Wharfedale: DV832B

Average:

Your responses

JP, Kettering on August 10th, 2008
A brilliant piece of kit I thought, at first. Quick and easy to setup and use. Then I started noticing the audio cuttin gout - seems to happen every 22-25 minutes, for 1-5 seconds. That soon gets very frustrating, especially when dialogue is involved, in complex storylines. Now, recently, there have been signal problems, and it's getting more frequent. The signal can and does fail frequently, sometimes for 6 or more seconds. It used to happen a few times an hour, but now it seems to happen every couple of minutes. I don't think it's the transmitter, as the signal is fine if you watch it on the menu screen (as a little box in the corner.)

Ken, Derbyshire on April 22nd, 2008
Good quality picture & easy to set up & use. Unfortunatley the sound drops out on a regular basis. Technical advice was to reset the box, made no difference. Changed the box for another, exactly the same poblem, advised to try a different manufacturer no problems with a Tvonics box. Manufacturers know there is a problem with this model, just hope people will accept this as normal.

Alex, Leeds on January 16th, 2008
Available from ebuyer UK at £10.99 inc VAT.. super saver delivery took me to £16 delivered - so not bad price at all. We're aiming to use it for an old tv in the bedroom with a small old aerial - I'll report my findings here, and whether or not we'll have to get a new aerial. Have seen the maplin aerial L29BB (with gain amp to 20dB) strongly reccommended on the net, so might get that if signal is sub-par.

Mikey, London on January 10th, 2008
I have had this 12 months and recommend it. No problems whatsoever. Bit cluncky & retro looking, but reliable.

Andy, Bristol on December 24th, 2007
Purchased this box a week ago and it is very good value and works well. However it suffers from the dreaded sound dropouts (every few minutes) mentioned in other reviews, which makes it virtually unusable. It should have been a 5 but I'll have to give it a 2 on account of the dropouts.

David Bate, Cheltenham on December 3rd, 2007
Bought a MICO box 11 months ago which proved to be un-reliable and finally packed up, giving a no-signal warning last week which could not be overcome. Fortunately Richer Sounds refunded the 20GBP cost with no quibble but could not supply much as a replacement. Went on-line to the Argos website which, unlike their catalogue, gives full spec. details of the various freeview boxes they stock, and selected the DV832B which I bought from the local store at the new price of 24.95 GBP. This is something of a bargain, the unit looks neat and I like the time display in standby mode, but wish the display LEDs were blue or green for easier reading - a minor point! I agree with most of the other comments about ease of set-up, picture and sound quality and recording features. I would have liked a button on the neat remote control to swap between the current and last programme selection but for the cost this is a very cheap way to get into freeview. Judging by the signal strength indicator it seems to be more signal-sensitive than the junk MICO box that, fortunately, packed up within the guarantee period! My recommendation - buy it tomorrow - great value.

Harry Kerr, Northern Ireland on October 15th, 2007
Great machine......I had a Sagem: ITD58.....which is a bundle of rubbish, all it could do was pixelate and it had only one scart connection and a massive transformer plug (whatever that was about..haven't a clue!!!) The Wharfedale, worked straight out of the box and doesn't pixelate and holds onto channels. It has a Favourites feature which I like very much. It has two scart connections and a normal plug. I got it from Argus for £24.99. Excellent machine. Hope I get my money back for the Sagem and if I do, I will buy another Wharfedale for another TV in the house. Great Product. Thanks for all the great reviews on this machine.......I'm glad I purchased it

Alan, Edinburgh on October 14th, 2007
My Wharfedale DV832B died the other day. Just went cold and wouldn't do anything. R.I.P. just short of its second birthday. Well, reading these reviews, that often seems to be the case, no matter what the make. So, having read all the reviews again I reckoned this box was still the best value in terms of features versus price, so I went to Argos and got another one. It was £5 cheaper than last time. Now I've used this new box for a bit I can report that there are a small number of differences to the previous version, mostly for the better. Firstly, the remote. Previously, this would frequently transmit the wrong commands giving a good deal of irritation. Other reviewers in this column have also remarked on this, and I have a Goodmans unit with the same remote which suffers similarly. Clearly this was a mechanical problem, something to do with the texture of the rubber buttons being wrong. This has now been fixed. The remote feels snappy and positive and does the job properly. Great. The user interface software is also different. It is now identical, as far as I can see, to that in my old Goodmans GDB4. According to the box label (and the information screen) it is version 1.5, whereas the dead one has a label saying that it was 1.7. It did have a couple of upgrades, but as it's now dead I can no longer ask it what version it got to. This 'downgrade' is probably for the better in useability terms, and it also loads the programme information more quickly. The receiver part of box seems to be more sensitive, giving a better signal level indication, and it is perhaps less sensitive to impulse interference. It also runs noticeably cooler. Well, all these improvements in just two years. But, it still has that dammed stupid pointless big bright red display on the front! Fortunately, silver sticky-tape covers that up.

Sam Northallerton on October 6th, 2007
£24,99 from Argos and does just what it says on the tin. Set itself up in minutes with no help from me - good picture, good sound despite being in a poor signal area- user friendly remote control. It won't win any beauty contests but tucked away on top of the DVD its not going to offend anyone. Only time will tell if its more reliable than its predecessor, a good looking but decidely temperamental Panasonic but so far definetly reccomended

Jmeadows, South West on July 10th, 2007
Just bought this from Argos at the reduced price of £24.99. Picked this one up because reviews sound okay, but what we found is it's almost identical to Tescos Digilogic Freeview. The front has changed, now has a clock, but everything else is the same, the remote is identical. Picked up the Wharfdale as they used to be a good name, we were replacing the Digilogic which has just refused to switch on had it less than two years. Time will tell if this lasts any better.

BarginMan, Bristol on June 15th, 2007
The "Wharfedale DV832B" Set Top Box is now only £24.99 from Argos as a "Special Offer"... ( You can't go wrong at that price, now can you ! ) ... A Bargin for sure !!!. Plug it in and away you go... Does what it say's on the tin.

Warren from Liverpool on June 12th, 2007
Just bought the Wharfedale DV832B for £24.99 from Argos. (Used vouchers as well so essentially got it for free :D) As this is my first box, had no expectations but after setup and installation - I'm so impressed!! Excellent PQ, Sound, the menu is great, digital text is awesome! Well i'm coming from just the basic five channels so I guess anything would have impressed me.

Robert, Glasgow on June 9th, 2007
Bought this box two months ago from Argos, which now takes my collection of set-top boxes to three. My other two boxes have to be re-booted all the time and the remote on the Bush never works. Having read the reviews here I decided to go for the Wharfdale DV832B and it is excellent, working without any problems since day one. In fact I have decided to replace the others with the DV832B in the near future. Great price and great performance.

Brian. N. London on May 26th, 2007
I agree with the comments raised about this STB great picture and channel changing, one BIG problem I have is connecting it to a VCR to record from STB, connecting SCARTS & RF leads as per manual is fine, picture great on TV, turn on VCR (inserting tape) picture goes and STB displays AU, TV has blank blue screen, any ideas? what could be wrong? no variation of SCARTs etc. seems to work!! HELP!!

Louis, London on May 18th, 2007
One oddity of the timer on the Wharfedale DV832B Set Top Box I have found is that when set through midnight, eg 11:00pm to 1:00am, it starts at 11:00pm OK, but does not switch to standby at 1:00am, so that a second timer setting is ignored. Timer settings within one day work OK. I am wondering if it does not switch the date one day forward at midnight, and so it is waiting for 1:00am on the previous day. Its odd! Has anyone else experienced this, and/or have any other explanation or solution?

Filip, London on April 23rd, 2007
Nice box! It'll receive remote signal from 5m away even at a dodgy angle. Issues are that the remote has exhausted itself (maybe the batteries?), when you press a button (for instance 1), it goes to channel 7 or something random. Also, it takes a while to load when you turn it on - it freezes for 5 seconds approximately.

Henry, London on March 3rd, 2007
After my Thompson DTI1000 warhorse died, I bought a Philips from Argos for about £60; and what a load of rubbish! This is much, much better, although I too get the odd silence from time to time - perhaps this is how it deals with a drop in signal, as there are very few occasions when I see any pixilation. Only other down side is the EPG: a delay in pulling up the channel info; loss of sound when in the 7 day screen; and inability to set the time from a selected program.

Stephen, Burnley on March 2nd, 2007
Bought one today after my Ferguson FDT500 bit the dust after almost 3 years service. Easy to set up in under 15 minutes. The manual is simple and easy to follow and the box works a treat with excellent picture and sound quality - no clicks and burps like I had with the old unit and a much improved menu and EPG. Only downside is the large red display. As this is set up in the bedroom I'll need to come up with a solution to hide it at night. Any ideas? Only had it for a day but I'm very pleased with it so far. Well worth £35 of anyone's money. A bargain, just sort out the display guys!

Mike, Cardiff on February 17th, 2007
Sadly on Thursday the 15th of February my wharfy died of a power surge, After giving me 16 months of loyal service, Oh well back to Argos to buy another wharfy this time with a mains power surge adapter.

D Jean Tomlinson, London on February 16th, 2007
I brought one of these digital boxes and followed the instructions to set it up. I also bought a second SCART cable for half price, all from Argos a few weeks ago, when they were back in stock. I plugged the video into the box as well. After automatic installation I found that I do not have most of the extra TV channels I wanted, such as BBC3 ITV 2 and 3, more 4 or QVC. I only have BBC4 and BBC Parliament, and other channels such as music ones. I could no longer use the video to record terrestrial TV, and can only watch it on TV not with the digital box on like my friend can. I live in a block of flats and have routed it via the video so I can video terrestrial TV again. So I am not impressed. I need to investigate why it doesn’t work as it should.