I thought this would be an easy thing to find but it is a nightmare. All i want is a Freeview HD box that will let me record HD and SD programmes to a choice of its own hard drive or a USB stick so i can watch programmes on my laptop. The nearest i have found is this but it is not HD.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Grundig-GUDB...1994531&sr=8-3

Freeview-HD boxes encrypt HD content so to do this with HD content you need either a PC solution (usb DVB-T2 tuner stick - eg http://www.conrad-uk.com/ce/en/produ...FfLLtAoduzUAqQ) or a Freeview pvr that is capable of de-crypting the content on copying. The Humax HDR FOX T2 running the free custom firmware will do what you want.

Some TV's have an integrated USB record function, will these not record HD progs ?

Yes they will, but again it's recorded encrypted - and in at least some cases is locked to the TV that recorded it.

So you can only play back on the same TV ?

I found this BTW

http://www.flatpanelshd.com/focus.ph...&id=1309266060

Yes, only on the specific set that recorded it.

Yes this encryption seems to be a real pain.

grahamlthompson... Does the Humax HDR FOX T2 have the record to USB stick facility? I looked at this box but it has very mixed reviews.

The problem with these DVB-T2 tuner sticks is the aerial supplied with them is virtually useless and i don't have the option of connecting a roof top aerial.

It records to it's own hard drive, after recording you can copy the recordings to usb. No Freeview-HD recorder of any description is likely to work without a proper aerial.

I have a communal Sky dish on the roof (i live in flats). I have been subscribing to Sky but now i have twin babies i don't get time to watch the football, which was the only reason i subscribed. Its not really worth paying for television now so i'm looking for a Freeview recorder. My television has Freeview built in but it can't record. I might look at Freesat instead but i will still need something to record onto.

Foxsat-hdr also running custom firmware will also do what you want. If your TV has working freeview you must already have a working arial. Easy enough to use this to feed a usb tuner.

Chinese -- there are a number of generic DVB-T2 boxes on eBay and elsewhere which record to USB and have no encryption.

The one downside is that the EPGs don't work on HD as the BBC have implemented an obfuscation algorithm on the HD EPG data, which only manufacturers who agree to encrypt HD recordings have access to.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HD-DVB-T2-...item4abfad29d6

This will do it -- I have one.

Thats no good, I can't read russian

ok.. a really daft question... is HD actually that really noticeable on a laptop screen as they are small. And doesn't your laptop have to have an HD screen to make use of the video being played in HD.

The box has an English option

Laptops have HD screens, why would you think they don't?.

You could also connect it to your TV (via VGA or HDMI, depending on the laptop), if you want a decent size picture.

Even tablets these days have more pixels than a HD TV.

See

http://www.apple.com/uk/ipad/feature...6-20f223adf54a

Actually its a question its not a personal opinion. so me thinking that "they do not" is irrelevant
.
Also in regards to a tablet having more pixels then a tv the image is still smaller compared to a tv, so is it really noticeable a sd picture compared to a HD picture on a for example a 7" tablet screen or 9.7". What I would like to know is it that noticeable, do you actually see the difference? if you plugged it into a big tv then you would see the difference..
for example some phone company tried selling me a phone with a really high resolution screen on a phone... and i thought does it really make any difference are you really going to notice the difference or not on a 5 " screen..

Of course you notice - no matter what the screen size - as long as you view from the correct distance then you get the full effect of the screens resolution.

The only advantage of a larger screen is that you can watch from further away.

If you watch a small screen from too far away, you lose most of the higher resolution advantage, but still get a slightly better picture because of the higher bandwidth of the HD programme.

The image quality on my Asus 10" high res Android tablet is infinetely superior to my 10" Samsung Netbook. Used to watch blu-ray or high res photo images the pictures are sensational.

Your thinking is clearly based on zero techical knowledge and zero actual experience.

Go and look closely at a high res tablet display there are dozens in the shops.

Actually how do you know my back ground and know of my experience.
It was a question, no matter how much you decided to prejudge me.

Thank you Nigel Goodwin for explaining this to me, it makes some sort of sense.

It was perfectly clear from your post that you have never seen a small very high resolution small display. If you had you would never have made the post.

Like any other bitmapped display the picture doesn't have to fit the display. All such displays including TV's have to scale the incoming signal to match the screen resolution (up or down), if they did not you wouldn't get a full picture.

Take SD TV which is normally 720 x 576 pixels viewed on a FULL-HD 1920 x 1080 TV. The TV will scale the 720 x 576 pixels up to 1920 x 1080 (guess the missing pixels). If you do the reverse and show a blu-ray film from a blu-ray player on a SD TV the blu-ray player has SD analogue outputs which downscale the 1920 x 1080 pixels on the disc to 720 x 576 pixels (and also change the framerate from 24 to 25fps)