I've just unplugged my Sky+ box and installed my newly bought Humax Foxsat-HDR.... and already I'm feeling like I've made a blunder.

The reason for me switching was to save myself the £20 a month it was costing me for Sky. But Sky + was so easy to use! And the channels that I watched (Living) are not available. Maybe it's just because it's new, but I don't think I like it!

Is there any Humax users out there who can tell me some good points about my new freesat set up versus Sky?

In respect of picture quality rather than content you may wish to adjust your TV settings to suit the Humax. I had to do this when I changed from my Pace to the Humax. It was time well spent.
As far as easy to use, its just different on the Humax. I have a friend in UK who has got $ky + and I find it rather ham fisted to use. The Humax is definitely better on skipping Ads !
Just give it time and I think both you and your pocket will get the benefit.

You've achieved your objective of saving £20, there's a start.

You say the channels you watch aren't on Freesat? Hardly an issue for the Foxsat or Freesat to worry about, a simple check of the Freesat website would have sorted that.

What particular issues are you experiencing with the box? Give it some time and I'm sure you'll get use to the differences from Sky+. For me, it's a great piece of kit. It's our third Humax model and does everything that we expect from a PVR.

Forgot to mention that you can archive recordings to an external hard drive from the Humax which I don't think is possible with $ky.

Yea I'll give it time and I'll get used to it. Any new piece of equipment and technology in my house usually starts with me disliking it, simply because I have to learn how to use/navigate it properly. The same thing happened when I switched to a blackberry phone - the first night I could've easily chucked it out the window!

With regards to channels I guess I'm most disappointed that Living tv is not on it as I had been following the new season of Grey's Anatomy. I honestly thought, for some reason, that channel was included. You win some you lose some I guess

And now with FTP and Twonky enabled its possible to stream recordings around the house and transfer directly to a PC without the dreaded USB.

The Humax box, like most of the other Humax boxes I've seen, are damn fine pieces of equipment, unfortunately, they are let down by clunky/poor user interfaces.

The interface on the Sky systems, whilst not brilliant, is much better than the Humax. If you can get over the disappointment of the Humax's UI, then I think you will grow to appreciate the excellent functionality of the box.

Having said that, there are some functionality flaws with the Humax, (e.g. not being able to record the live buffer), but we are led to believe that this will be corrected in a future release.
Last edited by bryhhh : 27-01-2011 at 08:18

If only they'd correct the other UI niggles, most of which are almost certainly nothing more than 10 - 20 minute jobs.

I have a nasty feeling they are just going to ignore them again.

You can record two and watch some third channels. Under the right circumstances you can watch any third channel and timeshift it.

For instance BBC1-HD and BBC-HD can be recorded at the same time and you can also watch and pause live any other channel.

A Sky+ box in sby uses in excess of 20W a hdr less than 1W.
(Around £10-00-£15.00 pound a year additional running costs).

You can play back your own video recordings from USB, or upload them to the internal HDD with the aid of a free bit of software including HD material recorded with a hd camcorder

You have VOD services from BBCi player and ITV player (currently in beta)

Digital surround sound is available over the hdmi connection.

I'm assuming this is not officially supported?

Correct Humax have either chosen not to open the HDR to its full potential for commercial reasons, or are restricted from doing so by agreements with Freesat.

Supported or not the streaming seems to be solid - no reported problems. The streaming software, Twonky, is itself commercially developed software used in hundreds of thousands of media streaming products.