I notice that the Humax Freesat PVR has a CAT5 connection which has been labelled as "for future". I am thinking of getting one and hoping I can connect it to a PC with XP Professional running, and being able to see the drive - anyone out there tried it?

It has not been enabled yet. It is part of the Freesat spec - for the iPlayer and other services.

Bob has mentioned the possibility of, say FTP being implemented (for transfer of recordings off the HDD), but this not definite.

This won't work at the moment but we all have high hopes that eventually the HDR will have at least an FTP facility that can be accessed by PCs on the network.

SMB would be even nicer though

Hi
Thanks for your responses. When you say that this is not enabled, does that mean that there are no menu functions at all (i.e. to set up IP addresses).
If that's the case would I be looking to install a firmware update later, when it is enabled?

Updates are automatic, it will receive it over the air when it happens, no need for you to do anything.

Actually there are menu entries there to set the IP address etc. But currently that is all there is. The lowest levels of the networking stack are obviously present in the current firmware as the device will request an IP address from the DHCP server and will respond to ICMP messages (pings) - however this is all that is there.
The new functionality (when it comes) will be enabled by a firmware update.

What i'd love to be able to do via the Ethernet port is; connect to a web server running on the box and be able to browse the EPG and set scheduled recordings. That would be cool

I'd also like Digiguide to be able to set recordings via this ethernet port. Now that would be handy.