Hello,
I am looking to replace my Sky+ HD box and would appreciate your advice. I have been reading the reviews and comments on the web and this is a short list of possible boxes.

Sagem DTR94320S 320GB "B grade" £130
Bush 250GB HD "refurbished" £139
Goodmans 320GB HD "refurbished" £140
Goodmans 500GB HD "B grade" £150
Grundig GUFSDTR500HD 500GB "refurbished" £150
Humax FOXSATHDR-G 320GB "A grade" £185

These are the best prices including delivery i could find,
but I have no experience of graded / refurbished electronics and would welcome your comments.

I got the Foxsat and have had no problems at all. Best thing to do is to read all the reviews of each product and judge for yourself!
Refurbished should come with a guarantee, usually around 3 months.
Good to see another Sky walkaway!!

The best Freesat boxes I have found so far are the Humax 1TB box and the Echostar Sling box

The Grundig will have been badged by Harvard who have now lost the rights to use the name in this country. The same internals are shared by their other brand name Goodmans and Argos's own brand Bush.

Harvard's reputation for build quality is such that many people would not use a bargepole to poke a bargepole touching one. Harvard have introduced new PVRs to replace these models and have resorted to using a new brand "Vision 21".

The other two have 320Gb hard drives and the Humax at least has been withdrawn in favour of a 500Gb model - which is why they are selling off their old stocks as refurbished models. Humax only offer a 1 year guarantee on these as opposed to their two year standard one. You might wish to consider the Samsung 500Gb model from Richer Sounds which is £170 new and they offer a 5 year warranty for £17. They also have clearance stocks of the 320 Gb Humax HDR for £180 in a few stores which should carry the standard 2 year Humax warranty.

Why, what difference does it make to your life?

i really don't understand this culture of "i don't like Sky, so i don't want anyone else to like it either".

Be like me changing my car for a Ford, and jumping for joy every time soemone else did the same

That's after the £30 cash back of course. You actually pay Richer Sounds £200.

http://www.richersounds.com/product/.../sams-smts7800

The Samsung looks like a very good deal. Has anybody used this box, any plus or minus points with it?

http://www.aerialsuperstore.co.uk/tr...-kit-508-p.asp

Major cons for me compared to Humax

No archiving to USB (might come later)

No manual recording or autopadding options.

I agree with Graham. Got rid of a Samsung in favour of Humax. Have not regretted it. Worth the extra. Brilliant box.

Hi Mark888,

I dumped Sky+HD in favour of FreeSat two weeks ago when I discovered that 90% of my viewing was FTA stuff. I went for the Humax HDR Grade A from Humax direct for £185 delivered. I have not regretted it. Aside from a tiny, tiny dent in the top cover it looks new. I had the lid off and the internals were very clean and new looking (ie did not have the look of a unit that had been on demonstration in a shop for months). I removed the 320GB HDD and installed the 1TB disk I had been using in my old SKY+HD box (having copied the recordings I was still to watch to another old 1TB drive I had lying around). The Humax formated the disk on first use and I can honestly say I have not looked back.

Here are my plus and minus points that I have discovered in the past couple of weeks:

Plus:
4:3 material (upscaled by the box) is finally in the correct aspect ratio via HDMI (you can even set it to 14:9 as the BBC sometimes do and then that slightly zoomed picture is upscaled to 1080i).

I love the skip setting on the remote. I have set it to jump forward 4 mins and jump back 15 seconds. Excellent for ad skipping.

Excellent HD picture, every bit as good as my old Satcured Thomson Sky+HD (a Thomson with a Satcure PSU is as good as SkyHD ever got).

Very responsive box (The Thomson was pretty slow by comparison, this never really bothered me, but the speed of the Humax is nice).

The Humax seems very stable. I have not had to reboot (mains power cycle) yet (I used to reboot my Thomson every two weeks due to Sky's clunky software).

Extremely low power consumption in standby (less than 1 watt).

x32 FFW is actually x32!

Minus:
SD picture is very slightly softer than my Thomson (If you have a Samsung or Amstrad Sky+HD box you may well notice SD is better with the Humax, the Thomsons were pretty good at SD, especially if they have a Satcure PSU as mine did).

The remote is not as nice to use as a Sky remote, the button layout is not as logical and the buttons are too small. I am thinking of getting a Harmony remote to overcome this.

Deleting programmes off the HDD is a fairly clunky and slow operation with a few too many button pushes for my liking.

No remote record option (but reading the Radio Times and setting the box is not the hardship I thought it might be).


Overall, there are more plusses than minuses for me, so far I do not regret making the change.

One last point, avoid all FreeSat+ brands other than Humax and Samsung. The Harvard boxes have already been rightly criticized in this thread, the Sagem units are only slightly better IMHO.

I hope this information is of use to you. Good luck

It rather depends on when you do this - During playback of the closing credits - press Media then OK and Select Delete.

Have you spotted the delete option when you press OK on a recording in the media list (3rd one down) ?

Exactly, I was tossing and turning in my mind over whether to go for Sky+HD or Freesat just last week...tossing and turning for all of five seconds actually...no contest....Foxsat HDR box bought yesterday , Sky+HD will be better for some people of course but as you say it all depends on what you want to watch, there's just not enough on it that interests me to warrant a monthly sub.

Thank you, to everyone that posted. The deal at Richer Sounds on the Samsung is very tempting. It will be that or the Humax Foxsat. Does anyone know if there are new models of freesat boxes to be released before christmas that might be worth considering?

I am also looking at getting a new Freesat+ and looking at Humax Foxsat.
I also want some questions clarified.
Is Freesat having a newer system, G2? does that mean a new STB?
the LAN cable on the back, can that be connected to another Humax STB, say Freeview HD+ and can I access each other fron 2 different rooms? or even access the PC harddrive?

Bush, Sagem, Goodmans and Grundig have a poor reputation in this market, I would not buy their A grade kit, if you buy their B grade you are brave indeed.

I realise that its the most expensive on your list but the Humax does have the best reputation by a long way.

First G2 boxes will be Sagem not Humax, early next year, Humax towards end of 2012 we hear.

On the current HDR, if you load an unofficial patch then you can use the LAN cable to copy or stream recordings to a PC, ipod or video streamer in another room ... works great !!!

I use the unofficial patch, and it came in very handy the other day when my Humax kept saying there was no channels stored everytime I switched the box on, as it allowed me to access the HDR HDD. It turned out that there was a channels_update.fcl file in /opt/channels, once I deleted that all was fine.

Unlike the Sagem DTR94500S that I had before it that was running very hot, kept crashing and wasn't very customizable and had a very ugly UI and the USB port on the front was useless other than for doing software upgrades.

Roland

Thanks for that.

Where is the cheapest place to buy a brand new Humax Foxsat?
Is this a good price below and which STB is better?

Humax Foxsat HDR Freesat PVR 1TB £285.49
Humax Foxsat HDR Freesat PVR 500GB £226.90

They are both identical apart from the fact that the 1TB can store approx twice the recording duration the 500GB can.

Look at Richer Sounds and there 5 yr warranty.

According to this review :

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/aud...-958920/review

Samsung will update their box to G2 when its available, so I suppose that really the SMT-S7800 is the first G2 box. I recently bought a Foxsat HDR, but I've sold it and I'm now planning to buy a Samsung box. They both cost about the same, but the Samsung seems far more future proof if Samsung continue updating it.

An update on my situation. I have bought the Samsung SMT-S7800 and am very delighted with it. No missed or short recordings. HD picture quality as good as my old Sky+ box. The jump buttons on playback are a good idea. The forward jump advances the recording in 60 second bursts and the backward jump rewinds in 15 second bursts, really good for jumping the adverts. Only thing I don't like is the bright blue light on the front display, but a piece of insulation tape over the top soon sorts that out.

The Richer Sounds for the Samsung seems amazing. Has it got the same features as the Humax? ie does it put series into folders and has it got a search facility like the Humax and can you archive onto an external Hard drive?and what is G2. And finally does the Humax win anyway? Thanks

Another Vote for Humax from me. Been using it almost a year now and no problems at all.

The Humax Foxsat HDR has "jump" as well, two presses of the button gets you through most ad breaks.