Been Humax’d up for well over 10 years (9200T then 9300T) and while we supplement recording stuff off Freeview with Chromecasts, Amazon Prime etc (but no desire for other TV services), we still prefer to manage our own recordings from the Freeview EPG rather than having to access different apps of variable capabilities to get to the same shows (some of which expire before you remember to go and watch them).

Was recently gifted a Humax YouView box off a mate (who is on here, *waves*) but it was very flaky and kept crashing so has been ditched but if it had worked it seemed to be a reasonably good way to do things.

What should I be looking at? Is YouView any good if the hardware works? Is there a better alternative? People seem to have Blurays with HDDs, do I need to break out and move on from Humax? People seem very loyal to them but they also seem to die (or at least go iffy) prematurely. Thanks for any thoughts!

I had a samsung combined blu-ray & PVR which was excelent, but it recently died. I replaced it with a combined panasonic unit (PWT-550), which also included freeview play.

Its shit. properly gopping. The EPG is slow and because some dimwit failed to include a cache for the EPG, it demands internet connectivity all the smegging time. It can take two or three minutes to scroll from channel 1 to channel 200. Purely becasue the page refreshes take so long.

The remote appears to have been designed by blunderbus and the watch-anything-you’ve-recorded-anywhere functionality refuses to correctly negotiate with my broadband’s uPNP firewall.

Avoid.

I’ve an old TalkTalk branded YouView box I still use for recordings off the EPG, as you say it’s better than using All4 or ITV Player, and doesn’t have iPlayer’s time restrictions. And films are very often not available on catch up at all.

I think the box is Huawei under the skin, it’s not great but perfectly adequate for my needs and the YouView interface is common across different hardware anyway. It’s been going for about 6 years or so and when it breaks I’ll probably just get another cheaply off ebay.

I got a Thomson PVR about 13 years ago that worked amazingly for 10 years. It was very intuitive. And best of all was that it continually recorded the channel you were currently watching and also the last channel you watched too. So you could flick between adverts or quickly check a football score. Sadly it eventually stopped updating the EPG.

The YouView in comparison is utter rubbish. I’ve got a Hunax one, but they are all the same.

I stuck with Humax given our first Humax was 10 odd years old and still going …got a T2000 to replace it from Richer Sounds: first unit was replaced in its first year under warranty which was disappointing but second is going strong for now; glad i paid the little extra to have 5 years warranty!

Got a Humax T2000 here too. High-capacity version (1TB).

Decent box. Not YouView so not all buggy. I don’t use the Smart TV stuff because I usually do all that via Apple TV +phone/tablet.

So there’s a 2000T (Freeview+) and a T2000 (YouView) both around the same sort of price point. Are we saying the 2000T (ie. not YouView) is the recommendation? I can probably completely live without YouView and if the box “just works” all the better! 😉

Thanks all for passing on your help and experience.

Didn’t realise they did a non-Youview version of T2000! Mine is the Youview version and it works fine (albeit on box two)…no freezing & not laggy, just does what its got to do. Also like the fact i can link it with the Youview app on my smartphone and send recording requests remotely

and it works fine (albeit on box two)…no freezing & not laggy

You do know that’s the Humax equivalent of saying “…I’ve not had a puncture in two years” don’t you? 😉

BT Youview box here, and it’s excellent. It’s a Humax under the skin – checking my ebay history it was sold as a T2100 – I don’t know what the difference is compared with a T2000, but it genuinely works really well, have never had any freezing or lagging and the UI does a good job of integrating recording and smart features. TBH even though I have other ways of doing smart stuff the Youview box is so much easier as I can just do it all from the EPG – if it’s in the future record, if it’s in the past the EPG automatically opens the appropriate app.

Intrigued by Youview smartphone app – hadn’t realised you could do that, will have to have a look.

Yeah, when it wasn’t freezing, the way it did that seemed pretty seamless but I doubted the box’s ability to do it consistently and without dropping the ball.

Maybe I will re-look at Youview, cheers.

That is indeed handy – a bit worrying in a way as it seems I can programme the box to record despite my firewall even when my phone isn’t on WiFi (I disconnected to check!) I presume the box regularly calls home to the Youview server and gets updated, which means there is a unique ID involved when it connects?

Get a BT branded Humax T2100 Youview from EBay, loads of sealed boxed units for about £100. No probs here – decent EPG, responsive and intuitive. Netflix also. Only issue I found is BT firmware nobbles NOW TV app removing Sky sports channels. BT internet not required.