Hi There

After finally cancelling my $ky account, I'm now pondering over which Freesat machine to purchase. I'm looking of course at the Humax FoxSat, and then also the Samsung SMT-7800.

Looking at reviews and user comments across the web, there doesnt appear to be much between them, good points and bad points on both. One thing I noted was that Samsung are still updating software whereas Humax are not.

Anyway, two questions which I cant seem to get defenative answers for...

1. Does either box allow you to watch iPlayer in HD?
2. Does either box allow you to watch non Freesat channels?

Many thanks in advance

David

Yes and Yes.

To be precise it is not iPlayer in HD but iPlayer in Higher Quality.

Only the Humax Freeview-HD boxes give you the iplayer service in HD from the current range (720P)

Indeed, my LG 3D TV has the BBC iPlayer HD mode which looks so much better than the Humax-HDR or Samsung iPlayer looks like.

Automan.

It looks worse than SD though.

Not on my TV. Why would 1280 x 720 look worse than 720 x 576 ?

It depends on the bitrate and the content. It's 1280x750p25 at ~3Mbps. If the original content is 25p, and slow moving, then it'll look dramatically better than SD. If the original content is 50i and fast moving, then the HD iPlayer version will look stuttery and full of artefacts.

So it could look worse than SD in some respects. Certainly the artefacts and motion judder will still be visible if converted to SD (I've tried it, and they are!).

Cheers,
David.

The picture quality on my TV using the Humax portal is way better using the HD service than the same from Freesat using the higher quality option. Not compared an original transmission with one transmitted in SD and recorded. You would have to find a recording transmitted on BBC 1 and BBC-HD to truly compare. Subjectively it looks better than broadcast SD and way way better than SD at 544 x 576.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcintern...dds_highe.html

Well yes, of course, the "HQ" option on Freesat iPlayer has almost no advantage of the HD version on CE iPlayer - it's lower res and lower (fixed) bitrate. The only possible advantage is that it allows 50i (smooth movement), while the HD iPlayer stream doesn't. But it always has more artefacts and less resolution.

Whereas the better SD broadcast channels on freesat are sometimes higher bitrate than the HD iPlayer stream. Different codec, but still: you can occasionally see artefacts artefacts on the HD stream that are absent from SD broadcasts.

I'm splitting hairs - I agree that, subjectively (except for smooth 50i), the HD stream beats SD broadcasts hands down.

Cheers,
David.

Thanks for the info.... off to make the purchase this weekend so looks like whichever box has the best reviews in terms of picture quality will win!

David

Just picked up a Samsung S7800 for £161 yesterday and I still have the £30 to claim back from the Samsung promotion. So if all goes well I'll have ended up getting it for £131.

I just went into Best Buy and asked them to price-match the Richer Sounds price of £169 which they did without question and then took another 10% of the difference off (or whatever the deal is). Not sure they realised that the Richer sounds price included the £30 cashback but hey, I'm not complaining.

Nice one, I might try to get one myself at that price.

Did you print out Richer Sounds web page or did you get them to look it up instore?

I took the printed web page and they looked it up. Good luck...

That's an absolute bargain, I paid Amazon £214 for the Samsung SMT-S7800 last month and I certainly don't regret it. In my opinion, it's good up to date replacement for my Foxsat-HDR. Well worth it for £214, so £169 (or less) is amazing.

Can only speak for Humax HDR (suspect same for Sammy).

The iplayer has regular quality (annoyingly poor do not use unless your internet bandwidth is under 2 mbps) and "higher quality" not HD but is around SD quality to look at.

It does allow you to watch non_freesat but you need to go into settings and change the mode, you cannot make timer recordings in non-Freesat mode.

Principle advantage of the HDR is that people have discovered how to "tweak" the firmware to allow recordings to be copied or streamed accross your network.

I can confirm that the Samsung is the same as the Foxsat regarding points 1, iPlayer SD or HQ, and 2, have to switch to non--freesat for other channels.

The Samsung doesn't have the programme guide idiosyncrasies of the Foxsat (jerkiness, slow to populate etc). Instead the programme sound continues uninterrupted when you go to the guide and picture reduces to a small window.

You can watch an XVID film on your computer's hard drive through the Samsung's ethernet port, but you can't offload videos to USB as you can with the Foxsat. You can also access Youtube through the Samsung's ethernet port.

I've just bought one of these over the phone from Best Buy at £161.99 delivered. It took a while because they rang Richer Sounds to check and were told that they were out of stock. I then rang Richer Sounds and found that there was 1 in Brighton, Kingstead and somewhere else so I rang Best Buy back and they chacked again and agreed to do the deal.

The girl I was dealing with was very poor at maths and at one point said it would cost me £81, then she had another couple of tries before arriving at the right figure. But we got there in the end. If I get another £30 from Samsung than it will be a very good deal