I brought this to replace the cheap old PVR I had in the bedroom. The main reason for replacing my old one was fan noise, which meant I had to unplug it at night! I'm happy to say this one is completely silent in standby.

The LCD is exceptionally bright, I think most items like this (such as hi-fi's), have th LCD backlight turn off when in standby, I'm surprised this isn't the case here. I may put in a request to Humax to see if they can fix this with one of the firmware updates.

Most people will probably buy this for the HDMI support, but be warned - the volume control does not work through HDMI, you will have to keep your TV's remote handy. Even my old cheap PVR had programmable codes for the remote which then controlled your TV's volume! Anyhow, Humax have assured me they are currently implementing a firmware update to fix this, but they do not know when it will be ready.

The Remote is not very user-friendly - its far too long and unbalanced (you will see what I… more »

I brought this to replace the cheap old PVR I had in the bedroom. The main reason for replacing my old one was fan noise, which meant I had to unplug it at night! I'm happy to say this one is completely silent in standby.

The LCD is exceptionally bright, I think most items like this (such as hi-fi's), have th LCD backlight turn off when in standby, I'm surprised this isn't the case here. I may put in a request to Humax to see if they can fix this with one of the firmware updates.

Most people will probably buy this for the HDMI support, but be warned - the volume control does not work through HDMI, you will have to keep your TV's remote handy. Even my old cheap PVR had programmable codes for the remote which then controlled your TV's volume! Anyhow, Humax have assured me they are currently implementing a firmware update to fix this, but they do not know when it will be ready.

The Remote is not very user-friendly - its far too long and unbalanced (you will see what I mean if you hold it in one hand and try to use it!). Also some of the common features you will want to use are hidden by what I consider to be an old-fashioned sliding plastic bit (I may just break it off though - its pointless). I'm going to buy a touch screen universal remote, because I think this remote is a pain-in-the-neck to use.

The picture quality is very good, and the responsiveness is very good too, as you would expect in this price bracket.

The menu's could do with being a bit more slick and modern looking, since the box has HDMI support and most people will use this with HD TV's I was expecting the menu's to look much better than your run-of-the mill £50 PVR. The menus could be doing with being a bit more "sky-plusy" - there is no now-and-next feature when browsing channels, only a now feature and the standard TV guide. For some reason they call recording a programme "reserving" which is a little bizarre.

Overall, it is great value and a great box. They really need to get some HCI consultants in and with the firmware tweaks that I was expecting I feel they could have easily made this both worth Five Stars, and the best PVR on the market today!