Humax FoxSat-HD Freesat Digital Set Top Box

As far as freesat is concerned alot of people don't know what is required and ultimately what you get for your money.

Freesat is relatively new, therefore you won't receive as many channel as sky. What you have to remember is that this is changing daily. I've only had the foxsat box for a couple of weeks, and already is has prompted me for an update to find new channels. After installing it quoted me saying 141 channel found, so not a bad start.

What i would say is that i have both sky & freesat, by simply adding a quad lnb i've kept sky in my living room, and put the freesat in my bedroom. The easy part is that both sky & freesat use the astra satellite, so if you are simply replacing your sky box then you won't need to adjust your dish. Don't let anyone try to charge you for the £80 installation free, just buy the box from play etc. And away you go.

The box is very smart, and comes in a lovely gloss black which should suit most users as my hd tv is also in the same colour. Contents are excellent, and despite some websites saying it doesn't have a hdmi lead, it does! You also get a scart, and video rbg lead. Remember the hd box gives you the hd channels for free, currently bbc, channel 4 etc. If you don't have a hd ready tv, then go for the normal freesat sd box, they start at only £50.

Whilst the box looks slick, the remote is a little bit on the cheap side, but to be honest it's fuctional and easy to use. Some comments say the buttons are close together, but i disagree and think it's very well spaced and simple to use.

Overall i'm loving freesat & the humax foxsat box is the best looking on the market. I know freesat + is already out, this gives you all of the above but with the ability to record, howver the same box will cost double nearly £300.

Worth the money, but will probably never take over sky.

Very good set-top-box for receiving FreeSat channels, problem free operation (the reviewer above who complained about lip-sync issues fails to consider that this could be due to their display rather than this box), and compelling features.

Picture quality in extremely good, especially if you select 'Original' as output format which means SD channel's 576i is output as 576i and HD channel's 1080i is output as 1080i which enables the best quality from most displays -- this is in contrast to Sky HD which forces 576i out as 576p and looks poor in comparison. Although you can still force everything to 1080i or 720p if you so wish.

Audio quality is good as this set-top-box can present Dolby 5.1 over HDMI, which Sky HD cannot (you need to use optical output for that, it only does stereo over HDMI).

Internet TV is fantastic, the BBC iPlayer is now available on this device if it's plugged into a home broadband network. Two resolutions are offered 'Watch Now' and 'Higher Quality', if you have high speed broadband then 'Higher Quality' is approximately same quality as FreeView. It is brilliant, and the best implementation of iPlayer yet.

The user interface is really easy to use with clear and friendly graphics, the SD ones are anti-aliased if you output 576i and if great in 1080i -- it looks miles better than Sky's.

Setup is dead easy, if you are a Sky HD subscriber you can simply run another cable from the Quad-LNB to this box; although two of my friends have bought these boxes where they have moved into flats/houses where previous occupants had left a satellite dish.

The only downside is that there are currently (April 2010) only two HD channels available -- BBC HD and ITV1 HD -- however Channel 4 HD, E4 HD, and other HD channels will be 'free to air' once their deals with Sky expire.

Bought this to guarantee a picture when touring the UK in our caravan rather than to rely on freeview in the future.
Very easy to set up and the picture and sound is fantastic on our 19" Technika LCD especially viewing BBC HD. Box is nice and small. Also has the option to scan for non-freesat channels. (Those not on the Freesat EPG but FTA like Sky news.)

Bought this the other day and I must warn you I wasn't too impressed at all. The box's main feature is that it can get HD channels but thats where he problems start.

First off the picture of the HD channels are not great, people are reporting better pictures coming from a BUSH box!! Yes that's right BUSH!!!

Secondly the HD channels have very bad lip sync problems. This is where the picture and the sound don't run together and it looks like bad miming!!!

I've done all the updates and what not but the problem is still there. The last thing I want to say is that the start up time of this box is dreadful. It almost takes 15 secs from pushing the power button to something being displayed on the screen!!!

But one good thing about this box that none of the cheaper one have is that you can take it out of Freesat mode and scan alot of other satellites and you can get loads more free to air channels that are not included in the Freesat list.

If anyone is buying a box to replace the old sky box just to get the pheonix chinese channel then there is a way to recieve this channel with this box so it is recommended at least for that.