Digital TV Recorders

[V Mad]

Its been a long time since we bought any new home entertainment equipment, but with the recent changes to TV transmissions decided to retire our old cheap set-top box, and buy a Freeview+ digital recorder from Argos.

I read the product reviews and was shocked to find how many problems people had with some makes. The Sagemcom got the better reviews so we tried one of those. First one seemed unreliable, locked up a few times and needed a mains reset to unfreeze it. Exchanged it for another the same, which is better but still has issues.

Its difficult to tell if the problems are software issues, and therefore will not get worse, just a bit frutrating, or if they are hardware faults which may get worse. Argos do a refund guarantee within a month of purchase so I might try a third one.

Has anyone else experienced similar problems? What make/models do you reccommend?




I

[mjheathcote]

Humax
QED

[mallardstag]

Humax
QED

And another vote for Humax

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Delectronics&field-keywords=humax+fox-t2&x=0&y=0

[Phil]

Humax customer service is iffy but the boxes generally good
icecrypt gives us the least trouble at work

Like replacement car part all boxes are made too cheap to last

[GDPR]

Have 4 Humax dvrs, and a Sony. The Humax are brilliant bits of kit, IMHO better than the Sony by miles.

[martin]

Humax have to be the best, that comes from friends with them, and loads of research, sadly, I have to wait for the Bush Freesat box to fail, which seems imminent, before I can get one. Note to self, don't take advice from sales people! Martin.

[Paul Goldsmith]

We've had our Humax 9200T for over 5 years now with now issue at all, great bit of kit ! Picked up another secondhand for use in another room, been running 2 years without issue.

Parents and in-laws both have the latest 500GB 9300T, again all love it and had no issues

[redstag]

We have a Humax freesat hdr box which is excellent. Replaced a Philips freeview pvr which was complete rubbish.

Pete

[SGN]

I have a Humax HD freesat box,http://www.amazon.co.uk/Humax-500GB-...5986095&sr=8-2
and although, the picture is excellent, the screen menu is horrible compared to sky and certainly not as easy to use, it also freezes from time to time, it has to be unplugged to get it going again, and don't get me started on the remote, you need two hands to use the channel numbers.
Whatever model you buy, get a demo of it first.
I've been told that someone on Ebay is now converting sky+ boxes so they will record freesat, I will be trying one of those if I need to replace mine.

Cheers
Steve

[wilf]

Also, get the biggest hard drive you can get - 500Gb or 1 Tb (1000Gb) as recording in HD really eats up the disc space.

[Phil]

Note to self don't use 35 years knowledge to try and advise Martin

Sgn if Humax is still freezing force if to do software update there was a fix for this recently

[SGN]

Cheers Phil, i'll have a look.

Steve

[KOY 23]

Note to self don't use 35 years knowledge to try and advise Martin

Sgn if Humax is still freezing force if to do software update there was a fix for this recently

Phil.

The phrase you can't teach an old dog new tricks, springs to mind.

John

[martin]

Note to self don't use 35 years knowledge to try and advise Martin

Sgn if Humax is still freezing force if to do software update there was a fix for this recently

? where did that come from ? does that mean you're in sales ? you can't be the 25 year old I spoke to.

[Phil]

I'm afraid so stuck in the electronics industry and no it wasnt me 25 was a long time ago. trouble is there are too many people on sales floors who cant be described as sales people but some of us do