Just managed to snag a Humax HDR from Dixons online for a very reasonable £222.30 delivered, these are my findings so far, I'm sure they will emulate many others findings.

1. The EPG and menu graphics are very nice, much better than the Humax 9200T for example.

2. The speed of the menus and remote control response is good.

3. It has not failed to record an SD or HD program yet.

4. It has not crashed or frozen yet.

5. The HD quality is excellent but the SD material a little soft, but that might be the lower bit rates of Sat against Freeview. I'm sure I will get used to the look of the SD.

6. I will be keeping my Humax freeview 9200T to receive Virgin 1 and the Five channels. Though the Humax does have a selection of different channels including more music, kids and some horror/Sci Fi.

7. I don't like the design of the remote control, the buttons are badly placed i.e play stop etc and too small. The remote control is worse than the 9200T and miles worse than a Sky remote. Also the remote picks up finger marks and dust like a magnet.

8. I'm struggling to delete something from a folder, still working on that one. Deleting should be much easier.

9. Boot time is too slow, the old Humax 9200T is much faster.



Improvement ideas for Humax.....

The box size is similar to the old 9200T I was hoping it would be much smaller, maybe now 2.5" drives are cheaper Humax could use these to reduce the box size and power requirements.

Could the Humax have a menu option to make it compatible with a Sky+ remote control for instance? As the existing remote is poorly designed.

The 320 gig drive is too small for HD material, the base model should be 500 gig and maybe a 1TB offering as well.

well, i have only just had mine for a day, so couldnt really judge it...but i am curious you compliment it on its remote responce. id read threads saying it was a bit clunky, so was expecting it not to be that great. it didnt let me down...boy is it cluncky. i find there is usually a delay, plus half the time the press dost do anything. this isnt that unusal in my experiance of pvrs, but with my freeview topfield i guess id got used to instant responce. then again, maybe its my enviroment causing it somehow. i sjhould add that the sluggishness is mostly either in guide or while using chase play....otherwise the responce is mostly good.
ive also read threads about picture quality compared to other sources. i can say in my observation the picture is deffinately slightly softer that i get direct to my tvs built in freesat tuner. i have set the hdr output to original, so the tv does upscaling...dosnt really make a difference except possible some sd viewing is marginally better....but so slightit might just be in my mind.
not knocking it though, its a decent pvr and does what i want it to

Not in my experience, in fact I see many instances where there can be a delay of several seconds before seeing a response.

One of the first rules of UI design is instant response to user actions, and the HDR fails badly here.

I reserve the word clunky for my Humax 9200T (several seconds delay sometimes), I guess it's early days yet but the response times are currently better than the 9200T.

Same here. It's the feature I'm least satisfied with. Next would be slow boot time but I only experience that once a day if I'm at home, as I leave my TV on standby until night or going away for the day.