Good value freeview HDD recorders

['daiking']

I've seen a Samsung one but it was mucho £££s (£230). I'm only keen on Samsung to match my TV. This one I think I saw it in costco and can't rememebr the ID

Is it likely to be worth it over the Humax one that I see is only £170?

Edit: No would be the answer according to Amazon

Edited 28 January, 2009 by daiking

[Dr Zoidberg]

I've seen a Samsung one but it was mucho £££s (£230). I'm only keen on Samsung to match my TV. This one I think I saw it in costco and can't rememebr the ID

Is it likely to be worth it over the Humax one that I see is only £170?

Edit: No would be the answer according to Amazon

That's got a DVD recorder built in for archiving to disk , but as far as I can tell only has a single tuner so you can only record one program at a time which is a big drawback.

[VWD]

And that's why you should only buy a decent PVR.

The cheapo ones sold under a huge number of brand names are made by a handfull of factories in the far easy and are unreliable cack.

Same could be said of the Panasonic Kit ,and look at interferance problems between VCR and TV,though I suspect that since my TV is Panasonic, some of my problems could be similar .Moved new PVR to lower shelf,with no similar problems .Also -my DVD is JVC -just out of warranty and record timer function U/S .At least with Asda stuff ,any probs in Warranty -changed instantly ,and no problems on where it was bought,like some otherv brands -so double edged sword IMHO.

[Guest]

Just to update.

I have just purchased a Humax 9150T from comet at the cost of just under £128. So far i am satisfied with the unit. However i will be keeping an eye on a few things. The first one is when it is switched on. It takes a good minute to run through its setup then a good 2-3 mins to populate the epg. There have been reports that the fan can be noisy but is fixed with the latest firmware. Mine has the latest firmware but the fan remains " noisy " ish. The epg is not the most attractive to look at either but i will live with that. Recording programs and picture quality are both adequate for my viewing.

[moley]

I went for the Humax 9150T directly from Humax as thet sell 'grade A' machines for under £100. The picture quality is better than the old Phillips freeview box and I haven't noticed a noisy fan. This unit is really easy to use, so I will read the manual through this evening to get the best out of the unit.

[Guest]

Well my Humax has gone back to Comet.

Purchased Friday, returned Monday faulty. No more in stock so cant get another one. Basically it kept locking up requiring it to be switched of at the unit. On restarting the unit within a minute i was unable to go into the epg, change channel, in fact i couldnt do anything. I had to switch it off at the mains.

So back it went for a full refund. I would have took another and tried it out but they never had any left.

[moley]

When I looked at the Humax website it quoted the grade A units as new units that had come back for repair and test. The unit looks new with no marks etc and I thought if it's been repaired and fully tested it might be better than one off of the shelf. Time will tell if it's any good and it has a 1 year factory warranty.

[moley]

Now had the Humax for 4 days and I don't know why I didn't get on of these ages ago. The fan on this one is really quiet, the only downside so far is the few minutes it takes for the EPG to fill. It's got some other nice features on it and I would recommend it to anyone.

[VWD]

Late update - latest Asda offering (bought as the features were absolutely & easly useably to Mrs V).

Since then it's locked up twice -requiring to be powered down at the mains .Easy for me ,as I'm in that field ,but not to my mind of merchantable quality .Plus one/twochannels with semi poor signal quality ( again my first field is telecommms/radio/transmission ) give digital glitz ,but Digital DVD says sig OK + sound degrading over time .So I can say that this device is not going to last to length of warranty .

So -bite the bullet & get Humax 9150 - £50 more - so lets see what you get for the money .

first - two year warranty .

second - auto setup .

third - all channels are glitz free .

fourth - picturequality isvery impressive .

fith - features are sooo easy to use .

Quite honestly -I've tried the rest ,and now the best is asking why I did not try it first .

Fraid as far as STB is concerned - YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR .

[Wardy]

Useful for people looking to buy

£130: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001EBQGIO/interactiveda3067-21

Humax FTW

Steve

[VWD]

Useful for people looking to buy

Humax PVR-9150T 160GB Twin Tuner. Up to 100 hours of: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo

Humax FTW

Steve

Humax 9150 - -handbook bit heavy reading- machine easy to use .

[Dr Zoidberg]

Late update - latest Asda offering (bought as the features were absolutely & easly useably to Mrs V).

Since then it's locked up twice -requiring to be powered down at the mains .Easy for me ,as I'm in that field ,but not to my mind of merchantable quality .Plus one/twochannels with semi poor signal quality ( again my first field is telecommms/radio/transmission ) give digital glitz ,but Digital DVD says sig OK + sound degrading over time .So I can say that this device is not going to last to length of warranty .

So -bite the bullet & get Humax 9150 - £50 more - so lets see what you get for the money .

first - two year warranty .

second - auto setup .

third - all channels are glitz free .

fourth - picturequality isvery impressive .

fith - features are sooo easy to use .

Quite honestly -I've tried the rest ,and now the best is asking why I did not try it first .

Fraid as far as STB is concerned - YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR .

I'm sure I said something along these lines earlier in the thread.

[VWD]

I'm sure I said something along these lines earlier in the thread.

At the risk of getting another "I told you so " , I have also tried higher priced units - one from Maplin , reduced from £150 ---it turned out to be the worst performer on the signal front , and when the EPG was brought up it displayed channels in a numerical order (e.g 1 - xx) , so that deleting all those pay to view meant that ch 13 ended up as ch x - nice when mrs looks through paper and sees program on freeview 10 - big nags on how she can't find her favourites -"It's not on 13/etc" - so straight back to Maplin it went .

As said -easiest to use was an "ONN" unit from Asda - trouble is that both went the same way .The first , lasted about 8 months, then one morning we came down to find it displaying EPG ,no sound picture etc .Totally frozen - only cure was to switch off at mains .Came back when repowered .Changed for similar .Five months later - same problem ,and to my horrer ,mrs tells me that she'd done this at least once before .So another back to store . This time I insisted on full refund -no exchanges -went to Comet and followed Dr Z's advice - "get a Humax"

[devonutopia]

This is kind of useless for me now as the place I moved in to has Sky+

[Wardy]

So after all this you never bought one?!

Ah well, at least it's provided good guidance for others

Steve

[VWD]

So after all this you never bought one?!

Ah well, at least it's provided good guidance for others

Steve

As Cila said (and Dr Z repeated)-----

choice no 1 - go down to local supermart ,get a £77 machine , and suffer .

choice no 2 - go find a Humax ( pref 9150) ,plug in ,decipher handbok, sit back and wonder if you've done it right ,but enjoy as it seldom (if ever ) packs up

Gents - the decision is your's ---diference -about £50.(OH ,Humax hasa two year waranty)

To date ,after about two years of getting stuffed by supermarket's garbage(and suffering the wrath of Mrs V) (only consolation Is that all were replaced under waranty) -I've resorted to buying what I should have bought two years ago .

[corradoboy]

My Sony's been good too

[Daddyfix]

I also have a Sony unit and the picture quality is so good you can tell which programmes have been recorded in HD, which ones are normal and which ones have had loads of compression applied to reduce the bandwidth!!

Nice touches are the remote is a nice size and operates other manufacturer's TVs (our is a Samsung) and if you try to record something that overlaps with another already set it immediately pops up a list of where the programme is to be broadcast at other times even if these are on different days (making it "other half" proof).

['daiking']

Bump again

Looking at the HUMAX units, not sure whether to get the 9150 (£130), 9300 (£170) or save some money and buy a refurb-ed unit, maybe even a 9200 (£100)

Is there much of a difference? I have a HDMI LCD TV but don't know if I'd notice the difference. The source would only be SD Freeview wouldn't it?

[Dr Zoidberg]

Bump again

Looking at the HUMAX units, not sure whether to get the 9150 (£130), 9300 (£170) or save some money and buy a refurb-ed unit, maybe even a 9200 (£100)

Is there much of a difference? I have a HDMI LCD TV but don't know if I'd notice the difference. The source would only be SD Freeview wouldn't it?

Yep , it's just SD and the 9150 and older 9200 are pretty similar machines.

The advantage of the 9300 is double the capacity and the HDMI output.

It means that the upscaling can be done on the Humax rather than the TV , plus you get a digital signal all the way through. It's the latter that will make more of a difference but I'm not sure it's worth £70 to be honest.

[Leeland]

Bump again

Looking at the HUMAX units, not sure whether to get the 9150 (£130), 9300 (£170) or save some money and buy a refurb-ed unit, maybe even a 9200 (£100)

Is there much of a difference? I have a HDMI LCD TV but don't know if I'd notice the difference. The source would only be SD Freeview wouldn't it?

As a 'third way' you may want to check out this product, I have it's predecessor and

am very happy with it (no lock ups or missed recordings in 18 months)

Having had Humax freeview products before I certainly prefer the TVonics EPG

and interface, very easy to use. Ok there's no HDMi connection but I very much

doubt, as you say, you'd notice any difference on the upscaling front, your tv

should do that well enough. It's a personal preference to me, granted,

but worth a look I'd say, nice and compact as well, mine runs next to silent:)

Buy TVONICS DTR-Z250 | Freeview+ recorder - Specification | Comet

[Captain Scarlet]

We've had the 9200 version for 2 years now and it still runs very well, although with all this switching of frequencies that's going on it has recorded a few programmes wrong. Our neighbour liked ours and bought the 9300 and has had no complaints.

Always found the Humax EPG and recording method very easy to use.

['daiking']

Finally plumped for the 9300T for the HDMI output and extra capacity. Don't think £171 counts as good value though. Plugged into a Samsung LE32R74 via hdmi, maybe some picture improvement via upscaling but definitely a better sound than the TV's freeview tuner.

Only hookd it up last night so not gone all the way through the manual but quick technical question. I've daisy-chained the RF signal through the Humax into my tv but now if the Humax is off the TV doesn't recieve a digital freeview signal. Is there anyway round this or do I need to keep the humax on all the time?

(other option is presumably to split the aerial signal so I can put it directly into the TV and Humax at the same time)

[Dr Zoidberg]

On my 9200T , if the humax is off with no power at all then you don't get any RF signal to the TV but if it's just on standby then you do.

It would be odd if they have changed that for the 9300

['daiking']

On my 9200T , if the humax is off with no power at all then you don't get any RF signal to the TV but if it's just on standby then you do.

It would be odd if they have changed that for the 9300

Just to confirm,

Humax is powered up, on standby, time showing on the display and the TV doesn't have a freeview signal for the internal tuner

Turn on the Humax (channel displayed on display) and the TV freeview tuner works like it always has.

Will have to have a play over the weekend.