I've about come to the end of my tether with my Freeview PVR and I'm looking to replace it. The problem is that I'm looking for something as reliable as my Sky HD box. I want to be able to put FTA programming onto the FS box as a matter of course and reserve the Sky box for FTV/PTV to simplify tuner management.

Unfortunately I'm a bit loathe to buy another Humax box. My 9200T had an annoying habit of randomly dropping timers so it became a PVR-of-last-resort backed up by a pen and paper list.

Is their FS version any better?
Can it be reliably trusted to remember what it's been asked to do?
On a similar note how reliable are broadcasters these days at sending the right control signals on Freesat?

How stable is the box? It's going to be compared to a Sky box that never crashes, never forgets things, always records what it's been told to and that hardly ever has playback issues. I really don't want another crappy PVR like the 9200. I just want another PVR that doesn't require a subscription but can at least be trusted to do what it's supposed to.

Oh - and what's the situation as regards a new version of the FS box? Probably dangerous to buy new kit anyway but if I wait a couple of months would I be able to buy something with a more powerful CPU? iPlayer would be a major feature I'd want and I seem to recall that it was a bit sluggish on the current box.

I've had the Foxsat since last June. Never had anything else but have used a Sky+ box at my parents. They have had periodic issues with the latter. They're not heavy recorders though, so don't know about that.

With the Foxsat I've had about two or three failed recordings. in one case it was a non-terminating one, so I actually got the programme. I don't know if that conforms to your standards of reliability.


It's quite common to miss a bit of the start of a programme but I've never experienced anything too serious.

Most channels are reliable in not missing the end. However, the Channel 4 group of channels are very unreliable with the endings.


I've had two lockups since last June. Apart from the failed recordings I mentioned above I've had no other issues.


Humax won't say anything about time scales at this point, so you might have a long wait. If you're not in a hurry then you could wait I suppose.

Re: stability/bugs one complaint on these forums was that there was a very long time between software updates (about a year) last year. Any glitches with the new model might have a similar story.

I've had my FS HDR since just after launch - it's worked faultlessly - very few lock ups and no real issues at all - I'm very pleased with it.

I suspect that Humax are waiting to confirm the final spec for Canvas before finalising HDR2 plans... in terms of production I guess a reasonable amount of the work is probably done - they won't reinvent the wheel, just optimise existing tech from the HDR.

Can't remember when Canvas is slated to launch, or if a date has been given when it's anticipated but they are on Twitter though as @canvasinfo

I'm still miffed that they haven't fixed the power cut bug. If it wasn't for this it would be a 100% reliability with no lock-ups or orther major issues to report.

I'm looking to replace my ageing Freeview PVR with a new Freeview+ HD when they are available and I just don't know whether I trust Humax to get it right.

Talking of reliability my ageing Freeview PVR is a Thomson DHD4000 and that has literally missed two recordings ever since I have had it (and I was an early adopter). One was a loose hard drive cable and the second was only a few weeks ago and I think its because the hard drive is dying

nudge stuck post

Thanks for the replies. It sounds hopeful then. Anyone with any other thoughts - keep 'em coming

Mine is perfect, it hasnt missed a recording since the last update.

I cant think of anything that annoys me with it now too, its much more user friendly.

Since I moved over to an external hard drive (after upgrading the size), mine has been 100% reliable. (putting in a larger hard drive internally resulted in a power supply failure although its by no means certain that was the cause, just likely).

Most of the problems are niggles which could easily be fixed if Humax were so inclined. However, the power cut issue alone would prevent me from recommending this HDR, or from buying any other Humax product.

The niggles and quirks I can live with and to be honest there is nothing that really annoys me about it. But like you the big one that should have been top of the fix list is the power cut bug. I can't belive in this day and age someone would release a PVR without testing its behaviour following a power cut.

I wonder if when it had been first released if the power cut bug had been discovered whether it would have had such favourable reviews. I certainly would not have purchased it.

After sending 3 e-mails to uk support and not receiving any reply I posted on the Humax UK Facebook group. Apparently this has been requested from the development team but there are no promises.

Mine has worked flawlessly for over a year, I live in Scotland so Ive not suffered from the frequent power cuts that seem to befall middle England so Im unable to comment about the HDR's performance after one.

It's not so much the frequency of power cuts, but the fact that such a major flaw is ignored by Humax which is the problem. I had my HDR for over a year before a faulty device tripped the ELCB and I forgot to reboot the receiver. I lost two recordings and their series links. It will happen to you eventually!

On average I reckon we have one power cut a year however over the past few months we have had a few more due to the power company replacing damaged cables in the area.

I suspect there are quite a few people who don't read the forums that haven't as of yet twigged why they perhaps miss the odd recording here or there. There may even be some that may have returned their units believing they have a genuine hardware fault (and not just a bug which should be fixed).

Several work colleagues who have 9200T's warned me of the poor customer service and support before I brought the Foxsat but as I wanted a Freesat PVR (and Humax were first on the market) I thought I'd give it a shot. There lack of urgency to fix the power cut bug (or even publicly acknowledge it) does not fill me with confidence in purchasing any more of their products.