Humax FOXSAT HDR

By G. Roberts

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.


By M. Scott

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.


By Tellboy

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.

Read More Reviews for HUMAX FOXSAT HDR

let me start by explaining a few reasons for taking this, we have been a vivid SKY consumer now for 8 years and after a few times of stopping our services it was exclusively then SKY would offer something new. Well at this stage of paying +£40 monthly for SKY i am now sick and tired with the repeated shows, movies and no new good things unless you would like to pay more. the research was based around the other reviews of this product, if you want movies & sports the go for SKY but if you can't like us this is the best all a single product, you get all the BBC subject material, all the ITV, Channel 4 & route 5 channels + more, in fact on my first plugging in i had 143 TV channels & 20 something stereo channels, the best thing they are totally free!!!

The product as other users said features its flaws, such as the slow menu and unless someone else has seen no preview of down and up channels that SKY offers, the handset isn't that big as other users have stated, its just jam packed with features. The box has a USB port in order to copy your saved shows onto a challenging disc or USB pen, or upload the photos & MP3. Like SKY+ you require 2 inputs from your dish to properly take advantage of the recording functions the dish points to the SKY sat so you do not need to re-align if you have SKY previously. It also has a card slot in order to buy the premium cards and view overseas channels etc and HDMI in put plus cable supplied, to me freesat will grow even more channels will be added and this comprises HD channels. Great product!!!