But I was reminded of the fact that the BBC iPlayer beta was made available to owners of the Humax boxes (both the Foxsat HD and HDR) this week by my former Red Rant colleague Tom Eccles.  I gave it a try last night watching Games Britannia I had missed the night before with pretty reasonable results.

So how do you get to the iPlayer beta?  Just like this.  Go to any BBC channel, press the red button and enter page 5483.  Confirm with the OK button and you are greeted with the front page.

From here I headed over to the Channels tab, to be greeted by the usual suspects.

Results were pretty favourable when I watched Games Britannia.  My broadband is around 6Mb, so I watched in Higher Quality (as shown in the second to last picture requires a “high speed internet connection” but doesn’t actually specify how fast it needs to be) and had no problems with the programme stuttering or ever stopping to cache more of the stream.

The only significant issue I did have was trying to skip forward in the programme.  I tried to skip forward by 60 seconds, and the HDR box reset itself.  This wasn’t confined to my tests last night, when I took these photos to test today it did the exact same thing again.

On a purely cosmetic side I did notice a lot of “pop in” where the screen textures would go blocky for a second before creating a final smoother image.  Particularly in scenes that involved a lot of movement.  This is to be expected with what is essentially glorified web video.

While I don’t really watch a great deal of BBC content (save for almost anything on BBC HD) having the iPlayer as an option directly on the Freesat box means I would be more than happy to watch it this way than have to watch it on a PC.
There are certainly glitches that need to be ironed out before iPlayer is unleashed to all Freesat users, but so far things are looking pretty good.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

According to Join Freesat the company is launching three new recorders.  The premium version will contain dual tuners and a 500Gb hard drive (as opposed to the 320 that is in the Humax PVR) as well as the Blu-ray recorder.  The second in command contains a 250Gb drive with the recorder and if that is rather too expensive in these thrifty times they are also releasing a version with a DVD recorder instead of the Blu-ray.

Pricing?  Not confirmed but expect around £500 for the high end model.  Available from May.  You can read the full story HERE.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

So here it is.  The holy grail for Freesat enthusiasts, the greatly delayed Humax Freesat+ FOXSAT-HDR PVR has finally arrived (in extremely limited quantities at the time of this writing).  I’m not going to delve into facts, figures or specifications here as there are plenty of articles elsewhere on the site telling you those.

The big question is a simple one; Is this the machine we were all waiting for?  In a word.  Yes.

Package contents are pretty much identical to the non-PVR Humax unit.  You get the PVR itself, SCART, composite and HDMI cables, an extremely comprehensive and well written manual and a remote control.  But unlike the Fisher Price remote that comes with the regular FOXSAT HD decoder, this is a far more sleek and stylish effort.  Humax have sensibly made this a mini all-in-one controller, which will look after your PVR, TV, DVD and Audio device.

Setting up the HDR is as mind numbingly simple as it’s little brother.  In fact the only thing that differentiates the HDR is during the satellite signal detection.  As it contains two Freesat HD tuners, it will happily detect two inputs from your satellite dish, thus enabling you to record two programmes at once, or watch one and record one.  All pretty basic stuff.  If you would like to see more of the setup screens, be sure to check out my impressions of the FOXSAT HD.

After the five minute setup is complete, you’re ready to go.  Yes, it truly is that simple.  Actually five minutes is more like seven after you download the inevitable over the air firmware update.

After the install was complete I went through the menus to check on the diagnostics and make sure everything was working as it should.

Whilst all of the setup is taking place, the front of the HDR displays Wizard (Roy Wood not included).

Naturally as I wanted to take photos of the equipment today, the sky is a blanket of cloud which makes for tricky lighting conditions.  This is the front of the PVR with the front panel flipped down.  While you can’t see it clearly in this picture, the display shows the broadcast HD resolution (1080i), that the sound type is Dolby Digital and that it is in glorious HD.

The HDR doesn’t break any kind of mould when it comes to PVR features, it’s pretty much everything you would expect from a PVR wrapped around the Freesat interface.  But what it does do, it does extremely well.

Take this screenshot for example.  As a test recording from BBC HD I wanted to record an episode of Heroes.  When selecting the programme in the Guide, this message pops up saying that the show is available in both SD and HD and gives you the option of which one to record.

There are also a number of other nice little touches, such as if you are already recording two programmes and you want to record something else, the HDR will search the schedules for either a repeat showing or whether the channel has a +1 sibling, and then record the showing there.

Media management itself is handled by this screen (having pressed the Media button on the remote).  Here you can flick between your recorded TV, radio and the music and photos that you also have stored (more on that in a moment).

When you opt to record an entire series (as I have here with Heroes and Harry Hill), rather than clutter up the show list with multiple episodes, they are automatically placed into a folder.  All other recordings are shown here with various additional information such as the date they were recorded, programme length, etc.

Provided the content provider hasn’t switched on the encryption setting, you can also archive your recorded programmes onto a USB drive.  So far the only programmes I have seen that have this encryption have been on BBC HD (Heroes and Torchwood), but everything else is fair game.  You won’t be able to watch the shows on anything other than the PVR though I’m afraid, but it’s a handy way of keeping hold of any content that you want to keep hold of, and don’t want to burn off to a DVD recorder.

So the Music and Photo sections.  These are my only beef with the Humax PVR.  I will never want to listen to music via the PVR, nor do I want to look at photos.  But the hard drive is partitioned to allow permanent storage for these functions and you cannot change this.  You can format the partitions and erase everything that is there, but you cannot simply say “I want to use my PVR for TV and Radio recordings only, give me all the space”.  Minor and petty?  Perhaps, but it would have been nice to be given the option.

Speak of disk management, this is the drive utility screen.
So what about general operation and quality?  Picture quality is identical to that of the FOXSAT HD box, BBC and ITV HD both look and sound gorgeous.  Plus the regular SD content looks great when upscaled to 1080i.  This is rather dependant on the channel of course, with lower quality signal channels such as music channels like Chart Show TV and Bubble Hits looking decidedly bland.  But primary broadcasts such as BBC, ITV and Channel 4 all look great.

Recording quality is spot on as well.  One of my slightly minor gripes with Sky+ when we had that installed many years ago was that the recording quality didn’t really match that of the broadcast.  Yes I know, cake and eat it, moon on a stick and all that.  But I can stop moaning now, because to be perfectly honest I can’t tell the difference between live and recorded TV.  Even with a show that contains a lot of bright colours such as Harry Hill’s TV Burp, it didn’t cause any alarm.

When all is said and done, I am extremely happy with my purchase of the Freesat+ PVR.  It may lack the sheer ease of use and speed at which a Sky+ or Sky HD box operates at.  But for those features you have to pay.  Here for £300 I have a box that will record the pre-requisite two shows at once, contains dual HD tuners, is crammed with features and I won’t be paying a subscription fee to anyone.

If you are thinking about moving away from Sky, or have just been waiting for Freesat to finally get their PVR out the door then this is an easy recommend.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The word from Join Freesat is that the HUMAX Freesat PVR will be officially released, THIS SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22nd.

That is all.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Channel 5, or Five, or 5ive or whatever you want to call it will be coming to Freesat on TUESDAY NOVEMBER 18th.

That is all.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I can’t help thinking that the same will inevitably be said of Freesat at some point in the future.  It’s a great idea that up to now has been executed with neolithic incompetence.  Ropey dialogue lifted from Beverly Hills Cop 2 aside, Freesat hasn’t exactly had the most exciting of launches.  I almost feel like I should be putting quotes around launches as well.

I think a poster on the AV Forums hit the nail on the head perfectly when he said on the day of the Freesat launch, if this had been a Sky product there would have been an enormous marketing campaign, extolling the virtues of the new system and why it was so great and revolutionary.  There would have been an assault on the senses that you usually associate with blockbuster Hollywood movies beating you into submission until you bought that product.  What we got with Freesat was a few Freeview looking boxes being nervously showed on BBC Breakfast News.  For a one off payment you could have free to air HD programming and nobody really knew about it.

Marketing aside, I have been keeping a very interested eye on Freesat for quite some time.  As I have stated elsewhere on the blog, I cancelled my Sky subscription a few years back as the pay channels never really warranted spending £18 a month on a basic package.  Obviously things have changed since then, but even when Sky HD launched I wasn’t tempted.  Then when Freesat came along and said “If you have an existing Sky dish that’s fine, you can just plug out box in and off you go and you can get BBC HD” I was hooked .  So just what exactly do you get with Freesat?

Not as much as you get with current Freeview or Sky for that matter.  Sky tend to keep things a little quiet but you can watch it without paying a subscription and get the Freeview content and more already.  So Freesat is essentially a Sky box but minus some of the Sky channels but with the inclusion of a couple of freebie HD channels?  Pretty much.

I have been holding on until Humax released their PVR version of the FOXSAT HD digibox, but word is coming from various corners of the net saying it could be the end of the year, if not sometime in 2009 before that eventually hits out shores and I’ve had the money for the box sat waiting since launch.  So today whilst out snapping pictures for 12 of 12 I caved and bought the Humax HD box from Argos.

First up, the box is small.  A lot smaller than I was expecting too, I was half expecting some kind of full sized DVD deck that would require me to re-jig the AV cabinet but it sits quite happily atop the Pioneer DVD player.

Bonus points go to Humax as well because they provide SCART, component and HDMI cables in the box which is a welcome bonus.
Setting the box up is incredibly simple, just connect the satellite feed, plug it in and off you go.  The only thing I didn’t do was connect the box to the ethernet network as there really is no need right now.  Anybody who has ever set up a Freeview box will get the general idea.  I took a number of photos of the setup which are all on Flickr.

A quick scan of the Freesat channels found around 70 combined TV and radio stations.  You also have the option to do a manual scan and find everything that is available on the Astra satellites.  This came back with around 500 channels!  Needless to say, I factory reset and rescanned for the Freesat channels.

There are a few quirks here too which caught me out, so hopefully this information will be of use to someone.  After putting in my postcode prior to searching for the services it came back with BBC1 London, and ITV Central.  I scanned again, same thing.  It turns out that not all regional services from the BBC and ITV are available on Freesat yet.  The official line from Freesat is:

Not all the regional variants of BBC and ITV services are currently available. This is due to technical constraints associated with co-existence on the satellite platform, so freesat has adopted a phased service launch.

Twenty BBC and ITV regional services were available at launch, and the remaining regional services have been priortised for launch by the end of July 2008.

If you are in an area with a regional service that is not available yet, your temporary default is BBC London and ITV Central West. When your region becomes available, it will automatically become your default.

Also, ITV HD isn’t actually a channel in its own right yet.  Currently the way to view an ITV programme which is being shown in HD is to press the red button and select to watch it in HD.  That caught me out as I was wondering why it wasn’t appearing in the EPG.

Anyone who has ever used Sky will be very familiar with the channel numbering system, starting at 101 for BBC One.  Channel switching is nice and fast and while the Humax remote control feels decidedly cheap the interface is crisp and clean.  Navigating the menus to configure the box itself is very responsive and the large, colourful icons make the whole process simplicity itself for all but the most ardent technophobe.

So to BBC HD, there may be limited programmes available at present but what is on there looks very nice indeed.  The box itself can only output up to 1080i, but this is hardly an issue as all HD programmes are either shown in 720p or 1080i.  We tested it this evening watching Coldplay at the BBC and will give the new show Bonekickers a try later on.  There was no sign of the oft mentioned lip sync issue with the Humax box (apparently fixed completely in the latest firmware that I downloaded during setup).  It’s all very simple and straightforward.

The cost?  £150 for the box (the SD versions are much cheaper) and £80 for a dish and installation if required.  Initial impressions from me are very good, it just works!
The channel line-up is a little lacklustre at present but we’re happy to have some extra music channels as the Freeview selection is extremely limited.  With allegedally 200 channels by the end of the year the service is gradually picking up steam.

I just hope it doesn’t run out of puff before getting to the station!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.