[trebormints]

Hi all

My Humax HDR has died on me after only 18 months of service, as it was a Grade A it only has a 12 month gaurantee and as I live in France Humax will not even ship a repaired one to me, meaning I have to pay the postage to and from and also £95 pounds for a refurbished model so cost around the £150

The Manhattan Plaza HDR-S is only about £180 new, so being about the same cost as a refurbished Humax with postage

Has anyone tried this model and if so could they give me their opinion on it please, from what I have read it is good, but their are not a great deal of recent reviews, I need just a machine that I can record while my wife watches French TV, HD of course where possible and able to record two channels, I do have two LNBS

many thanks for any advice

[mike65]

I have one, its good enough if you can cope with a 350GB HD which some think rather too small these days.

It a very unobtrusive box - small, light and virtually silent with the sole light a subtle shade of red/blue (depending on mode), the set up was painless and quick with the integration of the non Freesat channels onto the favourites list very easy (having them all on the one list is definitely a plus point). Scrolling through the channels and accessing of EPG details is not as quick/slick as that of SKY. I don't know if that is down to the Freesat software or Manhattans implementation of same, I have noticed that downloading the programme guide data is slower than SKY when looking ahead but after 10-15 minutes after booting up it'll all be there.

Selection of programmes for recording is simple and locating them in the library quick and painless. I only have a single input so can't comment how well it works when recording and watching different channels.

The original remote which was very small and light has been changed to something easier for the "thumby". The direction "sensitively" is greater than that of a SKY remote but its good enough not to harm usability.

Mine does have a glitch - the BBC HD channels which use "DVB-S2" do not work in cold ambient temperatures. If I warm the box with say a water bottle its fine until water cools enough! I could send it back but frankly I can't be bothered. I am not aware of anyone else with this problem so i almost certainly have a "rogue" unit.

[trebormints]

Thanks for the reply, are there regular firmware updates ?

350gb is fine as I don't record much and delete it when I've watched the program, and only have a 320 on the Humax

[trebormints]

second question, there is only one LNB input and yet I read that you can record two programs at once, is this true ?

again thanks

[mike65]

There are two LNB inputs
http://www.manhattan-receivers.com/a...HDR-S-Rear.jpg


There have been a couple of updates so far
http://www.manhattan-receivers.com/n...oftware-v1.0.7

[trebormints]

Oups, zapped the second LNB, again thanks for helping

[rob1969]

Hope you don't mind me butting in here ,

Hello all,

I just bought a Manhattan Plaza HDR-S as I was sick of sky’s prices, I am very impressed with the box so far, but I really want to be able to see Dave and Yesterday channels, I did a automatic tune of non freesat channels but they were not picked up, I wonder if anyone can tell me how I add those channels please ? A friend can view them on his freeview box he got from a bootsale for £3 ! thanks in advance.
Rob.

[cornish]

You can only get them free on dtt (freeview),and not on freesat because they are part of the sky packages.

[rob1969]

Thanks Cornish, that's a bit of a pain but fair enough, I'll have to buy a cheap freeview box just for those channels.

Thanks for your reply