My contract ends with Sky soon. I only pay £7.65 a month for basic Sky and they have told me that there will be no more concessions for loyal customers anymore. My monthly subscription will go up to around £20 a month.
One person at Sky said, l could keep just the recording facility for £10 a month but another told me, that’s finishing too.
I am now thinking, l may give up Sky altogether and buy a box to record the Freeview/Freestat programmes.
I have heard that Humax and Panasonic are good brands for these boxes but l wouldn’t know what to go for or what spec?
I don’t have a smart tv, mine is a Panasonic plasma television.
I have just terminated my BT Broadband contract but I’ve kept the PVR (for free) becuse it’s got lots of recordings on. It’s a Humax, very simple to operate and it’s been very reliable.
Omah, Thank You, This is the Humax model that is recommended on the sites l have been looking at.
The thing is, l don’t know what features, l should be looking for?
My Sky+ HD box is great and simple to use. If the Humax box is like that, it would be great.
Art, if you’ve had sky you might be better getting a freesat, recorder, this uses your existing sky dish, although you will only get free to air channels and not any sky ones, ( that aren’t free of course) humax also do these, basically just look for how many tuners they come with, which means you can record more channels at the same time, also look for the storage, eg 500gb or 1 or 2tb,
Yes, this is what l need to look into, how many channels can be recorded at once and what is the storage capacity.
My current Sky box has not been recording properly lately and l just got the ‘Failed’ caption. I rang Sky and followed the Tech man’s instruction to reset the unit, as Rebuild had not rectified it. It seems, l was pressing the wrong button and l lost all my recordings. I was gutted.
Angel, I have two Panasonic recording devices. The newer one has a capacity of 1Tb; I can’t remember the older one - perhaps 500Gb.
Each has two tuners, so I can record up to four programmes being transmitted concurrently.
They were both a bit pricey, but in addition to recording programmes they can both copy to DVD and BD. Perhaps that’s not something you need, though. Incidentally, I believe that Panasonic is the only brand that now produces such things.
I also used to have a Humax device, but that was quite a long time ago.
EDIT:
Come to think of it, if and when one of my recorders goes west, I’ll probably replace it with a cheaper recorder that doesn’t copy to DVD/BD, because I don’t remember ever recording more than two consecutive programmes that I want to keep on disc.
Youview is the Humax recording facility. There’s no subscription with Freeview.
I’ve had a Humax twin tuner box for some years now, and will be buying a second one soon. I will go for a higher spec, as I record a lot of stuff.
Get at least a twin tuner, otherwise you’re limited as to what you can record and watch at the same time. In fact, my next one will let me record three at once.
Also, at least a week to view is essential for recordings. Longer is better still.
Another useful feature is being able to edit channels, so you can hide ones you never watch, and better still is if you can rearrange the order of the channels on your list.
With Humax, the economy energy mode has a very long start-up time, but you get used to it!
[LIST]
[]Record up to 500 hours of SD TV, Record, pause and rewind live TV. UPnP compatibility
[]Over 100 TV and Radio channels 15 in HD. Frequency Range - 470MHz to 862MHz (UHF)
[]Catch up TV from BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub, All 4, Demand 5 & UKTV Play
[]Built-in Wi-Fi for easy connection to your Home Network
[*]Record up to 3 programmes simultaneously whilst watching a recording or catch up.
[/LIST]
Which magazine give it a 72% rating and mark it a “Best Buy” - their reservations were only that it was expensive and the on-screen guide was not complicated enough!
Honestly, All your answers have been so useful, l am now learning a bit more about what l need and what l would expect from a recording unit when the time comes. Thank You so much.
I use a Humax the same as Omah Arty, it will record two channels at once while you watch a third, it’s got a ‘week to view’ guide and recording is as easy as selecting the programme and pressing record, it will ask you if you want to record the whole series or just a one off. It comes equipped with it’s own freeview tuners containing over one hundred channels. You can always find something to watch…Never had a spot of bother with it and will definitely buy another Humax if anything happens to this one…
Perfect then Arty, no need to go through the worry of learning a new system…I’m getting too old to use new stuff…You end up spending more time messing with it instead of using it…
That’s why I’m looking after Mrs Fox…
it is like Freeview you don’t pay any extra for the channels you receive
