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

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 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.

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.

After trying to buy one of these for months, I finally received mine this week. Was it worth the hassle?? Definitely. Straight from the box, the Humax plugged into my Sky HD cables. It even told me that one of them wasn't working; a fault that was cured in minutes. It then self-tuned very quickly &,after hooking up the HD cable, I was watching satellite TV again.

The whole thing is QUIET in operation (take note Thomson!!) & has a great LCD display on the front of the box, which is very easy to read from anywhere in the room (nice touch)

The remote is nice & robust, although some of the buttons are hard to sort when your vision is less than 20/20.

The manual is a pain......I know that Humax have pulled all the stops out to get this box on the market, but to have a useless manual doesn't do it justice. You would expect to be told how to cancel recordings or set up series links, but, believe me, I haven't found them yet!! These features are there, but you have to find them yourself.

Of course, the picture & video quality is first-rate. I was watching the immortal Rab C Nesbitt last night (recorded) & I honestly thought it was in HD. It wasn't: the upscaler had converted it to almost HD quality from a standard BBC2 source. Brilliant !!

My advice is to find one of these beasts as quickly as possible & kick your present satellite supplier into touch. The manual may be a chore, but the box itself certainly isn't. It may be a bit more expensive now due to the current economic climate, but it's a heck of a bargain.

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.