A chance to talk to FlatpanelsHD's reviewers.
By Christer
#6749
I am a bit confused and perhaps you can sort it out for me.
I read in earlier articles that F8000 will have double tuners and the function to record one channel and watch another. Later I read at a forum that you needed two program cards on the F8000 to be able to look at one channel and record another, crazy I thought.
So when the F8000 hit the stores in Sweden I went there to verify if I needed two cards.
The answer I got was that the F8000 can´t record one channel when you look at another, they said it is possible to record one channel on the satellite tuner while you look at a terrestrial tuner IF you have program cards for both systems, crazy I thought! To be noted, the store I went to is professional, Samsung had been there the week before to educate all sales personal.
Now you verify that the F8000 has double tuners. That you can record one channel while you watch another, but you mention nothing about two program cards (I assume it is not needed).
However you mention that not all countries have this function, is Sweden one of them?

Thanks
Christer
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By Rasmus Larsen
#6759
The store you went to gave you wrong information then.

Samsung F8000 (and some of the other high-end 2013 Samsung TVs) have twin / double tuners, which means that they have two of each (T2, C, and S2). This applies in most countries, including Sweden to my knowledge.

You might need two program cards in order to utilize the twin tuner functionality but it depends on your TV provider. If you TV provider has encrypted channels that need to be decrypted with a program card then yes, you need two. If your TV provider offers access to TV channels without encryption (some TV providers in the Nordic countires do) then you don't need any program cards.
By Christer
#6766
Thanks for your respond.

I went to the store with this new information.
They say now that it is possible to record one channel and look at another on T2 for instance. But one of the channels must be free, no card needed, because you can´t have two cards in the TV. That is opposite what you say.

They even called the Samsung sales rep that confirmed. My guess is that a sales rep doesn´t have the same inside info as you that play around with the HW and talk to Samsung technicians. I would appreciate if you could clear this out for me.

(They also mentioned that only Panasonic had true double tuners except for high end TV sets like Lowe and B&O).

Thanks
Christer