Humax FoxSat-HDR Freesat 320GB HDD DTR HD Recorder

I've had the Humax setup for a few days now. Quality on BBC HD is stunning (I find myself just staring at it for ages) but the lack of HD content in general is annoying - this is nothing to do with the Humax itself of course.
Setup is very straightforward - plug it in and let it setup itself. There are 2 tuning options, a manual and automatic setting. For most the automatic is best as it only tunes in the available stations (classed as Freesat stations). The manual tuning option brings up far more channels but I'm fairly convinced that the extra channels are unusuable (pay channels mostly which are scrambled).
The one big tip i would give is that if you get one of these and it appears that the front panel is covered in scratches, well its not. There's a very hard to spot protective covering on the front and indeed another behind the front panel. You have to pick carefully at the edges and eventually it'll show itself.
Overall I'm loving the Humax - if you want to be able to watch and record freesat HD there's not much better at this pricepoint. Hopefully we'll see more HD content soon and BBCi player will be possible via the ethernet / network port.

After having sky+ like many others i was looking for a recordable system that i could use with my Samsung LCD which doesn`t have freeview due to it being one of the earlyer LCD`s on the market .
After reading many reviews which include freesat PVR and freeview PVR`s i decided to give the humax a go
Its a prettey simple saterlite and is fairly easy to use , It has a very good SD picture and the HD channels are also very good . There are only currently 3 HD channels but there are more on the way . The Humax is future proof as you will be able to add internet service to it in the near future . The niggles i have with it are that you lose a few channels that you get with freeview but gain acouple of others but there nothing to shout about . The remote is shocking and realy badly layed out and could do with a complete overhaul and the responce between the remote and satalite is slow so you can wait and extra couple of seconds after typing the numbers in before it apears on the tv by which time you have pressed other numbers and it gets alittle annoying at times . Apart from this its all good and you have the option if your a recording junkie to add an external HDD and it comes with twin tuners which some PVR`s fail to have . I hope in the future Humax replaces the controller and then i would say its even nearer to being perfect

Don't believe what the previous reviewer says, he obviously works for Sky! I've had one of these since they first launched and they are high quality in both build and performance. What's more they are a piece of cake to use (even for the technically challenged pensioner!). Full on screen programme guide from which you highlight which prog(s) to record (or whole series) and press o.k. It's that easy. We paid £299, so at this price it's a bargain. Buy one, you won't regret it.

Okay I've just received the box last week. I took a while before I went for it mainly because I was taking some time to get rid of Sky Sports. Anyhow eventually cancelled Sky and went for this option.

As an interface box I would say it is considerably better than the Sky+ box I had. Its quicker between menu items and the by far the best feature is the find feature where you can either search for a name or a film etc in the weeks ahead listings. Sky would only let you look at movie channels ignoring the movies on other channels such as BBC & ITV. The playback features and prgram filing is also far superior putting a series in 1 folder and also it has a bigger hard disk I believe

The pictures great and I simply disconnected my Sky box and plugged this in. Be aware ITV HD is not a separate channel but shows up as a red button on ITV 1 when HD is available. THe BBC HD channel looks great but I only have 1080i

On the whole so far very good. no more monthly payments and a good choice of channels. More HD channels to come hopefully.

Much cheaper than anything else out there and doesn't seem to have compromised on quality et al

Great Buy!

After having a Skyplus box, I was worried that this would not be as good. Result, it's much better. For a start, the EPG is excellent, allowing you to search for upcoming movies for the following week, and to record them in advance (the Sky box doesn't so this, only searches on specific movie channels as opposed to all channels). It's got a great layout and easy to use system. The sky plus box has that annoying background music, this doesn't. It's a slick black box, which looks good, with a pleasing blue display. The initial set up is fast, straightforward and easy. The HD is excellent. Overall the image quality is superb combined with my Pioneer Plasma. I have used to manual set up to add a further 400 channels, most of which I'll never watch, but i really wanted to add fiver and fiver usa.
The only niggle is the remote, with it's tiny buttons. It means you'll find yourself squinting for the controls, as opposed to automatically pressing the correct buttons. Apart from that, I'd say it's a sound investment. The price seems to be dropping month by month. I paid £290 in April 09.