Customer Reviews

Humax FOXSAT-HDR Freesat+ 320GB HD Digital TV Twin Tuner HD Recorder - Installation Recommended

5 star:		(370)
4 star:		(159)
3 star:		(34)
2 star:		(22)
1 star:		(31)

 

 

There are now so many reviews in here, mine probably won't be see by many people, but I am still going to try to ease the pain for people learning to use this very good piece of kit.

The validity of the many comments about how awkward it is to use depend upon your personal background. If you are a Unix computer whizz it will all seem pretty simple; on the other hand if you are uncomfortable around technical gadgets, you will struggle with some of its excellent functionality. Those are the two extremes of course, most of us fit somewhere in between.
If you are at or near the non-tecchy extreme you might want to consider paying up and sticking with $ky....

For most people I believe it is definitely worth persevering, because you get many advantages over a Sky+ box:-

* picture quality - even SD is superb on a good quality TV (noticeably better than Sky for me)
* proper support for radio programmes (EPG and point and select record functionality)
* availability of folders - highly desirable with a large disk
* ability to connect a flash drive for copying to and from external media (with a USB connector on the front of the box, so you don't have grovel round the back each time you want to connect)
* ability to store and play back mp3 and jpeg files (kept in separate areas of the disk from TV progs.)
* buttons for skip forward and back during playback (duration can be customised)
and of course - no monthly subscription to pay!

Now for some tips that may help you reduce the learning curve:-

(I take no credit for most of this info. - it has largely been gleaned from the excellent AVForum website; in particular from the extremely helpful postings of a Graham Thompson - the man seems to have almost unlimited knowledge and is extremely generous with his time, a very rare combination in my experience. Humax need to make him a handsome bonus payment, he has helped so many people with this box.)

* There is an almost invisible protective film over the display, which if left in place may reduce the responsiveness of the remote control. You need to pull down the front flap and use something very thin to pull up a corner of the film.

* A fairly small amount of the hard disk is pre-allocated to mp3 and jpeg use - if you don't have any use for that facility you can go into set up and reduce those areas to a minimum, to give more space for TV/radio progs. You need to do this straight away if you are going to do it, as I believe it causes existing stored files to be deleted.

* Moving and deleting files - this is the feature that causes the most pain and confusion. These functions are always greyed out unless you are in File Manager mode. To go to File Manager you first need to press the whimsically titled "Opt+" key on the remote. File Manager opens up a split pane file layout list and lights up the move and delete functions. To move a file you first have to open the folder you want to move the file into by highlighting and then selecting it in the left hand pane. Then move to the right hand pane, highlight the desired file and press the green button. What could be easier? (Quite a lot of things, I hear you cry!) It's a Unix thing, apparently.

* For reasons best known to Humax, you cannot move or delete files whilst any recording is in progress (or for some time afterwards, I have found)

* The default output display format seems to be 4:3 - this is odd given that almost all TVs sold today are widescreen! If you find that movies and US progs. keep appearing in this format, go into set up and change the display format setting to "anamorphic" - this stretches the display of non-widescreen material to widescreen.

* If you normally leave the machine in standby, when you experience a power cut, any pending recordings will not be actioned until you have brought the box out of standby at least once. (I have yet to experience this myself.)

* The rather odd things called thumbnails, which act as restart points within a recorded program, are only updated overnight.

* With my TV at least, the volume control on the Humax operates over a range somewhat less than the volume level of the TV, so I find myself having to set the TV volume very loud in order to get an acceptable volume range with the Humax switched on. I have not discovered a way to get the two matched up as yet.

I am sure other stuff will come to light, but that's probably enough for now.

I waited for Sky to make upgrading to Sky+ reasonable but it was always a case of new customers only...

When my video went on the blink, thanks to my son, I decided to take the plunge and get rid of Sky.

To get this box working I needed a new cable which was about £90 - dual cables like Sky+ for this box . I live in a tenement block and there is no way I'm going up on the roof!

Availability was poor for this in early 2009, and I had to wait 3 weeks or so after ordering it from Comet, who for once were the easiest retailer to deal with - they didn't even push their warranty!

I've been very pleased with the box so far, the initial tune was easy, once I'd realised you put in the Post Code like you were using a mobile phone, the box seems to retune when there are new channels without you doing anything.

The recording is easy and very useful, much better than a Video Recorder and the picture quality is good. Channel selection is good, and I'm watching more Film 4 and BBC 3/4, the only channel I miss is Paramount Comedy and we mostly watched 'Sex and the City' reruns on that.

The only niggle is the remote, the controls are grouped strangely and the often used buttons are frequently smaller and harder to find than the obscure ones. Also you need to point the remote right at the box. On the plus side the remote has codes to be used for your TV and DVD players (it's a universal remote). They need to let an interface expert loose on it, either that or borrow as much as they can from the Sky remote, without getting sued!

In short well worth it, great to be shot of Sky and their money grabbing ways. If you're a big sports fan you may be stuck with Sky but otherwise come on in the water's fine.

Having had sky HD for a year I was tired of paying so much for not a lot. The customer service is poor and the the way they make it dificult for you to change your plan (especially reduce it) really wound me up.

The freesat way looks pretty good after just 24 hours. Have set up favourites and recorded a few progs and mastered the remote. So far so good.

Just 2 HD channels is a come down - will miss the concerts on Sky Arts but the saving is worth it.

The Humax picture is excellent, the guide interface is much better than even the new Sky interface. The remote may not be perfect but its no where near as bad as one reviewer made out. Have mastered the functions in less than an hour.
The Sky HD box is real rubbish, often wont work, has been replaced once nd still locks up at least once a week - so far the Humax has been faultless.

All we need is more HD channels.

FANTASTIC! I had two Sky Boxes and two Panasonic Hard Drive Recorders and this one box has replaced them all. Where as many, many times Sky did not switch on to record, the Humax has not failed once since I bought it. I am running the box through a Sony full H.D. 52" t.v. and even the non H.D. channels are clear in fact close to 3D. Far superior too to the Sky + system. One failing, it does not have a grouping for favourite channels. On the other hand you can enter a name of a program and it will search the next 7 days to find it for you. There is a display on the front of the box so you can see what you are watching, not just the channel but the program too. The added extra is that EVERYTHING is free after you have bought the box unlike Sky who even charge you for channels with endless adverts. This is a must buy. I have even contacted Humax for some help and they were incredibly polite and helpful. No need to telephone them, they answer 'personally' by e mail, no costly calls, again unlike Sky. If you want a fantastic product at a great price then this is it. Oh and by the way, you get 200 hours of standard recordings or 80 hours of H.D. recordings and the H.D. quality is unbelievable. Well done Humax, BBC and ITV for such an innovation and for once you are thinking of the viewing public's pleasure not just what money you can get out of us!

Generally I am very pleased with the product. However, there is one important missing feature that I find bizarre. It is not possible to set the PVR to record a program in the future on a non-Freesat channel! One of the main reasons for buying this product is that there are two lnb inputs. I checked before buying that you could receive non-Freesat channels, and there was nothing in the specification to indicate that you would not be able to use the 320Gb of memory to record these channels. It did not cross my mind that this would not be possible. After all, what is the raison d'etre of a PVR!

Having set up my new equipment and tried in vain for over an hour to set it to record, I found a samall note on page 34 of the user guide: "Note... You cannot reserve the programmes in non-freesat mode".

Clearly, if all you want are the Freesat channels, this is a terrific product. However, if, like me, you do want other channels as well, then beware of this unexpected limitation.

Much of what I would have written here has already been said by other reviewers, so I'll keep this brief.

Good points about the product:

1. Outstanding picture quality, in both HD and SD.
2. Simple to set up. I just removed all the cables from the Sky+ box that I was replacing, plugged them all back into the Humax, ran autotune and it took less than 3 minutes to be up and running. Even though I live in London, by entering a Welsh postcode I was able to get the Welsh channels and regional variations at the top of the list.

Bad points about the product:

1. The menu interface is extremely unintuitive, and the manual is dreadful. I have had the box for a few days and have still not worked out how to store and access my favourite channels.
2. The remote control handset is ugly and user-unfriendly. The buttons are too small, there are too many of them and the layout is a puzzle. The buttons to start and stop recording are particularly small and hard to find.
3. The box takes a good 15-20 seconds to wake up from stand-by.

In summary, an excellent piece of technology let down only by poor design in its menus, software, manual and handset. I'm not sure it fully deserves its near-mythical reputation.

NB - Several sales assistants told me I would need to re-align my existing Sky dish, or get a completely new satellite dish, in order to watch TV via Freesat. That is absolutely not true. You can simply plug all your existing cables into this box.

I have bought 3 Humax PVR (Personal Video Recorder)for myself and family and have always found them to be problem free. Indeed I was always pleasantly surprised that you could buy something and improvements to it were downloaded overnight a couple of times a year in response to feedback from users.
It was like having the latest machine for free.
This model is an entirely different technology getting the signal from a satellite rather than the aerial. If you have a Sky + box set up with twin LNB feeds from a successful SKY installation and are fed up of paying over the top to SKY this is the box for you.
It self installed apart from input of postcode to give the correct regional programs.
I found the HD reception amazing although this is limited to 2 channels at the moment but I am running on a 37 inch 1086p Panasonic
It is as good as my Blu-Ray player.
Apart from some functions being at different places on the remote control no problems at all. The black glossy remote control which is now fashionable is good for detecting fingerprints and I dont know why this is not a more practical matt finish.
No software updates were detected.
It has a blue glow when running but a very large red glow when put into standby which is slightly obtrusive (I wonder if this is by design to encourage you to switch off at the wall. If you did that you would not pick up updates.)

There are plenty of functions that you may never use with an interface and file manager more like a computer. I am very pleased I bought it.

The product itself is excellent and very easy to set up. At first the remote control was extremely difficult to use - then I discovered the 'second' piece of plastic protection tape on the front of the unit - the first is on the front of the drop-down cover but you then have to open the front cover and remove the second one. It was not obvious that it was there and I don't recall seeing this mentioned in the instructions.
However, even after that the remote control was a bit slow and not the easiest to use.
I have now bought a Logitech Harmony 525 remote control and that is fantastic.
The user guide could be improved by having an Index at the back and also more information about how to tune to the FTA (Free To Air) channels.
Notwithstanding my comments about the remote control, I have no hesitation in recommending the Foxsat HDR.

Let me start by explaining a few reasons for going for this, we have been a vivid SKY user now for 8 years and after a few times of stopping our services it was only then SKY would offer something new. Well at this stage of paying +£40 a month for SKY i am now fed up with the repeated shows, movies and no new good things unless you want to pay more. the research was based on the other reviews of this product, if you want movies & sports the go for SKY but if you don't like us this is the best all in one product, you get all the BBC content, all the ITV, Channel 4 & channel 5 channels + more, in fact on my first plugging in i had 143 TV channels & 20 something radio channels, the best thing they are free!!!
The product as other users said has its flaws, such as the slow menu and unless someone else has seen no preview of up and down channels that SKY offers, the handset is not that big as other users have stated, its just jam packed with features. The box has a USB port so you can copy your saved shows onto a hard disc or USB pen, or upload your photos & MP3. Like SKY+ you need to have 2 inputs from your dish to properly make use of the recording functions the dish points to the SKY sat so you don't need to re-align if you have SKY already. It also has a card slot so you can buy the premium cards and view foreign channels etc and HDMI in put and cable supplied, to me freesat will grow and more channels will be added and this includes HD channels. Great product!!!

I already had a great HD receiver, namely the Fortec Star Passion+, so the Humax FOXSAT-HDR had to be good - and it is. The upscaling, for me, appears to be better than the Passion which in itself is already very good. The remarks concerning the manual are true as one has to be sometimes patient and investigate via the internet so as to check what else this receiver can do. For example one can "flip" from FreeSat to non-FreeSat mode very easily. A useful feature if you want CNN and/or SkyNews as the FreeSat preloaded channel list does not search for these channels. There are a few other channels that are not available in FreeSat mode but these are easily tuned using the non-FreeSat capabilities. BTW, even if you reset to factory settings I noted that any channel tuning already undertaken (FreeSat or nonFreeSat) is retained.

The receiver's teletext function works well (only on BBC channels please note unless you want Sky's racing pages in nonFreeSat mode) and so to does the "red button" feature to enable ITV's HD channel when it is transmitting.

You can record on the non-FreeSat channels but there is not quite the same flexibility as using the FreeSat EPG - recording a programme series for example - although, for me, this is not a "must have" feature.

I have yet to install a second aerial feed (I already have a quad LNB installed) but as an interim measure I have installed a loop (see the manual) between LNB1 Out and LNB2 In and this does allow a certain combination of recording one channel whilst watching another. If both required channels are polarised in the same direction (horizontal or vertical) then it seems to work. One can experiment or you can pre-empt results by searching on the channel frequency data (either off the web or via the receiver itself). If there is a conflict then the system warns you when it is about to record anyway. Either way to get the best from having two tuners one really should have two separate aerial feeds.

The HD output is suburb - BBC, ITV and LUX HD in nonFreeSat mode.

All in all a really great buy.