Originally Posted by 2Bdecided:
“Has the writer ever used Freesat before?!”
Clearly not or they would know that 365 or whatever it's called is available on Humax but strangely is absent from the on demand menu here.
Quote:
“Wow - automatically offering the option to record HD and series - haven't had that on my existing Freesat box for three years! 
”
What it does not do is automatically opt for the HD version of all the catchup services. Unlike YouView, you have to set that up in each of the apps.
Quote:
“It takes five seconds for my existing Humax box to display a simple text list of programmes I've recorded, and goodness knows how many seconds to delete an hour-long HD programme. Those people who think the original Humax could run something like Google Chrome (or whatever the equivalent for set top boxes is) if only Freesat would update it, must be living in cloud cuckoo land
Interesting to see the vitriol on Freesat's facebook feed for daring to launch an improvement that can't be back-ported to the original boxes. People really are strange.”
Precisely. In time scale terms you are looking at a Windows Vista PC attempting to run Windows 8 with all its features.
Quote:
“It'll be interesting to see how it compares to YouView. I guess we'll have to wait for real users to get their hands on it before we know - most of the problems with YouView discussed here were missed by the press.
Cheers,
David.”
Well the IPTV option they have chosen is widely touted as the "established system used Europe wide" as opposed to the newer MHEG-IC used by Youview. This appear to not allow them the full integration of catchup services and your own recording in the "backwards" epg ("bepg"?) or in the individual programme information.
With Youview your recordings show up as such on the bepg. <free time> changes to show only the channel you are going back in and only the programmes available via catchup.
Youview now shows previous episodes available on catchup as an extra page on the Information Plate (Humax's term in previous boxes' manual) popup. This now also has space for thumbnail still and a detailed "genre" description of the programme strand as well as a sysnopsis of the individual programme.
This <free time> box allows "hunt and peck" text entry in addition to the SMS type input currrently only available on Youview (SMS entry is far quicker in my experience)
<free time> has more options to order your recordings including folders but the folders have wierd timings. It appears it list the duration of one programme rather than the total time - hence 9 episodes of Monk are shown lasting 55 minutes. What happens to shows with a feature length pilot?
<free time> has catchup from the BBC and ITV with 4OD and Demand 5 "coming soon" (I've heard that before from Humax when it took them from the October press presentation and April release of the HD Fox T2 to the following January to officially add USB recording). Youview has those available now plus Milkshake (children's content from 5), STV player in Scotland, NowTV from Sky for paid movies and BT Vision for their bb customers.
Both boxes give "recommended" programmes but the Youview version is related to catchup only and is listed by categories such as films, adult etc.
The Humax <free time> uses an external power brick whereas their Youview's is internal - ghost of the infamous blowing power supply capacitors in the HD Foxsat?
By the way I note that unlike the Foxsat HDR, there is no external "pass through" for the dish signal. Presumably that makes watching or recording more than one channel impossible for those with a only one dish feed available (so I won't be getting one!)
