I too was thinking of getting one of these but in the end decided I wanted something that did a bit more and to replace my aeging modded xbox running XBMC so I built a Media Centre PC using a Fujitsu-Siemens Scaleo E as the case (with a P4 HT 3.0 ghz) and added in the TV tuner I already had, a DVD drive, A HDD I already had, a HD 2400 pro GFX card I picked up for £10 and some memory.

It came with a proper media centre remote and a keyboard with trackball on and it works extrememly well!

It will even manage 720p HD (through a DVI to HDMI adapter) which is fine as my TV isn't full HD anyway.

Cost me in total £130 which I think is bargainous! Will record well over 100+ hours of TV too!

Also I can just leave it in hibernate (so virtually not using any power) and if a programme is scheduled to record it will switch on, record then hibernate again so it is working well for what I want it to do.

Just a thought if anyone was thinking along similar lines.

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.

That's a bit crap if they have changed things for the worse like that.

I'd give Humax a ring as their tech-support are quite helpful and see if they can confirm this is now normal behaviour.

That's a bit crap if they have changed things for the worse like that.

I'd give Humax a ring as their tech-support are quite helpful and see if they can confirm this is now normal behaviour.

No panic yet, I've hardly had time to look at it and not read the manual fully either.

I too was thinking of getting one of these but in the end decided I wanted something that did a bit more and to replace my aeging modded xbox running XBMC so I built a Media Centre PC using a Fujitsu-Siemens Scaleo E as the case (with a P4 HT 3.0 ghz) and added in the TV tuner I already had, a DVD drive, A HDD I already had, a HD 2400 pro GFX card I picked up for £10 and some memory.

Not bad and certainly tempting if you can do it for that sort of price. My desktop pc is already linked (VGA cable) to my TV to watch downloaded content and it would have been more logical to upgrade to a media PC in situ with the TV.

But... the wife needs to be able to use it so really it needs to be a standalone unit that's easy to use and she has no chance of interfering with. The Humax does that, a media pc wouldn't.