Had ours 2+ years 1tb supposed to be refurb but was brand new no probs at all. Now have 2 hols a year after telling Sky to shove it robbing B*****ds

You can compare Freeview and Freesat channels here

https://ukfree.tv/channels/all

Have a closer look.

Seems quite expensive for a 1TB Freeview for £139 which is a refurb.
As prices of TV's are falling faster than a dead pigeon from the sky, why are set top boxes going up in price instead of falling too ??

Thanks did this on the FoxSAT unit and it worked fine, took me a few goes this is a longer guide if anyone has issues.
Many thanks! Remember the newer YouView units are locked to code set 1 so you need to select a number from 2 to 6. The default for the FoxSAT is code set one same as the new YouView units.
https://community.youview.com/youview/topics/conflict_of_humax_remotes

No

There is a secret to avoid the BT TV (or any Humax conflict) :smiley: with the BT TV box powered off, and your Humax box on, press and hold OK and 0 on the Humax remote for 5 seconds. You should get a prompt on screen to change the remote channel (frequency) - press between 2-5) and your done! Works great, and Logitech Harmony remotes recognise this too :sunglasses:

Freesat set-top boxes with record seems to be a niche market, with Humax seeming to have the most products. There seems to be Bush and Manhattan offering lower cost options.

Freesat advertise these ones, including a Sagecom.

http://www.freesat.co.uk/get-freesat/all-boxes

Same here but with 2 new Freesat boxes. They kept going off. For some unknown reason, after 30 to 45 minutes they list power. I returned the first one and swapped it. When the second one did the same, I just asked for a refund. I am ditching sky and need a reliable Freesat recorder. Any advice?

do the Astra channels include sport?

You need to plug in an external hard drive via the USB ports on the back to enable the pause/record features

Guys the HB-1000S am I supposed to be able to pause TV as it's not working or the rewind etc?

Not sure the Humax one is "This HUMAX Wifi Dongle connects your box to the internet with out the need for an Ethernet cable High data transfer rate - up to 300Mbps Supports windows XP, 2000, Vista, Win7, Win 8 Linux 2.4/2.6 -----THIS IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH THE HB-1000S MODEL--" a quote from their website.

Humax boxes will only work with Humax WiFi dongle.

For the catch up TV, it has two inputs for internet connection,i tried two usb wifi dongles which don't work.
Humax recommend to use a homeplug if you can't plug directly to your router,something like this [url=https://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-LINK-TL-PA411KIT-Powerline-Adapter-Starter/dp/B0084Y9N3O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1463227557&sr=8-1&keywords=homeplug]Your text hereLINK[/url]

Hi can anyone tell me why the boxes need broadband? Is it for the catch up TV? Just cancelled sky TV and in the market for a one of these boxes. I'm pretty sure my sky + box didn't have a cable to access Internet. To get a cable would be a bit of a hassle as the Internet is set up in another part of the house. Any advice please?

Thanks madfrankie. Bought a 500Gb HDR-1100S for £40 less than normal RRP with the reassurance of the manufacturers warranty that I wouldn't have got buying secondhand off eBay which is what I had been thinking of doing, :smiley:

PSU definitely faulty, so not a good start, but they were nice on the phone and are posting me out a new one without having to return the whole thing. Can't fault the customer support service.

Result.

I love the usability of Humax boxes, but I'm on my 3rd Humax box now (in 5 years or so). When the power supply was inside the box I think this caused a problem with overheating and damage to the hard drive.
The latest box has an external power supply, so hopefully will solve this.

Brought box from the website couple years ago. Refurbished and still going strong. Then tried to buy another for the bedroom and found they had stopped selling refurbished online so had to pay full price from another website. Humax boxes do not seem to suffer from software issues like others. Both mine rarely have a problem. I can download programs to my box and then put them on the hard drive via Ethernet cable to watch on the TV. Far better than messing about with chromecast

I got a couple of the PVR 1000 first one fine, second one was having issues with recording. I ran ran some checks on the drive (took it out and connect to a PC) bad sectors - Ran Spinrite on it. Reinstalled all fine. Both units now >4 years old used daily.

A couple of things about the Humax units

1) Picture quality is MUCH better than the units built into most TV (I've a Sony and the SAT image on the Humax is much better than the TV's SAT tuner) I fact I'd say of all the receivers the Humax picture quality on FreeSAT is very good. Audio is flawless
2) The Humax units I've seen are really well made and they run cool with virtually no noise except for the HD
3) On some model you can connect a USB drive and copy programs off the disk. However HD recordings are encrypted. The cheapest way to record unencrypted HD is with a Raspberry Pi and MyGiga DVB-2 USB stick £14 with a TV Antenna.
4) Remotes work well but Humax make the BT TV box so if you have one of these you need to only have one device on at a time.
5) If you are used to Sky you might be surprised how good the picture is and the units are cool to the touch!
6) The Power supply is built into the box and is well made I've had Humax kit that is 8 years old still going strong!
7) The newer humax models support on demand TV and you can push Youtube from your phone to the Humax (Andriod) not sure about other Phones.
:sunglasses: The older PVR TV units can use modified firmware allowing FreeSAT channels and unencrypted Astra in the same channel list. (There will be no or series record EPG for non FreeSAT channels)

Great find! Heat++

Also had my Humax Freesat HDR for around 8 years now and it's never skipped a beat. Loaded customised firmware so it's accessible on my network. Great bit of kit.

Run for the hills rather than touch Humax. I’ve had 3 Humax Freeview PVR – Yes I’m an optimist...
PVR 1: Humax PVR-9300T randomly used to do a ‘factory reset’ where all the recording timer settings were deleted without warnings, so nothing got recorded. Humax tech support unable to cure problem.
PVR 2: Humax DTR-T1000 would take up to 3 hours to actually switch on to be able to watch TV, yet it was recording in the background. Humax tech support unable to cure problem.
PVR 3 Humax Freeview Play FVP-4000T even though had 3 tuners, unless turned on first, once a recording started it would not turn on. Forever locking up at switch on, displaying a blackscreen, so each time it needed to be re-booted by un-plugging the power plug from the back, and rather being put neatly out of the way, the machine had to be sited within easy reach. Pressing the remote control 'Home' or a numerical key sometimes switches the machine OFF. The remote is so dumbed-down it is ridiculously lacking in facilities. There is no 'info' button on the remote, so apart from the programme title in the Guide you have no idea what you are watching. Without a front panel clock/programme name or channel number displayed you have to press the Guide button to find out what you are watching. An indicator LED on the front panel defies logic: when the machine is OFF it is red, changing to blue when the machine is ON, unless something is recording then the LED remains red. If a programme is recording with the machine OFF [LED red], when you try to turn the machine ON the LED remains red, so you press the ON key again not realising you actually turning it OFF again, as the LED will not go blue. Freeview Play catch-up TV only applies to BBC 1 – 4, ITV, C4 and Demand 5: so it did not catch-up on Dave, Yesterday, Pick TV etc.

Had my recordable freesat box since launch date Nov 2008 and had no problems with it what so ever. If that's what you mean by **** then my advice is buy, buy, buy.

The HDR-1010S has Wi-Fi built in - mine is connected that way right now, without any additional dongle.

That said, the HDR-1010S is not bad, but I find the interface really laggy. Compared with Sky+ HD box and BT TV boxes anyhow.

Other nice touch with the Humax Wi-Fi connected boxes is that you can cast YouTube from your smart device directly to the Human box - avoiding navigating via the remote!

I forgot you can't get Quest on freesat, didn't know about Dave though, how can anyone live without salvage hunters and American Pickers! :smile:

Personally I prefer the Freeview platform now that Channel 5 HD has just started.
A few others that I noticed.

4seven HD : Freeview YES - freesat NO

Channel 4+1 HD : Freeview YES - freesat NO

Dave : Freeview YES - freesat NO

Dave ja vu : Freeview YES - freesat NO

Quest / Quest+1 : Freeview YES - freesat NO

freesat has more music channels and more +1 channels but there really isn't a big difference.

I also purchased the HB-1000S (set me back £46 inc ndd shipping), was very happy with the products appearance as seemed brand new, I thought perhaps they made a mistake unfortunately it didn't last 2 months. contacted the customer service this morning. Seems to be a hit and a miss with humaxdirect I'll keep yous updated with their resolution - to which I am expecting to be smacked with some more inconvenience.

​Got one refurbished from here few years ago for my mum, she records everything going and it's still going strong.

Had my humax foxsat 8 years and had zero problems.

Not quite fair, I think. I've been using various Humaces for more than 10 years now, and by and large they're pretty reliable. They do tend to have a working life of not much more than three years, though, but that's probably not so uncommon for this sort of thing. And I do use them pretty intensively - very little live TV for a very long time.

​mine lasted 2 days and i paid £145. problem also with humax is their customer service dept only does a 9-5.30 mon Friday. worst service ever took over 2 weeks to get my refund. they are cheap but forums state refurbs not done properly. i ended up buying new from Currys in the end.

But the 1010s CAN do live pause and rewind!

1010s does have inbuilt wifi

Some misunderstandings above: in fact, the Freesat 1010s for £139 has two tuners, 1tb storage, wifi and CAN pause live tv. Which is (for me at least) a great direct replacement for the Sky box. Though the family hates me, as they now can't watch Sky's excellent content...! (Which isn't worth the £90 we were paying and anyway can't be spending that much on channels when the free channels are excellent, so tough it out family!) :smirk:

There's a good reason why the Humax's are refurbished... (Because they're **** and they always break)

Bought twice from Humaxdirect in about 4 years. First was a HD-Fox-T2 Freeview (add a USB drive and it becomes an HDR) and the one that arrived on Tuesday was a Humax HDR-1100S 500GB Freesat.

The Freeview always has this ghosting problem, like encryption scrambling around the edges of images when the USB device is plugged in, but a few power offs and on fixes it. Without the USB it works as it should every time.

The Freesat gave me a shock tonight, as it appeared to have powered itself off. PSU showed no green light, after swapping cables and everything, leaving the PSU unplugged for 10 minutes, and trying again it came back to life.

The "Graded" stuff is a bit hit and miss, though it does come with the same 1 year guarantee.

You pays your money and takes your choice, but Freesat has way more interesting channels than Freeview.

Had ours 2+ years 1tb supposed to be refurb but was brand new no probs at all. Now have 2 hols a year after telling Sky to shove it robbing B*****ds

My humax freesat box is 2 years old now, purchased from humax direct as a refurbished model and not experienced any issues.

£139 is a cracking price!

Seems quite expensive for a 1TB Freeview for £139 which is a refurb.
As prices of TV's are falling faster than a dead pigeon from the sky, why are set top boxes going up in price instead of falling too ??

Bought a 1tb wifi free sat For £139 - bargain. Got rid of sky but the Mrs can't live without live pause and rewind!

I have a Fox T2 which is getting a bit long in the tooth (Freeview HD). Are there any worthy upgrades? I'm sure I've read of a few issues with newer Humax boxes.

IIRC - the HDR-1000S and 1010S support Wi-fi by adding a USB adapter. The HDR-1100S has it built-in. Apart from that, I believe the internal hardware and software is pretty much identical.

this one does, although a bit more expensive
http://www.humaxdirect.co.uk/refurbished/hdr-1010s-1tb-31ef52.html

I have 2 of the freesat HDR-1000S .Both replaced Sky boxes.Both record perfectly, although one does have an annoying fan noise at times!

any Humax owners out there - I have a HDR Fox Recorder - it places series recording in folders akin to a Windows PC. The folders can be moved, renamed & copied to USB. - can anyone anyone tell me of a later Humax version that does the same thing?

I have, they still dont have wifi built in.

Has anybody bought one of these in the past?
Do they last?

You can compare Freeview and Freesat channels here

https://ukfree.tv/channels/all

You can get this for £49.99 @Bargaincrazy.com with £10 off a £30 spend (code W1030) and only £3-95 delivery so £43.94 in total rather than £46.00.

Shame they dont have wifi

Couldn't tell that these aren't brand new, my refurbished Humax HDR-1000S is brilliant

Had my Humax box years yes use with scart socket never had any problems at all

Good find Op, does a usb wifi dongle work on the the HB-1000s?

Bought a refurb box from humax direct 2 years ago. Looked like a brand new unopened box and contents. No problems with it. :-)

Bought two freeview boxes at Christmas, had to return both. They kept missing recordings due to signal loss (tv & other freeview boxes ok) and one suffered from an annoying vibration rattle noise linked to hdd activity.