Alba: STB2

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Comments (29)

Andy Fox, Leeds on September 26th, 2005
Appears to be identical to the BUSH DFTA7. Boxes almost identitcal and same remote. Just cosmetic changes.

Richard Powell, Gloucester on December 4th, 2005
Bought from sainsburys a few days ago, the box is fairly small and lightweight and looks pretty good for a cheap STB. Connections at the back include two scart sockets and all the usual stuff - one thing that may annoy people is that the box does not have an LED at the front of the box telling you the channel number your on - not really a problem as you could just check by pressing the EPG miniguide on the remote. The automatic channel scanning was fairly quick and picked up all the channels in my area. The software contains a Now and Next miniguide and also a 5 day EPG (not advertised on the box!). Picture and sound quality is very good considering the signal bar is <50% most of the time. The remote control feels a little "basic" or "plasticy", which includes all your usual assorted buttons and digital text/interactive controls, but one thing that discerns me is the slight lag that you get when changing channel or volume etc, it doesnt happen all the time but occasionaly when you give the box a command it does nothing (Hint: FULLY pressing the button on the remote does minimise slowdown), while other times it changes channels fairly quick, ut other than that, for 29.99 its a good little freeview box. I'll prolly give it 3.5 - possibly 4 out of 5.

Roy Hughes, London on December 8th, 2005
WARNING: This box has a major software fault. After using the EPG (or, I suspect, the timer functions) the unit will stop reponding to the remote control. It gets slower and slower (10 seconds to respond to one key press). After some time the TV picture starts to break up and then goes black! The only way to recover is to switch the power off then on again - so make sure you can reach the power switch without moving the TV! Bit of a disaster really...

Justin, London on December 15th, 2005
My housemate and I bought these at the same time. At this point my housemate's has died and mine is holding on by a thread. BE WARNED these are rubbish! After about four months mine started to get picture break up and not due to lack of signal but everytime there was any white on the screen. Then the picture started to freeze meaning I had to turn the thing off at the wall and back on again. Then it started turning itself off and on along with all the other problems. I spend most of my time unplugging the thing rather than actually watching TV. The EPG is a complete waste of time telling you nothing most of the time. Honestly after this buy I will never buy anything that has to do with Alba ever again. Well done Alba!

Aeowolf, Wolverhampton on December 27th, 2005
I wish I'd read more about this product before I bought it from Sainsbugs. Set up ok at first but then the picture froze, and the thing wouldn't turn off without unplugging. Also, like other reviewers, the remote worked when it felt like it. I thought having the two scarts meant I could record off the aerial and the freeview, but couldn't do either. Going back for a refund....

Spock, North Yorkshire on December 28th, 2005
I've seen exactly the same lock-up problems since buying one of these last week. Looks like ropey software to me. After using the EPG the box locks up, won't change channel or respond at all to the remote. Also it periodically interrupts viewing and blanks the screen for about a second, maybe once every 20 minutes. If you're thinking of buying one of these from the stack in Sainsbury's - don't!

Paul, Chippenham on December 30th, 2005
I was bought this as a Christmas present, and it has lasted about 4 days before it was returned to Sainsburys. I'm afraid I echo the thoughts of everyone else - basically the software crashes and then will not respond to remote presses - you will find yourself stuck on a channel or a menu and then only way forward to power off and on at the socket. Quality.

Nev, Chester on January 3rd, 2006
It first appeared to be a bargain, but as others have already said, it has a tendancy to lock up/freeze. It can also have a very long lag when pressing a button on the remote (say to change channels), nothing appears to happen, then all of a sudden it catches up with the buttons you pressed. It's going back today. I did email Alba to see if there is an update but no response as yet. Current software is 2.00

Romy Parrington, London on January 14th, 2006
Oh God, My worst fears are confirmed and my boyfriend already warned me at the time I bought it - Should have listened!. I hope I still have the receipt. My box has all of the described Gremlins. Sainsbury's what are you doing selling this tat?. My box refuses to respond to the remote control esp EPG unless the button is pressed at least 4 times. It switches itself off, black screens, has no volume with picture.....today developed a new symptom; a weird shaking picture abit like I am viewing a flick book. All can be solved with the unplugging trick which after a week of ownership, I have had to do far too many times.To be honest the best soloution is packing the whole lot up and taking it back to Sainsbury's which I will do tomorrow without fail - the grim truth is that it is never going to Improve. You get what you pay for. Don't be tempted to buy this awful ALBA product. Sadly if you are looking at this site I'll bet you are already having similar problems

Martin, Hemel Hempstead on January 17th, 2006
Wow! Kindred spirits!! Hmm, Romy was right, might have been a good idea to have read this before buying!! I have the shaky picture fault (sound works fine at this point) every so often and the lock up issue. I can confirm also that my unit does seem to be on a go slow with the remote response also.

G Cooper, London on January 18th, 2006
When I returned my Alba box to Sainsbury's Customer Service desk, last Saturday the reaction of the girls behind the counter said it all. 'Oh, no - not another one!'. When coaxed for more detail, they said they'd had "dozens" returned with the same faults (sound dropouts and freezing, plus lockups) and couldn't understand why the company still sold them. Swapped for a Philips, but the jury's out as to whether that's any better! Curiously, the Alba delivered a sharper picture. If only it had been more stable and had come with a better remote! As further evidence, my brother is now on a second Alba (also from Sansbury's - what a good job they have a sensible returns policy!) and it looks like that one's going back too. Best avoided!

John Breen, Lurgan, N Ireland on January 20th, 2006
Well I'm just about to return my STB2 after 4 months. It's now started switching itself off and on randomly. Avoid this box like the plague - seems like the software was designed by a CBBC presenter

Stuart, Bristol on January 31st, 2006
Well thank goodness for sites such as this. I was just about to trundle off to Sainsbugs to get this at discounted price, but shan't as a result of the negative comments showing the same fault! I'm amazed that Sainsbugs are still flogging the damn thing in the knowledge that it has a major software fault.

Spooky on February 11th, 2006
All the above. This is my second box, exactly the same faults with both, lag with remote, seizes up, even ignores the box front controls at times, jams when using epg and text. Absolute nightmare. Second one going back, was going to buy Philips instead but just checked those reviews, what is wrong with the box makers, argh. I don't consider pulling the mains plug out 3 times a week to be normal for fixing tv equipment.

Andrew, UK on February 15th, 2006
Do not buy! I bought it 2 days ago for a present and have had problems with EPG And freezes to much, slow and a waste of money. Mine might just be an infected box though.

Colin Aspinall, Tewkesbury on February 26th, 2006
Bought from Sainsburys a few days ago. I was very pleased with the initial performance good quality picture and easy to set up and use. I had no problems on the first day of use, but on the second day it locked up a couple of times and I had to pull the mains plug to free it up again. The next day it started to select the wrong aspect ratio with a narrow screen for no good reason - switching it off and back on again it recovered for a while. Now it has all the previous problems plus a major failure of the colour output - everything has a red cast. No matter what I do, I even tried a new scart cable, it will not recover. Taking it back to Sainsburys tomorrow.

Norm, Derby on March 19th, 2006
Got mine from Saninsburys (I don't normally shop with the effluent middle classes). I should have walked away at the checkout. The 'girl' on the till whilst serving me was busy slagging off a customer (who had complained about her attitude) to a freind who was further down the queue! She demanded I filled in all manner of personal details supposedley for TV Licensing. Being a law abiding citizen I will provide those personal details that are necessary. However, I refused to give details that would have resulted in tons of junk mail and telesales calls. She then got stroppy claiming she had never had to process the form before. The whole thing got very heated and eventually Sainsburys gave up on trying to get me to part with details I was not prepared to give. The unit is showing early symptoms of being as much use a chocolate fireguard. Really looking forward to taking it back. From what has been descibed so far this product is not resonably fit for its purpose. One thing that really worries me is that its mains powered and with the level of problems described I wonder how safe it is!

Steve, London on March 31st, 2006
I bought this box at Argos on Wednesday, returned for refund on Friday due to problems... --- At first I liked this box, but ended up returning it to Argos because the aspect ratio was doing the wrong thing...channel 4 was showing a film which appeared in letterbox format if viewed analogue, but "fullscreen" (i.e. zoomed in on the center of the image to fill the screen vertically) when viewed digital via the STB2! I investigated a bit more and discovered this was the case for all 5 terrestrial stations. I also noticed that some of the pure digital stations seemed to display correctly in letterbox, but others were doing the zoom thing and some of the text overlay was cut off at the edges! And I also observed at least one BBC show that was "squeezed" horizontally, and this was all at the same AR setting in the setup menu. I attribute this to dodgy firmware... --- However, if you don't care about missing the edges of the picture (or have a 16:9 television), you might like this box; it's actually got a (sheet) metal case, with an actual on/off button and channel up/down buttons on the box...if you lost the remote you could still at least use it, unlike some other products! You get a small picture when in EPG mode so you can see what's going on with the program, it has a timer so you can timeshift programs via a VCR. Picture looked nice (ignoring the aspect ratio issue discussed previously). Also allows deleting of channels, so you can get rid of pay/unused/etc channels completely (i.e. will not show up under any "profiles"), nice. Oh, and a 9 pin Dsub RS-232 connector on the back (for diagnostics/software upgrades); I doubt you can find software anywhere but if you like hooking kit to your PC and hacking around, the port is right there for you! --- Having said that, I also experienced the lockup problem mentioned in other reviews on this page and had to reset via the mains within an hour of setup (I think I was in text mode when this happened the first time). Remote was frustrating to use...unresponsive, buttons required too much force to press, sometimes even when pressed fully in the box didn't respond--again, as noted by others already on this page. And I did notice a program that was jittering vertically on one occasion, which someone else here pointed out too. --- Summary: Mixed bag. I returned mine because I am a "letterbox snob", my wife would have been happy to keep it since it's a world apart from plain old analogue! The firmware/software is flawed, aspect ratio doesn't do the right thing, but if you're not a letterbox purist and don't plan on using text services you might find it to be good enough for you; it's a slim, attractive, sturdy box and the on-screen interface is, at first glance, quite nice! --- Epilogue: Replaced with Panasonic TU-CT41 for the same price I paid at Argos (on special at "Richer Sound"); can confirm that this unit does NOT suffer from the aspect ratio problem, since it provides twice as many AR modes including "4:3 letterbox" unlike the Alba...(in fact verified that the digital letterbox shows even more of the frame edges than the analogue version of the exact same program) but miss some of the less "critical" features of the Alba. --- Hope this is helpful...

Keith Hague, Macclesfield on April 4th, 2006
Bought from Makro just over 12 months ago,this makes it out of warranty. Same problems as all the others but now somthing has gone wrong with the signal imput, keep getting message saying NO SIGNAL, therefore no signal no picture. What a load of rubbish!!!

Garry Pogson, London on April 19th, 2006
My partner bought this because it was on offer (wonder why?) in W H Smith. I only found this site because I was looking for a replacement Remote (after only three weeks), thinking that the kids must have broken it by dropping it - but the scales fell from my eyes whilst reading the earlier reviews. Have already just about put my back out several times whilst trying to reach behind our telly to switch power on and off to rectify freezing, and since remote stopped working am in danger of RSI from manually clicking up to 71 for Cbeebies on the front panel. As CAMRA said about Watney's - 'Avoid at all costs'.

Simon Lee, Harrogate on April 22nd, 2006
Bought this box in October 2005 and thought it was a bargain. Got it all set up but after a few days the remote started to have a mind of its own! At one point pressing red turned it off! Terrible! Then the picture kept black and white! Bought it from WHSmiths for £39.99. Don't buy it. It's RUBBISH x1000!!!!

Jill, Antrim on May 23rd, 2006
Eh... yeah, wish I had this information six months ago! My darling little Alba has been having many of the same problems outlined by you good folks above. However, I just returned from a trip yesterday and as soon as I plugged it in smoke started billowing from it like it was about to blow up. Unfortunately, I have no reciept or box left as proof of purchase so I don't think I will be able to return it to Argos.

Charles, Derbyshire on May 29th, 2006
Bought from Argos in Lincoln just over a year ago (!) What a waste of time as all these other good people have said. Last thing I buy from the Alba or Bush brand. I have had an echostar (on another set) over two years and it still works fine. Don't buy.

John, Hertfordshire on May 31st, 2006
I bought my box from sainsburys around christmas time. It has generally worked ok apart from the remote control lock up problem that others have mentioned above. It is solved by turning the mains off and then back on. This can be annoying,especially when it happens twice in the space of an hour. The picture quality is good and everything else has worked fine. So if you're abit skint and not too bothered about the lock up problem its not a bad purchase! If you've got some spare cash I would definatly go for a better 'problem free' model.

Rory Shearer, Dundee on June 24th, 2006
Rotten, Rotten, Rotten! Should have read this web site earlier :-) , this box is indeed rank rotten. Seems ours lasted a while longer but the blank screen, no sound, switch on and off at the plug, and no response from the remote, routine has well and truly kicked in now! Wasn't exactly expecting vast quality from a cheapo Alba but performance like this is a shambles! If you're reading this keep your money and buy something decent instead. Thank goodness for the internet for being able to vex your frustrations! Did I say this set top box was rotten ?!

Paul, S.Wales on September 6th, 2006
Bought this because of the cheap price tag of £30 from Salisbury's. I wasn't expecting much because of the price. Worked OK for the first couple of days the remote was very slow to respond but I could put up with that for £30. Then it started playing up. When you switch channels the program would disappear altogether with just the menu still working. You had to knock it off at the mains to reboot the receiver. Got fed up with doing that and took it back and exchanged it for the new Toshiba DTB 55. Sainsbury's were doing an offer for a limited time on this for £40. The quality difference in using the Toshiba for an extra £10 is huge. It has a much better menu, remote and EPG. It also has a LCD on the front to tell you what channel you are currently on which turns into a clock when turned off. I would highly recommend the Toshiba but stay well clear of the Alba STB2.

Richard, Sheffield on September 14th, 2006
I bought this box as a mothers day present and for the first week, it seemed fine. The box was a little slow to respond to remote commands but it was an acceptable issue due to the price. After a week however, it became even slower. The next thing to happen was the screen blanking out, and I don't mean while the box was turned on, I mean while you are watching normal TV. A quick resolution to this was to alter the scart mode from RGB to CVBS (strange since RGB was actually the correct format). One of the more annoying problems encountered was when the box had been unplugged overnight. Most of the time the box would turn on and opperate normally, but on accasion it would turn on and have lost it's memory, prompting a first time installation which involved searching a storing all the channels again. This problem became increasingly common as time went by. The EPG (Electronic Program Guide) would crash often on this thing either freezing up the whole box (requiring you to unplug it for 5 mins) or turning it off and not allowing you to turn it back on (until you unplug it for 5 mins). More recently, when the box has been plugged in first thing in a morning, it has caused interferance with normal terestrial TV signals, showing up as horizontal noise bars, jumping picture and no sound. This happens until the box warms up. This started happening 2 weeks ago and as of the time of writing this review, the box has now completely ceased to detect any digital signal at all. It still turns on, but sits at a screen with the alba logo in the background and the message "no signal". I have thought about contacting the manufacturer about it, but after searching google and finding many other people having similar problems who's resolution is to buy another box from a different manufacturer, I doubt they would be much help. Save yourself the money and mental health problems. DO NOT BUY THIS FREEVIEW BOX!

Matt, London on November 14th, 2006
Crashes periodicially and has to be reset from the mains. RC very poor, suspect it is more the software than the remote though. Picture ok, sound suffers from dropouts occasionally. Poor. Avoid!

Rob, Ayrshire on February 10th, 2008
Don't buy, cheap and nasty. My grandmother had one for just over a year when it gave up completely. Constantly needed to be reset, various sound and picture issues. Eventually became non responsive