news of the next generation of Fresat boxes ahs been released on Techradar:

Humax has not taken its eye off the Freesat ball and is planning the Foxsat HD 2 and Foxsat HDR 2 (Freesat+) as follow ups to its award-winning current boxes.

The Foxsat HD2 will bring Interactive TV including BBC iPlayer and ITV Player and auto detection of new channels or software, getting rid of the need to manually update the box.

Home network

Humax also indicated that it would integrate its home network solution, for content sharing through the home network and USB recording functionality.

For the digital video recorder Foxsat HDR T2, the same feature set will be there along with a hard drive to record on – with current talk suggesting that it will be a 1TB HDD, although this is not confirmed.

Both boxes will be 'portal ready'; in other words, ready for internet television – and should be available in Q3 2010.

See this post from 9:00 this morning

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/s....php?t=1179073

Thanks, microvent.

Glad to see that they are upping the HD to 1Tb (and hope they've sorted out whatever it was that was limiting the HD to 1TB.

Sorry to see that they don't seem to have managed timer selection over the net.

No, HDR2 HDD = 500GB.

http://www.which.co.uk/news/2009/12/...top-box-190017

Screenshot of Humax presentation slide at 17:43.

Rgds.


Les.

"with current talk suggesting that it will be a 1TB HDD"

By no means certain but the cost difference between 500GB and 1TB is now so small that it would be a pretty daft marketing decision to go with the lower figure. The price differential is already down to ~£25 and in the 8-9 months until the box is ready (assuming it's on time) to release it will shrink even further.

Even if they do think the extra cost of a 1TB drive is too risky it really would be a mistake not to offer at least the option of 1TB.

Of course, an ESATA port would be good, too, although USB3 should be established by then.

I see homecinemachoice say Feb 2010 for going on sale...
http://www.homecinemachoice.com/blog...er+tv+11+12+09

Automan.

I think they're getting confused.

From what I've seen, the Freeview HD box is due in the Spring, the new Freesat HD box isn't due until Autumn.

Mike

the new freeview hd box is going to be 1080p50 capable but the new hdr2 is just the same as the hdr; 1080i.
#
seems strange as they are based on the same platform.

will it make a difference?:confused

http://cdn.cloudfiles.mosso.com/c716...FoxT2specs.jpg

http://cdn.cloudfiles.mosso.com/c716...FoxsatDHR2.jpg

But they are not the same platform are they? Do they both have the same channels? Sounds like we are going to be able to view a far better picture quality on Freeview.

GG

What use would it be? - there are no 1080P transmissions, and Humax so far have used fairly poor scalers, so you're probably better off using the scaler in your TV anyway.

I mean technical platform, I understood from various news articles that both had the same chipset, it was mainly the tuner that separated them?


i know, but there must be a reason they are planning it on the freeview box but not the freesat box. especially as dtt is limited bandwidth wise, but satellite isnt (narrowbeam issues aside).

Just an advertising ploy I presume?, or part of the required Freeview HD specification? - in which case ALL Freeview HD boxes will include it. Certainly originally the suggestion for Freeview HD was to initially use 720P, upgrading to 1080i as encoders increased in quality, with the possibility of eventually moving to 1080P with further encoder improvements.

Having the box upscale has no bearing on the bandwidth of the transmission anyway.

as i understood it, they talked about 1080p50 for freeview hd but it was thought it would hold back box manufactures even more. im sure i read that somewhere, maybe the freeview dtt consutation document .

I actually think the current foxsat HDR is capable of 1080p (not sure if its 25 or 50 though)

May be bob_cat could enlighten us?

Having 1080p50 upscaling on the boxes means that the broadcaster can broadcast 1080p25 (for use with films, as desired) without having to use intermediate formats which reduce quality. Because Astra2 already has a substantial legacy of product that would not produce an acceptable user experience (the STB would have to resync the HDMI unlike an 1080p50 upscaling box) the broadcasters have not expressed an interest in 1080p25.

It might be that we upgrade the core silicon between now and release which allows us to have 1080p50 upscaling anyway, but currently that level of up-scaling is a cost adder to the products. Excluding the dish installation, Freesat will remain the lowest cost way of obtaining HD for some time to come due to some of the incremental silicon costs for the next generation Freeview HD (up-scaling and T2 being the highlights).

Nigel, I wouldn't say the Humax scaler was poor, I would say that there are better or more expensive scalers on the market, but independent professional tests have informed me that it is "middle of the road".

I think this is absolute rubbish!

But Bob, you yourself have admitted it's not a very great scaler, and well below that used in the Sky HD boxes. Compared with the cheap DVD players though, it is of course better.

Hi I noticed that the "new" HDR will have divx onboard.

How about letting us have divx? It can't be that difficult.
Having divx on the "old" HDR would make it into a really universal piece of kit, and I could get rid of a further box under the telly !!

Bob - pretty pretty please !!

You don't need Humax a nice man called Raydon has created AV2HDR that lets you upload SD mpeg2 and HD mpeg4

http://www.hummy.org.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=6468

thanks for the reply bob.

I agree that its no that bad. I have a panny tx 42v10 with freesat built in and a HDR and the picture difference is pretty mininmal (whether @ 1080i or original) and I sit less than 3meters away. I dont think many people would tell the difference in sd quality.

i did used to have a early and relatively cheap hyundai 720p lcd screen and sd did look pretty naff on that, so whether you use the tv scaler or humax scaler there are obviously other things on your tv that make a difference to picture quality.

Hi, I have already tried it, but it won't work on any of the .avi files I have on Hard Disk......

If they are standard def 576lines or HD 1080lines they just need converting to a suitable format.

Seems USB3 is now commercially available. CLICK showed a 1TB external drive complete with PCI to two USB3 ports yesterday for £100. USB3 on the next PVR would definitely be on my wish list!

I have never admitted it is worse than a SkyHD box, because I don't believe it is.

Bob

USB3 has not entered the roadmaps of embedded chipset suppliers, eSATA is possible but the practicalities have not encouraged our developers yet.

Because these are embedded devices the addition of DivX requires changes to the silicon (because it isn't optimised for that codec) and the support for a variety of codec formats in this architecture isn't good enough.

Additionally to that we must pay a licence for that codec and so even if it was physically possible we would have to retrospectively pay DivX for that feature addition to all sold products.

No additional feature updates are planned for current products.

Bob