Viewing 18 posts - 1 through 18 (of 18 total)
  • Freesat box…. worth a go over sky?
  • renton
    Free Member

    We are moving house and rather than pay sky monthly we are considering getting a freesat hd box.

    do any of you on here use them and if so can you recommend a model to look at.

    also how does it compare to sky ?

    cheers

    steve

    JPcapel
    Free Member

    I did just this.
    The view is that the freesat picture is slightly better than FreeviewHD.
    I would also say the HD channels on freesat are slightly crisper than Sky HD. Most do series record like Sky+.
    We got this box and its been great.
    http://www.falconsat.co.uk/products/Humax-FOXSAT-HDR-500GB-Freesat-Twin-Tuner-PVR.html
    You can watch a channel and record another, so it needs 2 lines down from the dish, which if you have Sky+ you will already have.

    I have then combined our freeview and blu ray player into this (to cut down on the number of appliances underneath the TV):
    Panasonic DMR BS880EBK

    Freesat doesnt include DAVE, which was a shame as quite like monging to re-runs of topgear.

    Hope this helps, I hated how much Sky ended up costing per month, just doesnt seem like value for money IMO.

    Mounty_73
    Full Member

    We have just bought 2 freesat box’s, dropping sky, over priced and not value for money IMO.

    Bought a couple of chead SD box’s from Argos…..setting them up today…

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    randomjeremy
    Free Member

    Swapped out SKY+ HD for a freesat box the same as JPCapel.

    The user interface is pretty awful compared to the SKY one, slower and less intuitive. It does support iPlayer though which is cool.

    Worth it overall? Yes, no more bills for watching crappy TV!

    kimbers
    Full Member

    glad people are finally emerging from being murdoch zombies

    tadeuszkrieger
    Free Member

    I’ve got the Humax, and yup, the interface is a bit crappy, but other than that I’m happy with it and I’d buy another one.

    Not had Sky, so no idea about that.

    Papa_Lazarou
    Free Member

    we’ve got the above humax foxsat and I really like it, works well and no giving cash to Sky.

    sharkbait
    Free Member

    I keep thinking about ditching Sky but can’t quite bring myself to do it yet. We don’t pay for a lot but tend to only watch bits of Sky1 as well as the usuall BBC1/2, ITV and Ch4. My girls watch quite a bit of ‘American crap’ kids stuff as well 🙁

    We also get Movies for free as they forgot to switch it off when I cancelled 2 years ago.

    But last night my 11 yo daughter wanted to watch Hawaii Five O but it wasn’t on, so she watched it via AppleTV and I used it to watch some Modern Family later on.

    Lord Sugar mentioned a new service that was starting next year so I’ll hang on and see what that is.

    cranberry
    Free Member

    I’ve recently installed the Humax box – upped the hard drive to 2Tb – it is excellent.

    The next step will be to jailbreak it so that I can properly access the FTP server on it and copy files from the box to my laptop for watching away from home.

    thegreatape
    Free Member

    I would concur with what randomjeremy and tadeuszkrieger said about the interface – it’s a bit clumsy and slow to react.

    Other than that, no complaints.

    datsunman
    Full Member

    Echo the above, just ditched Sky+/HD for a Humax FreeSat box.

    I bought a refurbed box from http://www.humaxdirect.co.uk for £188, comes with the smaller disk but I’m not overly fussed about that, can always replace it at a later date.

    My only regret so far is losing ITV4 HD, TdF in SD now. 🙁

    convert
    Full Member

    The next step will be to jailbreak it so that I can properly access the FTP server on it and copy files from the box to my laptop for watching away from home.

    What will the advantage be? I’ve been happily dropping recordings from my humax on to an external hdd to play on my macbook no bother.

    re Freesat – never had sky but moved to freesat from freeview to get access to iplayer on a big screen. A few losses on the fringe channels but otherwise good. If Eurosport could just divorce themselves from Murdoch and broadcast on the freebies as on the continent I’d be happy as.

    woody2000
    Full Member

    I have a Technisat HDFS which seems pretty good so far. Single tuner only, but it has iPlayer support (and ITV player when it finally arrives), and you can stick a USB HDD on it and use it as a PVR. Pic quality is good on HD and SD, and the UI isn’t too bad either. Just need to get myself a standard aerial put in for the Freeview built into the TV and I’ll be able to watch 1 channel on Freeview whilst recording another on Freesat. 🙂

    tonyd
    Full Member

    We switched from Sky and bought a Humax a few years ago, for the amount of TV we watch it’s fine. As above, interface is clunky but you don’t watch that!

    I didn’t realise you could get iPlayer on it, or is that just later models?

    randomjeremy
    Free Member

    tonyd have a look on the back of the box, it should have an ethernet port – I hook mine up to my broadband via some Homeplugs and it works fine. To get Iplaye you tune to BBC(one?) and press the red button, it should show up. I don’t know whether you have to have already plugged it into your network for this to show up when you press the red button though.

    cranberry
    Free Member

    Convert:

    Some details of what the jailbreak software offers here.

    spooky_b329
    Full Member

    Interested 🙂

    I don’t generally watch stuff on the mainstream channels, not interested in drama’s etc. I tend to stick to the discovery channels, stuff like Flying Wild Alaska and other documentary adventury type stuff.

    Any channels on Freesat that do repeats of this sort of stuff?

    Finally, Freesat+ HD box needs four coax’s to the dish doesn’t it?

    cranberry
    Free Member

    I’ve not found the Discovery Channel on Freesat.

    The Humax box requires 2 coax inputs in order to be able to watch and record simultaneously.

Viewing 18 posts - 1 through 18 (of 18 total)

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