I'm fed up waiting for Humax to get their act together and fix this box so I'm looking for an alternative. Is there someone out there with experience of the Foxsat HDR and Virgin V+ HD who can provide me with some ideas about how they compare in terms of functionality and reliability.

(I'm not interested in comparing the content available, I know VM has more available. I'm also well aware that V+HD is not free - so no cost comparisons please. I am currently on VM for Broadband and Telephone so I can get their basic SD package for free but will have to pay extra for V+ and HD.)

There is no comparison. V+ HD works reliably!
Although VM has no ITV HD it does have CH4 HD.

Forgot to mention, I have both!

The V+ records three channels at once and is AFAIK pretty reliable. You already own a HDR so I don't need to tell you about that.

Not sure what else you need to know, or what aspect of your HDR is broken. Mine works fine all the time so not sure what this un-released fix will cure.

So content is not important , you require or simply a working box ?

Is a FS box sooooo bad ?

This V+ sounds interesting.
I've had the HDR for almost 6 months (switched from sky, so it's almost payed for itself).

I too am sick of waiting for the infamous update, and virgin does sound appealing.

Can't get in to Hummy.org but from memory

Deletion while recording is now allowed

The subtitle bug is fixed

You can't now crash the hdr by trying to switch to a radio station while recording two

Empty series folders are auto deleted when the last file in it is deleted

An option to auto delete the oldest recordings in the event of the disk being too full is provided

A folder containing unwatched programmes is now flagged with an icon

Adding/moving/ deleting non-freesat channels no longer deletes freesat programme reservations

An auto channel update no longer deletes ITV HD reservations

The diagnostics display now shows correct info for both tuners.

And of course iplayer access

I wasn't impressed with the v+ box i used but it was some time back. The box was very slow to respond to the remote, the owner said it locked up fairly regularly, the 'search' function locked up the box for about 30 seconds. My experience of it was definitely worse than the Humax.

Have they got better?

I think I'm also right in saying that the box is only functional while you subscribe and remains the property of VM.

At least with Sky the box is yours from the day you get it and is still useful without a subscription.

But I can't say I've heard anything bad about the VM Box. Several good comments in fact. That suggests it's at least as reliable as Sky+/Humax. Unfortunately I have heard a lot of negative comments about VM's customer service - more than Sky - so that might put me off as well.

Still - it's a moot point for me. VM don't think my town is worthy of cable anyway.

My son has a V+ box. It appears to work well but it has two major downsides. One you can't update the HDD as it's not your box and two there's no way of archiving the stored recordings directly to a hdd. You can of course record SD in real time to a dvd recorder but quality suffers due to the multiple recoding required

LOL, no content is important, it is just that I already know the content differences so I didn't want the thread sidetracked with discussion on what is or isn't available on each.

It is not so much that the Foxsat HDR doesn't work, but just that it has a number of bugs that Humax just haven't thought worth fixing yet. (Some MAY be fixed in an update due sometime in next year or two.)

I have always had a FTA Satellite receiver and I did subscribe to Sky for a while (Analogue and early days of Digital). I dropped Sky purely due to cost. Then my first PVR was a Pace Twin which was very good for a first to market box. I later upgraded to a Humax 9200T for the better functionality it offered. This box had outstanding support from Humax, lots of updates, even an update bringing it in-line with the Freeview+ spec.

Based on my past experience of Humax, the release of the Foxsat HDR looked fantastic. A box that was as user friendly as the 9200T (and Sky) but also had FTA capabilities! Suddenly I could put a single box in the lounge (replacing the 9200T and my FTA DSat receiver) that I could let the whole family use with no worries. Unfortunately that vision faded rather quickly once I got it installed and experienced my first few crashes. After a while you get used to what actions are likely to cause it to fail (all widely reported here) and learn to treat it nicely to keep it going, plus you get into the habit of rechecking the recording schedule regularly. Definitely not family friendly at the moment.

I don't particularly want to go back to Freeview with all its interference issues so I'm thinking I might need to bite the bullet, accept the cost, and go for a VM box. (VM would be cheaper than Sky because I already have VM BB and Phone.)

The other alternative I'm considering is the Panasonic boxes but it is still early days for them and not a great deal of feedback available yet (once bitten - twice shy).

I have never had a recording failure that was not the fault of the broadcaster screwing up the crid's. The Panasonic box or any other freesat+ pvr will have exactly the same problems.

Very true. But hopefully other boxes will not lose the recording schedule due to a channel update or forget to reset the time after a power outage. (Fortunately infrequent for me but I do get occasional power outages - probably due to being on overhead power lines.)

I've already gone back to having a separate FTA box for multi-sat because a non-Freesat scan will wipe the schedule.

I can see the power cut situation being a problem, the other problems are fixed in the shortly to be released V04 firmware, however there has been no info posted on the clock reset following a power outage situation. Fortunately I have good neighbours who would manually reboot the box for me in the event of a power outage. Without this I would have invested in a ups. By coincidence we had two power cuts recently and by sheer luck the box was on at the time so there was no problem

Debateable

I bought my 9200 just after the Freeview+ update and have never seen an update in 18 months. There's a couple of nasty bugs (most principally dissappearing timers) that remain unaddressed.

LOL, heard that one before

I have both.The V+ outputs a great sd and hd picture,(in actual fact I've been looking for a dvd hdd recorder that would have the same quality output as the V+but as yet haven't found one.The V+,in the main works well,and I have had it from day one.I don't like the Foxsat sd pq and only record hd with it,but that's ok by me.I would recommend the V+ unconditionally.Probably the only thing I have against the V+ is you cannot record from the buffer,but the Foxsat is the same.

Why do think this, Humax have actually specified what's been fixed and stated that there might be other features as well. That's never happened before, it's the height of cynicism to take cheap shots like this. We shall see who's right in the fullness of time. My guess is late November 2009

I second that!

Many thanks for your comments. Looks like the V+HD is definitely an option for me for Christmas TV viewing. I just need to get the lounge redecoration finished and then I'll make my choice.