Unfortunately mine locked up yesterday while watching a recording of the Killing on C4HD. I had just turned on the subtitles and then paused it. When I went to press play again, nothing... No response to any buttons on the remote or fascia. After about 5 minutes to study the freeze frame in minute detail, the box decided I'd had long enough and rebooted.

Pity as in almost every other respect I love it.

Since you asked, the two gripes are:
A lack of DiSEqC (my fault, should have checked. Hope it's in the pipeline)
Occasional stutters and jumps in playback, but I guess they're inevitable with any hard disk recorders.

No you shouldn't be getting those unless you had a dodgy signal when it was recorded. This might be indicative of a problem with your box, e,g. the HDD inside.

i would report it to Echostar if i were you, they tend to respond positively. if they know about any problems they can try and sort them out.

I had a Pace Twin that used to hicup during playback, but then that was the first ever Freeview PVR and could barely cope with doing one thing at once, never mind two!

Given that modern STBs are capable of recording _and_ playing back multiple HD programmes simultaneously (certainly possible with the two year old Humax, and the Echostar is a higher spec unit), you should absolutely never see hicups.

As Badvok said, check your signal. Note that hicups on recordings can look different from watching the same problematic signal live. On some recorders, you'll see garbage (blocks, freezes etc) when watching live, but jumps when watching the same thing from a recording.

Cheers,
David.

Does anyone have the problem where after a while using the search function causes the box to reboot? I have to perform a factory reset to fix the issue but it's only a temporary solution.

i generally don't use the search function, never have done on any box as have always find it useless. but after reading your post i have tried it twice on my Echostar and it didn't work and the box rebooted both times. i seem to remember trying it when i first got it and it crashed then as well.

Now this isn't a problem for me as i don't use it anyway, but i think its best if we both report it to Echostar, then they can try and sort it out. maybe they already know about this and it could be one of the exciting new features that have been promised, they might improve it so you can type a search word in.

My Humax box works okay I think, I have not tried it for a while

just tried it twice again and crashed both times. good job i don't actually want to use this function.

at least ive found an easy way of rebooting the box.

any more Echostar owners out there fancy trying theirs.

Just reported it to Echostar, hopefully they will respond soon.

Did the same for me too but as Z3man says i never use that either.

seems like its probably a software fault on all boxes then, it probably hasn't been mentioned before because hardly anybody uses the feature as its pretty useless anyway. Echostar probably already know about the problem, but the more that report it the better. they read this thread regularly anyway so i would expect a fix in the next software update.

I installed one of these for a relative over the bank holiday weekend.

I feel like I should do a proper review, but I only had a couple of days to try it. The things that struck me were:

1. it's much faster to operate than the Humax. Not just the EPG (which works instantly - hint hint Humax!) but the recordings library etc - all far far quicker than my HDR.
2. the GUI is completely different, and far easier for a new user to understand than the Humax
3. it boots far more quickly when recently used, but is just as slow (maybe even slower) to boot when it's been unplugged from the mains.
4. it's not silent in stand by - it's still doing something if you listen carefully.
5. it's about as loud as the humax when working, apart from occasional (once a minute-ish) slightly more audible HDD seeking when recording. I noticed because I slept on a camp bed in the same room as the STB! Didn't hear it watching TV.
6. the GUI looks gorgeous in HD, and pretty good in SD
7. it's not as capable with a single cable feed as the Humax
8. I loved the remote control. It has the TV controls you need (power, AV-input, volume, mute) without having to switch modes. And it works from a sensible distance and angle (unlike the Humax). Some people might find the text+buttons a bit small (though well spaced, so you don't hit two even with big fingers).

The thing that pleased me was that I'd shown this relative our Humax, and let her play with it - and she thought it was like something from another planet! Whereas she seemed right at home with the Echostar straight away.

Only dial-up internet at her house for now, so no chance to try Sling there yet. I had it briefly on the network at my house, and iPlayer was fine, but no itvPlayer yet. Sling "just worked" in a browser in my house, which amused the kids, but no chance to try it out of the house. The picture quality in the house wasn't quite as good as via DLNA, but far better than my older Sling box classic. It was 100 times easier to set-up (literally!) than the Humax DLNA hack - far easier to navigate too since you have the STB GUI right there on the PC, with the STB remote shown on the PC. No battling with xmbc or whatever. It does stream HD recordings, but only in (what I think is) SD. Fine on my laptop, but if you have a Full HD screen on your PC it'll be a shame it's only SD.


I think a lot of the discussion about this box has missed the point: Everyone talks about Sling and watching your TV anywhere - and that's kind of the reason I chose this: so that when this relative gets broadband, I can connect to the STB using Sling and troubleshoot any problems she has with it. But having seen the STB in action, I don't think I'm going to need to do that because the important thing about this box isn't Sling - it's that it's a really well designed Freesat box that's very easy to use.

I won't be able to say how reliable it is long term, because if anything does go wrong I won't know whether it's the STB or the relative that's messed up!

Cheers,
David.

P.S. I phoned her back today and she's still delighted with it. Pausing live TV and everything! Considering on Saturday night she only had four analogue channels and an unused DVD recorder, this is pretty amazing stuff.

This all sounds very promising and interesting I landed here looking for a speedier Humax and looks like this box is up to the job! Good job it's 2am otherwise I'd be out at John Lewis buying one!!

I wonder if anyone who has one can confirm what happens if you have padding set on back to back programmes with simultaneous recordings on a different channel?

Some PVR's will want to use separate tuners with padded back to back recordings and may therefore fail to record programmes on other channels. If it were intelligent (like MyStuff!) it would only pad before the first, after the last, and use one tuner for the sequential recordings. Does the Echostar do this?

I would love to be able to get recordings off the box - I occasionally do on my Topfield, mainly for radio shows so I can listen while out and about.

I love the sound of the responses from Echostar. This is quite like how Thomson were for the DHD4000, grabbing feedback from early users to add more and more features. There are some corking ideas people have that could be built into hardware if only manufacturers would pay attention!!

Spoke to her again last night - she'd been "recording programmes, watching them, fast forwarding them through the boring bits, and then deleting them when I'd finished them just because I can!!!" - if you knew this technophobic person, you would find this absolutely unbelievable - I'm stunned.

@slimgym - they're exactly the questions I'd ask (and be able to answer!) if it was mine, but no chance of getting this out of the person who has it now, so I'll leave others to answer.

Cheers,
David.

This isn't a recommendation because I used a different seller, but several sellers on eBay, and one on Amazon, now have this box for under £250.

There's one seller on eBay who has it for £233.99 with free postage. These appear to be new (more than 10 available), seller has good feedback etc - but as I said, this is not a recommendation, because I've never used them. Wish I'd seen this last month though!!!

Cheers,
David.

John Lewis have also dropped it to £249 (Clicky)

Hi, you shouldn't be getting any stuttering or jumps in playback. I have never had that on my Humax PVR, either a software issue or your hard drive has problem.

I bought one, since I received a £50 voucher for JL at work and they had dropped it by £50

I think the answer on the padding thing is that it will use a single tuner to do sequential recordings on one channel since it can either use manual recording (with padding) or the broadcaster triggered start/end, and not both.

So far I think it's a really nice unit. Very quick to whip through the menus.

Picture quality is rocking, that's probably because I'm used to Freeview with its lower bitrate. I only have an SD TV but it's a Sony 36" CRT.

The jump forward/back buttons (ad-skip) are instant. I have configured to go forward 40 seconds and back 10. Very easy to ad-skip.

Nice looking unit with a nice display and very responsive illuminated touch buttons on the unit.

It has dedicated page down/up buttons which is a nice touch for spooling through the guide and library.

Be nice if you could text search the EPG with a text string. You can search by type such as "Movie" which then gives a filtered list of programmes irrespective of channel.

Perhaps the only downsides to it are things Freesat insist are on there (like displaying Genres when you first press "Guide" - you can press it again to see all).

wise choice slimgym, looks like this is easily still the best freesat box on the market, i thought the Samsung SMT-S7800 might have give it a run for its money but looks like it still has plenty of problems and little niggles from reading the owners threads.

I couldn't be sure that the Samsung can record two things simultaneously? It makes mention of the twin tuner and says "record one and watch another". I can't believe it would only be single record. Big drop-off if true.

I'm wondering how the Echostar will cope with clashes in series links, or if it just silently drops one of the clashes to find it elsewhere in the scheds. So far so good though.

It tells you about clashes and asks you if you want it to search for an alternative broadcast of the show.

I have just bought an Echostar and these are my initial observations – I am currently using a Humax Foxsat HDR elsewhere. It was £224.99 from tvaerials.com.

It is running software 119R. I like the physical appearance and remote and it is satisfactorily quiet.

Please could anybody with more knowledge / experience report anything I've got wrong.

It appears to be impossible to set a manual recording (which the printed manual says you can, but the downloaded manual has removed). This is a bit of a limitation.

It appears to satisfactorily record two programmes whilst watching a third from the library.

I have had an incredible game with the remotely accessing it as, whatever I do with the Slingbox password other than leave it at the default, I get 'The Slingbox Administrator password that you typed is incorrect. Please re-enter it'. I can change the Slingbox name, no problem but seem to be stuck with the default password.

I tried to register it at http://www.myechostar.com/Support/Pr...istration.aspx by got 'Server Error in '/' Application.'. I reported it and am expecting a response?

I really like the speed of response after the Humax.

There doesn't appear to be an App for my Samsung Galaxy Tab (Android 2.2) – I would happily pay £20 for one.

All in all, I am pleasantly surprised and am looking forward to trying the Slingbox features in anger (i.e. when abroad!).

Watched Match of the Day recently while i was in France and set up a few programs to record. Awesome. Worked perfectly.

For information re "I tried to register it at http://www.myechostar.com/Support/Pr...istration.aspx by got 'Server Error in '/' Application.'. I reported it and am expecting a response/".

Rapid response from Echostar. Registration now fixed.

Going back to my error (after a while the box locks up when trying to search for films), I've noticed that a day or two before this starts happening, the clock stops updating when the box is on standby. I use this as a warning to reset the box before it crashes.