Leaving Sky for Freesat and Humax Foxsat?

darkwarrior

Had a question as Im in the same boat as teh OP. I see the humax Freesat HD on Humax's site for 90£. I figured Id rather get it there and the warranty than for maybe £12 cheaper on E-bay. But is there an option there to later add external storage?

Recording isn't important to me, I dont have Sky+ for instance, but in the future, if the case of upgrading is just using a USB stick or buying an external HDD it seals the deal on buying it.

The only downside is no Dave but since its part BBC owned I figure it will come eventually. Gonna cost me either way, either need an aerial installed for freeview or the Humax box.

macman

AFAIK the Foxsat is not currently enabled to allow use of an external drive, although it has a USB port. I can't see Humax doing this really, as it would simply take sales from the more expensive PVR version.
Attaching a USB flash drive would not be a lot of good, as that would barely have the capacity to record the weather forecast...HD requires a lot of disk space.

darkwarrior

Well I have a 16gb pen, even HD programming won't generally run more than 2GB for an hours worth of tv. Its not something I need, its just something that, in the future, if i can upgrade easily it makes my decision much easier.

davemurgatroyd

darkwarrior wrote: »

Had a question as Im in the same boat as teh OP. I see the humax Freesat HD on Humax's site for 90£. I figured Id rather get it there and the warranty than for maybe £12 cheaper on E-bay. But is there an option there to later add external storage?

Recording isn't important to me, I dont have Sky+ for instance, but in the future, if the case of upgrading is just using a USB stick or buying an external HDD it seals the deal on buying it.

The only downside is no Dave but since its part BBC owned I figure it will come eventually. Gonna cost me either way, either need an aerial installed for freeview or the Humax box.

Humax are extremely unlikely to enable recording via the USB port. There are other single tuner freesat boxes (a lot cheaper than the Humax HDR) which will allow recording to external usb devices but note that they are single tuner only which means record OR watch one channel only - no watch one and record another channel.

Dave is extremely unlikely to ever come to freesat - jointly owned by BBC Worldwide and Virgin Media it is subscription only on satellite and BBC worldwide makes significant revenue from sales of its programming to other broadcasters across Europe who would be unlikely to pay as much as they do if those programmes are broadcast FTA from satellite and thus receivable in Europe.

darkwarrior

But Dave is on freeview right? Seems silly it would be on there and never come to Freesat since it of course makes money from advertising as well and being on Freesat hits a few extra hundred thousand people.

As for recording, Im ok with a single tuner, Im not sure Id ever use the facility anyway, just nice to have the option there when you're paying £90. I have read pretty much everywhere that Humax is the best box you can get for Freesat though for ease of use and getting as many channels as possible.

Kurtis_Blue

Need a bloody big aerial to receive dave via freeview in continental Europe.

Kurtis_Blue

Seems your question was very timely Humax today released new software that enables:

Includes External PVR functionality (Single Tuner):
- Time Shift Recording option (Menu > Preference > Recording > Time Shift Recording
- switch ON if you wish to use Time Shift Recording)
- Pause / Rewind Live TV (Time Shift Recording needs to be switched on in the menu
- Record 1 channel while viewing a 2nd channel on the same MUX
- Instant Record
- Buffer recording
- Accurate Recording
- Series Recording
- Alternate Instances (Conflict Resolution)
- Split Recordings
- SD/HD linkage
- Recommendations

On the freeview HD foxsat, So who knows maybe they will enable it on the freesat versions later.

darkwarrior

Very nice, thank you Kurtis.

joanneinwonderland

Hi all

Humax all set up and running and we're really pleased. HD is brilliant did not think it would make that much of a difference!

One problem we're having is that when we're recording some channels cannot be watched. I've just tried a few things just now recording one channel and seeing what's available then recording 2 and scanning through. Even when recording 2 channels I can still flick onto Film 4. Surely when just recording one though they should all still be available?

It seems it is mainly ITV channels affected.

We've got our postcode in as an English one to get ITVHD will that have made a difference? We're in Aberdeen therefore dont get ITVHD up here yet...

Had a look through manual and troubleshooting point 16 says

"Cannot change channel while recording"
Certain channels may not be changed due to the restriction of the tuner or the connection type.

HELP!

Many thanks all
xx

scotsbob

joanneinwonderland wrote: »

We're in Aberdeen therefore dont get ITVHD up here yet...

Both ITV HD and STV HD are available to you on Freesat in Aberdeen, or indeed anywhere in the UK.

You can get ITV in HD on channel 10510 ( 11.428 H 27.498 )

You can also get STV in HD on channel 3855 ( 10.936 V 21.998 )