Humax HDR-1000S 1TB (1000GB) HD TV Freesat Recorder with Free Time (requires Satellite dish)

After reading a lot of reviews (some good, and some bad), I threw caution to the wind and bought the Humax HDR-1000S 1TB (1000GB) HD TV Freesat recorder, with Free Time. This was a `completely new installation', and it required an aerial wiring route plan through the house in order to `hide' all the cables; this was phase 1. I did this after a lot of thought and some careful drilling and cable routing through various walls in order to hide the cable. For this wiring I used 25m WF65 twin sky+/ HD coaxial cable in black to keep the cable unseen on the chimney stack, all other runs in the house were out of sight. The vendor I used supplied the cable in a `lose coil' and not on a reel, so care was needed not get it all in a tangle. The cable was a `thin' twin type with a good tough external insulation and the spec stated a good performance on signal loss over the 25m run from dish to the receiver. I did the cable run in one `continuous' piece of dual cable to avoid signal loss at the joints. For this I needed small `F' type Connectors which I sourced from Electrosmart Limited, I also fitted their 90 degree right angle connectors, to allow the cable to `hang down' and not `twist` against the wall fitting where the `F' coupling connects to the wall connector at the cable run termination. I bought a new Systemsat Zone 2 Satellite Dish & a Quad LNB for Sky Freesat and fitted it to the stack at the back of the house. I installed duel cable and a Quad LNB to enable two programs to be recorded simultaneously. To align the dish, I bought a Koenig Satellite signal strength meter ( £7.00) and made a patch cable up from a short off-cut from the cable run. With the cable run finished, connectors fitted and dish in place, I was good to go on the set up.For the initial dish alignment, I switched on the Humax box, (this is needed to power the Koenig Sat Finder), I connected the Ethernet cable to the Ethernet extender and set the dish to vertical on the stack with the use of a spirit level. I gave the LNB 5 degrees of skew, and then tightened the dish lightly into position and swung it very slowly from full East to West and found the strongest signal indicated on the sat finder. As the signal gets to the 'max' on the sat finder dial one can use a squelch knob that decreases the meter's sensitivity and so 'fine tune' the dish's alignment. At this point I had no idea which satellite I had aligned the dish to. Having locked the dish into position and reviewed the signal strength and signal quality, I was delighted to see good TV reception.I used a small amount of Vaseline on all outside cable joints (to avoid corrosion), and fitted small rubber boots on the external connectors to avoid water ingression into the LNB, I also pulled down the plastic cover sleeve of the LNB connector to give additional protection against water ingress.The Humax HDR 1000 does its job very well, but like all digital equipment it can 'lock up' and so, as with a PC a 'reboot' is needed; simply switch it off, wait 30 seconds and switch it on again, and you are up and running.Some reviewers very negatively commented that the box takes `a long time to come on', but again one should remember that after switching on the unit, the hard drive has to spin up to speed, and the system has to `boot' itself. If one is using the On Demand feature then it is important to also remember that the Humax has to bind with the user's router, which in turn has to connect to the relevant server, data has to be downloaded to the device via the ISP network, buffered internally in the unit and then displayed to the TV. Fair to say that on initial start-up all this takes a little time.It is worth noting that the 'On Demand' icon on the Program List will only display the On Demand stations if the central button (Green) is pressed first, this turns the On Demand icon background colour `blue' and all the On Demand stations are then accessible. This fact is in the User's Guide, but I failed to read and note this point.My Humax recorder is connected to my NetGear router via a pair of NetGear mains Ethernet extenders that I sourced from Curry's. This also avoids unsightly Ethernet cable runs all around the house. I did not trust using a dongle to do the WiFi connectivity.The Electronic Programming Guide (EPG) is very user friendly, and the majority of programs I have recorded to date are 100% complete, at worst, the headers of some the programs have started when I play back the recordings, but this is of no consequence to me. Series recording programming is very easy to set up, and I particularly like the `Resume' feature, that lets one resume a film where one left off previously. This feature is also enabled on the On Demand programs. One niggle for me is that if I select Films on the List feature, I would expect only Films to be listed on the guide, this is not the case, and all the programs appear as usual for some reason. Also, another niggle on the unit's features is that when recording, the 'Movies' menu does not list the films that are upcoming on any of the BBC or any ITV channels for some reason, so one has to scroll through these channels to find the films, and then program the recorder.The hard disk usage appears on a sliding bar on the EPG menu and shows the `free space' available on the system. Any automatic erasing (in the event of insufficient disk capacity) will be from the user's earliest recordings.The HD recording quality is good, and the choice of all the additional channels that are free of charge is very satisfying. Most importantly, my wife has found the Humax very easy to program and operate, and very much enjoys the expanded viewing choice.My next task is to load all the family holiday snaps onto the unit via the USB port and then enjoy some photo viewing sessions over a glass of wine.I highly recommend the Humax HDR-1000S 1TB (1000GB) HD TV Freesat recorder, with Free Time.

A few little glitches every now and then but so did the sky box so I can't complain at that. This is FAR better than the last Freesat box which actually put us off the service then. I most certainly don't miss sky now.It has all of the On Demand Services, the backwards guide works really well I find and the picture quality for HD as far and away better than the Sky HD box. Not as many breakups and pulls in a stronger signal from our dish than the Sky box too. Overall I'm impressed.I particularly like the fact it will tell you when there is an HD feed available to watch or when setting the guide. The iOS App works well too.

This HDR-1000S is the 1TB satellite equivalent (ie FreeSat or Freetime) to our trusty old Freeview Humax HDR-FOX T2 PVR 1TB recorder. It does NOT have built-in wi-fi, for that you need the HDR-1010S. The box engineering is different (less easy to stack neatly) from that of the HDR-Fox T2. And as a family we think the FreeSat EPG is slightly less friendly than the Freeview one, but it is still a vast improvement over Sky.The HDR-1000S has two satellite receivers and can record from both and still show the picture we want. It has the usual nice features, such as being able to spool back in time on an already tuned-to program to watch it from the beginning and then Fast-Forward across the ads; this is possible even with a program that is still being recorded. There are extra features peculiar to the satellite and web access, and we still have not explored all these. More later.Connecting to the Ethernet LAN and to the pair of satellite leads was simple, as was plugging in the 4m long HDMI lead to the TV, and it all just seemed to work as it should. But then a year or so ago I did spend quite a while making sure the quad-LNB dish was correctly set for the TV with an equally good signal on each lead. So now I have a spare LNB for something else in the house.There is a bit of DNLA conflict with some software in the Media Server I have, but that should not affect most people, and the on-demand catch-up stuff etc all worked properly when that Media Server was switched off.The power supply is a separate 12V brick-on-a-wire with a UK mains plug to figure-8 lead, and my initial reaction was one of annoyance because it will be untidy. But later on when thinking about it, I realised that with almost all the equipment I have needed to repair over the last few years it has generally been the power supply that has failed, so here the ability to simply swap it for another generic 12V brick is actually a long-term advantage.The pictures? Well of course they are excellent, being fully digital, and we chose to send them as always 1080p to the TV, regardless if they were originally SD or HD off air. Recording quality is excellent with no additional digital artefacts being introduced.The sound? Again excellent, the HDMI allows for the digital sound to be embedded for the best surround quality over the simplest connection.The controls on the Remote? These are mostly intuitive, especially if one is used to the earlier Freeview box, even if some of the button shapes are a bit peculiar (beware: 'Designer' at work).The EPG? We're getting used to it, it's OK but not as nice to use as that for the Freeview box. One big new advantage it has is in offering a direct short-cut to all the available On-Demand programming if we choose to head back in time on the guide menu. It directly loads iPlayer etc and runs the selected program.Automation? Not so good, hopefully it will be fixed in a software upgrade. The TV recognises it as a CEC device, and when switched on by the remote it will wake up the TV and sometimes the TV will switch across to it, but mostly it has to be selected on the TV's Source menu. When switched off manually it never tells the TV to change back to being a TV again. This is in direct contrast to my CEC BD player which does grab the TV's attention and then later releases it exactly as required. But we can live with this.Happy bunnies here, with the old Freeview recorder/tuner for the kitchen TV and this new FreeSat DVR and the FreeView/FreeSat TV in the living room, we have the best of both worlds.