Home > Consumer Reviews > Humax FOXSAT-HDR Freesat+ 320GB HD PVR Digital Box- Installation Recommended

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.

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.

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!

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.

After a long wait we finally got the Humax HDR. Having used a Tivo for many years I had high expectations. Technically the box is very good, the picture quality is excellent as is the sound quality.

However, the user interface is 'clunky', I must say that they could learn a thing or two from Tivo, seaching for programmes is not a good experience but works.

The most dissapointing aspect of this product is the support from Humax. The box is riddled with small yet anoying software bugs, to date (April 09) there are no fixes for these. This is compounded by the company ignoring emails and support requests.

If you can tolerate this - its a good little box. I am going to score this lower than perhaps it deserves due to the invisibility of the Humax corporation. Once they have sold it to you, thats your lot.