Daewoo: DS700

Your Views

Comments (16)

Steve, Yorkshire on November 20th, 2005
It's fast, interactive, good with weak signals and is quite small compared to other boxes. It has the 7 day EPG and has an intuitive menu system. The remote is small and uncluttered and it is not hyper-directional (i.e. you don't have to point it specifically at the IR 'eye') like some others. It has picture in picture EPG with preview (press 'info' from EPG), channel 'swap' (flick between current and last tuned channel - handy when watching music vids and something you don't like comes on, just change channels). You can also view channel strength menu and switch subtitles easily. The channel selection allows reordering and favourites. You can set the timer or reminders easily from the EPG - and this is my only bug bear - it cannot bring the box out of standby to 'fire-up' a DVR or VCR with Q/AV/Smart/Easy/I-Link. You have to set your recording device's timer manually. It is NOT TUTV compatible, but a Matsui is available from Currys which appears identical although it has a card slot (it costs about £20 more though for the privilege).

Kevin Wilson, Witney, West Oxfordshire on November 22nd, 2005
Easy to set up and very compact. All the correct cables are provided. The unit has a separate power adapter. Unfortunately, this unit has very poor sensitivity in marginal signal area so won't work in Witney with a loft aerial - it needs a high-gain aerial to receive anything. Also, the power adapter was noisy - it sounded as if it was arcing all the time. I guess that's par for the course with a cheap Chinese-made product. Took it back for a full refund from Tesco. Now replaced with a decent Sony VTX-D800U which is brilliant in weak signal areas.

Mike, Stow on November 27th, 2005
As previous reviewer has said it is easy to set up and has all the leads you need in the box. We too bought it for its compact form factor. Trouble is it just doesn't work with weak signals. We could get one or two channels with full sound. Others were sound only or broken up pictures. Concluded we need a better aeriel so phoned around installers who were quoting between £180 and £250 for a new one. Debating whether to take it back and swap or just forget digital.

Mark, South Wales on February 4th, 2006
I live in a medium signal area and all the channels are at full strength - 10! This is with a 11 year old aerial that usually gives mediocre analogue reception. Picture is great with no lockups or scrambled pictures like my old Alba box. I bought this particular unit because it can output s-video through the scart sockets. This is very hard to find on set top boxes, the £70+ ones like JVC and pioneer do. The sony ones only work when link to smartlink recorder. S-video is useful if your tv only has 1 rgb scart you can revert to s-video rather than the composite output, most pc video input cards can accept s-video in giving better quality for freeview-to-dvd conversions. This unit has a IBM powerPC chip, the supplied scart is a cheap design, using a better quality one gave me a slightly better picture.

Ryan, Rotherham on March 21st, 2006
I think I should just clarify what Kevin Wilson said, it's the adapter which is the Chinese made product, not the set top box, which is made in Northern Ireland.

Matt, Telford on March 22nd, 2006
I bought it because it was the cheapest I could find and am glad I did. Being my first set top box I took for granted the EPG, channel ordering, favourites and many other features but when looking for a second box couldn't find the same features without going to a much higher price (from £35 to £60 or so). My signal is mostly 10 and it's only fault is locking up occaisionally when the power cable needs removing to reset it. Good for a cheap model.

Den, Belfast on March 29th, 2006
Trust this box to come from the North of Ireland. Things from here don't last too long. Titanic springs to mind. Got one of these boxes at a very good price. Loaded up channels straight away. Sky3, News, FTN, The Hits etc along with several audio channels. The only channels missing were the mainstream BBC, ITV, CH4, FIVE etc channels. I can't get them loaded up. On the instructions I was asked to visit the web site that doesn't work I will try to get through on the phone later. If not looks like this box is going back.

Den, Belfast on March 29th, 2006
Hmmm Daewoo are blaming my aerial for not receiving any signal for the mainstream BBC, ITV channels etc. I have another Digibox that picks up everything with a portable aerial. My Daewoo box still says 'New Service - Please Wait' It has been like this for 3 days now.

Den, Belfast on March 29th, 2006
Finally the box is receiving all the channels it should be. I don't know what the problem was. The aerial is still the same but a good feature of this box is that u can test signal strength. When I tested the BBC, ITV, CH4 etc it was weaker than the rest of the channels so that could be the basic problem. I do live in a good coverage area. FINAL VERDICT: Must say now that box is up and running I am very happy. The channel guide is very good and easy to use. Plenty of features such as Widescreen. So looking back on the trouble I had at first I must say that at least Daewoo have a helpline that was answered within a minute by someone from Ireland instead of India. 10/10 for that alone. I have a Daewoo TV that is about 8 years old and hopefully this box will last as long. It would be nice to see these boxes come down on price or else Daewoo improve their ability to receive signals from a transmitter which I can see from my upstairs window.

Mike, Herts. on June 4th, 2006
Got one of these today at a boot sale, 5 quid! The idea is it will be used as a 2nd STB for taping etc. After an hours use, seems to beat my Echostar in most respects, given the 7day or whatever epg, it might even replace the Echo (which only has "now and next") as main box, will report back after further tests. Wonder if its easy to get hold of a user guide ???

Brian Carson, London on June 12th, 2006
This could have been a fantastic unit. Remote will drive you crazy - press stop and if you hold it down for a millisecond longer the tape will eject because it has a combined stop and eject button. Why combine the two functions as this is just asking for trouble. If you press record the display does not show elapsed time etc etc {and more crucial what channel you are on} - in fact the display shows nothing useful so you need to stop recording to discover how much tape you have left. What is the point in having a display that does not display any useful information. For reasons that completely escape me it is not possible to switch off ' new channel found ' and the display will be recorded onto tape if you do not select ' search or ' disregard ' By the way the ' new Channels found ' also appears if they want to update their ' Advertising Banners ' but you will not have a clue what its doing until you select search. By the way if you look at the epg - you will be hit with thirty rotating Advertising Banners. What a cheek - they do not mention that in their specifications. they have a secret area you need to press 'Status' then 'select' then 'text' then 'text' then 'select' to enter it - only change what you understand - I have stopped it downloading new adverts. Alas even in their secret area there is no selection to stop it hunting out new channels. As it stands as a Combined recorder and freeview unit it really is a complete mess and I would never buy a second unit. If they sort out the remote and fix the display any updated model may be worth a look. They have to drop the adverts as well

Mike, Herts. on June 18th, 2006
Not quite sure what the previous guy (Brian in London) is reviewing, it sure as hell ain't the DS700 !!!!!! I stand by my 4 stars......might even go to 4 and a half !!

Andy North, Milton Keynes on September 2nd, 2006
We bought this box because 1) My Mum's DS608 is pretty good, 2) it's been discontinued at Tesco and is now down from £45 to £20-odd. It doesn't have the same signal page as the 608 (shame). It also has 2 Scarts instead of the 1 scart and a modulater of the 608. The EPG is completely different from any other I have seen, i.e. it's more like looking at a magazine timeline listing - you can scroll left and right through time or jump a day each way but you can only see five channels in the list at a time. It would be nice to be able to optionally lose the Preview from the list and see 10 channels. Re: other boxes' timer problems - it works BUT timer output goes to the VCR Scart only. It you switch the box on during a timed session, the TV Scart then also becomes active. Don't worry, the timer won't be interrupted, you have to specifically press Cancel to achieve that. You can safely switch off again.

David Lloyd Aberdeen on October 31st, 2006
User guide is available from Daewoo spare parts company at the extortionate price of £14.95 plus p&p. If you wish to register your disgust at this price the number is 01664 484000, by the way the box is brilliant.

Norma, Cheshire on March 10th, 2007
Had this box since Christmas but, was fine at first but now when I press guide some of the channels have a red oval next to them with "del" on it and there is no information for programmes, this happens on about a dozen channels including the ITV and Channel 4 ones, anyone had the same and know how to fix it?

Mike, Herts on March 30th, 2007
Norma, give your box a complete rescan, it did the trick on mine when I started noticing those little red ovals !! Cheers, Mike