bought MTV set-top box (after hunting almost 6 coles stores) from castle hill. Reached home, plugged in (red and white goes as per color for audio, yellow got a port that says CBSV or something like that next to white or red). They also got yellow color for some kind of digital audio, so connect correctly.

My case when i connected, the display on TV is worst..lot of dots, continuous scrolling but the big MTV logo is visible even on that scroll. I pushed remote button to standby but TV display still the same grains despite it went to standby !. I suspected this is lemon and went to nearby store to return.

I think i am bit luck as they dont have any more MTV but they give me a OLIN HVBT-1800 as a replacement. (This might be old stock as they sold this olin for 49$ during christmas). Ofcourse Olin is better then MTV so i gladly accepted and it is working fantastic except one small glitch. The Olin cant display EPG/program info for SBS alone, rest all works beautifully. I will call Olin support tomorrow when they work before deciding to return again.

But the point is, Olin gave an instruction sheet which was missing but might be applicable to MTV. Since these are HD set-top box, they try to broadcast like 760x760 or even higher to TV which might have been a reason why my display was so bad on my old phillips CRT TV. Olin got a button on remote to upscale or downscale and they adviced to downscale if TV behaves strange. So check your remote (and manual) and see if that applicable or helps.

I bought the HD stb the other day and am having problems with the remote as it seems to send commands to the MTV HD DVD player I bought from Coles about two years ago. I’m not sure what I can do about it. One of the buttons on the stb remote causes the dvd holder to open and close. I’ll play with it for another few days, but may return it if I can’t figure how to stop it (other than moving it out of the line of sight of each other).

They are using same infrared signals between 2 different appliances !!!

Just curious, did you get EPG info on all channels? (SBS in particular)?

I seem to be getting EPG on all channels - certainly SBS

cool, certainly olin issue. one of my friend too got same issue. thanks.