You are mistaken concerning the 2 year warranty not being taken into account. John Lewis changed their conditions for price matching 5 years ago.
Have a look at the Jogn Lewis terms and conditions on the second tab on this link http://www.johnlewis.com/inspiration...dersold-policy

For an explanation of how this is interpreted including a quote of what a John Lewis representative had to say about the change see this news article
http://www.johnlewis.com/inspiration...dersold-policy

A few other reports from different news papers are also still available online but they all essentially say the same.

You are mistaken in your reply to my comment about the length of warranty currently offered by by John Lewis on the FVP-4000T. John Lewis include a 2 year warranty on many of their electrical products and that currently includes the FVP-4000T. What that means is that if bought from John Lewis the purchase would are covered by:
(1) the new Consumer Rights Act;
(2) the John Lewis 2 year warranty;
(3) and if you complete the Humax registration and keep the receipt, the 2 year Humax warranty.

John Lewis could take the stand that their warranty gives the buyer something extra and therefore it will be very difficult to find a comparable product else where to satisfy John Lewis's terms and conditions for their price promise guarantee.

I can only speak about my own experiences, but Huwei, Vestel and my Sony TV don't include the whole epg for the multiplex in its ts files. and therefore are more space efficient than the Humax freeview+ and at least the youview+ DTR-T2100 models.

I also had an old Segam standard definition recorder and if I recall correctly its recording size was the same size as an old Vestel I had at the time and therefore would not have contained any epg at all in its ts recording files.

I was just pointing out that a 2 year warranty is available when purchasing from anywhere if you register it on the Humax site, so JL is not exclusive.

It will be covered by the CRA wherever it is purchased from.

Don't know what, if anything, is different between the 2 warranties.

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Not sure what you are thinking about there: can you provide an example of hardware lock down? I would say that it is the software that needs to be locked down to thwart attempts to develop custom firmware. Certainly the people who have looked at recent Humax models, say that Humax have made software changes to make it much more difficult to produce custom software.

How does the inferior JL extended warranty add 'something extra' to the manufacturers real 2 year guarantee?.

You'll have to buy one and read the open source software notice provided.....It's of no real interest to me so I can't be bothered (the print is very small!!).
Here is the Freeview Play Technical Summary, just as a matter of interest.

I very much doubt it does. But John Lewis could claim that it does in real terms. E.g. For the Humax guarantee you have to register and not every one does, for the John Lewis guarantee it automatically comes with the purchase; John Lewis are therefore supplying a 2 year guarantee even if the purchaser does not register with Humax.

Managed to get one from Argos today, easy to set up and seems to be working fine, pausing tv excellent,, recording hopefully will be just as good

One question how future proof is this freeview play? is it going to last or is there a chance i could be wasting my money if this doesn't take off

Feeview playback had two incarnations.
Freeview+ and freeview+ HD had a few incarnations. The initial freeview+ HD requirement did not include the capability of IPTV, the last did.
Freeview Play is planned to be similar to freeview+ in that it will evolve over the next 5 years.

Different manufacturers treat evolution differently. Humax track record is to semi keep up with changes but not fix some bugs which some of us think of as show stoppers. Vestel's track record is not to add new features to existing models but to remove severe bugs and bring out new models to cover any extra features introduced by an evolving standard.

But to answer your question if you mean that if you buy a freeview play recorder or receiver will it be future proof then the answer is absolutely not. No one has a crystal ball. Look at the original freeview specification and what happened with split nits and other changes to what is broadcast. It is just not feasible for a manufacturer to cater and test for all possibilities which have been defined in the standards due to cost, let alone cater for changes which aren't defined yet.

As the plan is for more TV's to have Freeview Play installed in the future, It'll probably be around and develop for quite a while. However, any argument or viewpoint either way would be pure guesswork.

Back to the UI.....No idea why the recorded programme thumbnails(?) need to be so large. Looks like they've catered well for the partially sighted there.
The channel logos on the guide are awful and take up too much room. This means that less channels are shown per page on the screen.
Every function takes two more clicks than is necessary.

Giving it until the end of the week to make my mind up.

I agree with you regarding the thumbnails and logos,but it is very early days. YouView gives the option of removing logos,and future software updates could well give FVP owners the option to do the same. I'm sure the developers trawl through forums like this to find out owners opinions,and could well act on what they read,as it is in their interest to make this product a success. Mine is staying for the brilliant HD PQ alone,and viewing is 99.9% of the experience.

I have to agree that to my untrained eye the picture quality is superb.

Despite my initial reservations I decided to audition the FVP-4000T and was much impressed. The screenshots that have been posted don't really do the UI justice and I've seen very few examples of lag or sluggishness. I'm guessing the poster had a faulty unit or TV setup issues as the UI is bold and clear.

I'll give my initial thoughts and then some more detail after I've used it for a while:

Setup was straightforward and quick. It discovered a software update immediately . I had no HDMI issues at all. Pressing the power button on the Humax remote brings the TV on and from then I only need to use the Humax remote.

The UI is almost completely overhauled. Pressing HOME brings up an overlay across the bottom of the screen which rotates into view. Move left or right to select options and down to access recent channels/apps. Coming from a FOXT2 it took a short while to acclimatise but I found very little slowness or lag (more to come on this).
The remote is much better in real life than the photos would suggest and its clear a great deal of thought has gone into it. The back has a guide to make sure that your hand is in the right place for one handed operation. ( if you prefer two handed operation then it may be less optimal). There is a reassuring cluck when you press an action button. The text/number buttons are softer so that entering channel numbers or text into the search box is quiet. I was genuinely surprised by it.
The TV guide is clear and I found that the reverse EPG worked on ITV and C4. However, ITV and C4 do not make as much of their programming available on demand as the BBC does. This may well explain why initially it was thought catch up was not working on those channels.
It's clear that the UI and guide are internet enhanced and I believe reports of slowness may be due to lower broadband speeds. For example when I press OK on a programme in the guide it takes about half a second for the enhanced programme info to download. As an experiment I connected the box to a Three mobile broadband hotspot. This time it took about two seconds for the information to appear which could be unacceptable. The box states in big letters that you must have at least a 2Mb/s connevtion.
However, during setup you can choose to not use the enhanced guide if you wish.
If you wanted you could operate the major functions of the box using just OK and the arrow keys as on-screen controls for play pause stop rewind etc are available a la iPlayer.

On the negative side it seems odd that the remote has space for AD and SUB buttons but not for a button to access the recordings list. It turned out not to be a huge problem for me because I realised that on the FOXT2 I would spend a second or so hunting for the media button. For some the text size will be too big.

This is my early impressions and I will report back when I have had the chance to fully explore the box. If you are an existing Humax customer then be prepared for the box to be different to what you are used to.

I wish I knew how to turn that enhanced guide off because it really is terrible (I wonder if the software update added that in, because I don't remember seeing the option to disable). If it's downloading information every time then no wonder it seems slow. My internet is fast enough to stream TV though, so would love to know if that's the cause.

I believe the speed stated on the box refers to being able to stream the programmes, that being the whole point of Freeview play.

Have to disagree about the remote, it's terrible. That reassuring click is an irritating noise on too many of the buttons, I use a Harmony remote anyway so it's something that doesn't affect my use.

I will agree with a previous poster about the HD quality, the picture quality on HD does seem amazing, best I have seen on any 'live' TV broadcasts.

I think this proves what Barry said over on My Humax. It's very much a Marmite device you'll either love it or hate it.

My initial impressions surprised me as going from some of the comments I had half expected a grey low contrast display and slow UI.

Of course time will tell and I will report back when I have had a chance to properly test it.

One minor annoyance is that if SWMBO accidentally unplugs the router ! the FVP-4000T does not subsequently auto reconnect (wireless) .

Thanks for the review prking.
Can you confirm or otherwise that you can create folders like you can on the Fox T2?
Also on playing a recording does it have the skip forward/backward a fixed number of seconds like the Fox T2 (unlike the Sky remote where you can only fast forward/back which is horrible!)?

Has anyone found out how to get skip forward / back working?

It seems there are no dedicated buttons for this on the supplied remote. Are there some codes that can be used on a Harmony remote?

Is this what you mean:
With no dedicated skip buttons on the remote....

During playback display the timebar - eg by pressing play/OK button, with this on screen, and the elapsed time highlighted you can skip fwd/back using the cursor right/left buttons.

Option for duration of skip can be set in the playback menu:

Back - 7, 15, & 30secs
Forward - 30, 60, 120, & 240secs.

Well I have been through the entire setup again to see if the new software had added anything but there is no way to turn off the supposed enhanced guide mentioned by prking.

I have just tried the BBC red button+ on the F1 and I'm liking that.

The function of the box is good, I just can't get over the slow response time. Scroll forward in the guide and click on a programme, the 'please wait' bar at the top, even for a split second is seriously offputting and unnecessary as far as I'm concerned.

I also still can't find any scroll back data for programmes other than BBC ones. Prking, can you let me know of a programme on channel 4 that you can scroll back and watch so I can at least see if it works.

How quaint! Takes me back to my first ever PVR, the Humax 8000T.

Thanks for that. I wonder how well that would work with a Harmony macro? Exit -> Play -> Cursor Right / Left? I suspect the inter-key lag would make that annoying. Or could you lose the initial Exit (ensuring it is in a known state) and Play always displays the playbar while playing a recording?

That looks like a copy and paste from the myhumax forum 4000T FAQ published over 2 months ago, so credit should be given.

Terry, Barry over at myhumax has updated his post on this stating there is data for itv and c4 sd channels perhaps you would like to check .

That's great thanks, the info for ITV and C4 is only on the SD channels whereas BBC show theirs on the HD ones too.

As I watch HD I was scrolling back from there and finding nothing, bit of an annoyance but hopefully something that can be sorted.

That's because the BBC have a HD version of iplayer, the others do not.

It's the same as Freetime satellite boxes.