A bit of PVR advice please

Dyson

Dyson

Dyson

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Hi all. We'll be moving to a new house in a few months and thought I'd take that as my opportunity to ditch SKY. I'd miss SKY Atlantic, but that's it, so I think it's time to go.

Am I better replacing my Sky plus box with a Freeview, or Freesat PVR? Top of my list for a Freesat box is the Humax HDR-1010S. Good choice?

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
 
I have considered this time and time again, as i have very little interest in Sky channels. I occasionally watch them, but rarely, and certainly wouldnt miss them.

However, it just isnt worth it in my opinion.

Sky you get an excellent quality industry leading STB thrown in, along with free installation of a brand new fresh antenna, every 12 months should you wish, which keeps you up to date with the latest hardware at all times.
The package which includes everything bar sports and movies (so ten fold the offering from freesat/freeview) costs £16pcm currently on a 12 month term with F&F available routinely from this very forum.
The box is then worth (i just sold last years STB at £29) a bit at 12 months.
A decent (as in, on a par with a new Sky STB) Freeview/freesat twin tuner/on demand/wireless enabled PVR is expensive, non maintained, and will date. Then you have the obvious lack of content.

As much as i dont wish to be with Sky, its just not worth switching out, just keep paying Sky the £16 for a maintained bang up to date HD content rich service and accept that £16pcm is the cost of a decent HD/OD PVR system.
 
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You make an annoyingly strong argument for staying with them... I was pretty much decided, but now I'm not so sure. Thanks for the great post.
 
I bought a HD Freesat Box which can record to an external hard drive or usb pen off this very forum for £65 delivered. After that it's £0 per month to receive freesat (so long as you already have a sky dish installed, etc). £16 per month for something you don't like/want IMO would be a worse deal.

The only reason to have sky IMO is for live sports, that's it.

Freesat + Netflix at what £6 per month IMO is a far better option. There are a lot of other options out there (illegal) which can get you HD shows, HD movies, HD live sports, PPV events as well, etc for a very low monthly cost (£7 per month or £40-£60 per year), etc, they cannot be discussed on here though.

you may want to have a look at techkings forum
 
I bought my Mum a Humax freeview PVR, it was absolutely horrendous. Takes ages to swtich on/off, the interface is terrible, slow, clunky and just not well set out. It was like a £160 unit too, the cheap and nasty one it replaced was miles better. We've now got Sky, just the very basic package but the Sky box is fantastic, very well set out, responsive and just generally nice to use.

Personally I use a TV tuner in my HTPC to watch and record stuff, seems far better than any PVR I've ever used!
 
if you like sky, and want the extra channels then get sky.

if your happy with freesat channels, then humax box hands down, been using one for ages and tbh its got to the stage now i preferr its gui to the sky one.
 
Humax boxes in comparison to a skyHD box?

This is why it isnt worth leaving. Those boxes are utterly woeful by comparison.
 
Dimple said:
Yes, that one, I paid £340.
For me it is worth the extra and there is a lot of help out there.
It uses LINUX and there are many different versions, think of it like Android with all the Apps.
Click to expand...

I'll give it some research, from first look it's certainly not the easy option so to speak, but does look interesting. Thank you :)
 
Jez said:
Humax boxes in comparison to a skyHD box?

This is why it isnt worth leaving. Those boxes are utterly woeful by comparison.
Click to expand...

Utter nonsense!

Have 3 humax fox-t2 box's in the house and both the gui and functionality (even when not using hacked firmware) is significantly better than sky hd box's.

I can Decrypt HD recordings, control and set record via http, NFS shares, samba shares, watch blu ray MKV's on it, connect NTFS HDD's to it, download torrents on it, youtube, iplayer, flicker, web browse ...etc ..etc

A short list of ALL the functions that my humax can do, the VAST majority of which are impossible on a Sky box:

http://hummypkg.org.uk/packages.html
 
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Dyson said:
Top of my list for a Freesat box is the Humax HDR-1010S. Good choice?
Click to expand...

My parents have a Freeview one, the Humax HDR-2000T DVR, and it has to be on for the TV signal to pass through. Avoid.

I have a Panasonic HWT230 Freeview HD DVR and it's wonderful. Unfortunately I've read that Panasonic have dropped Freesat.

Freesat / Sky reception can get iffy when it's cloudy or raining or both; Freeview doesn't seem to have as much of a problem.
 
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