Humax Foxsat-HDR

With Freeview unavailable in my area and my unwillingness to pay a premium for content from sky, i had little other option than to buy a Freesat box. After much research and trepidation the general consensus seemed to be that a Humax Foxsat HDR set top box would meet my needs better than any other box.

After paying £200 for a box (a bargain in my opinion), I set to work installing it straight away. The previous owners had kindly left a satellite dish up with two cables running into my living room, so it was just a matter of plugging the two cables into the back, typing in my postcode and letting the box do its work. A word of warning, there are three holes in the back of the box. Choose the right two! it is clearly detailed in the manual.

Once scanned and completed, I proceeded to plug the box into the internet using an ethernet cable. All simple enough. Quite frankly, I was blown away by the image clarity, as was my other half. the HD pictures are amazingly detailed, although there are only three channels at the moment - BBC1 HD, BBC HD and ITV1 HD. I have heard rumours that Channel 4 HD will soon be added to the fold.

The picture quality on the BBC iPlayer is also immense. A quick trick for anyone who owns this box - going to channel 999, wait a moment then press Green Green Blue Green Green, wait a moment longer and press the red button and voilà, you will be granted access to ITV Player!

With regards to the menus, I find them easy to use. It is easy to record individual programmes, record series' and delete programmes after watching.

An interesting feature is the 'move' option. I record a lot of films, so I created a new folder and moved all my films into this to prevent cluttering up the recorded items page! Other features include the ability to transfer recorded programmes to a USB stick and the ability to transfer your music and films onto the box. Another excellent, and very cleer feature, is that due to the way signals are received by the box, even when you are recording two channels at once you can sometimes watch another channel too! You can always watch a recorded programme when two channels are being recorded at once.

I have found that recording space is plenty enough with the 320 GB version. I currently have at least 15 films waiting to be watched, with several HD series being recorded all the time, and I have not been over 50% yet.

All in all, you really do get what you pay for. If you are sitting on the fence and considering a cheaper alternative, don't. I waited nearly a year before buying this, hoping it would drop in price. It didn't drop much, primarily because the demand is there.

One of the best purchases I have made.