Freesat

Barleyman

Barleyman

Barleyman

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Joined
2 Mar 2011
Posts
105
Yes, I know this has been discussed several times, but bear with me. Having searched a few threads here and in avsforums, it seems to me that the freesat box is a bit crap and quite expensive to boot. So would it be a reasonable alternative to buy 2nd hand Humax HDR-1100S box from ebay, from someone accepting returns and some kind of rep? These boxes are probably fairly old but if the HDD breaks, it should be easy enough to swap a new 2TB 2.5" drive in there. I've got LG CX OLED which has single sat input so technically I need no PVR at all, but USB HDD would be then another item on the shopping list.

I've got Sky-Q dish and I'm aware someone needs to climb up and replace the LNB with a quad model, technically dual output would work just fine but quad costs about £15 new so whatever, the antenna guy will probably want a lot more than that. That someone's probably not going to be me, I don't have a suitable ladder and even if I did, it'd be a bit iffy, so that's probably going to add a significant amount of £££ to this escapade.

I've already returned the Sky Q box a good while ago and pretty much just want to be able to watch the freeview channels without having to jump through several different streaming apps and the landlord is too cheap to put up an actual aerial. Being able to actually record shows would be nice too, those apps don't have bestest quality AND I don't enjoy unskippable ads all that much.

The other way to do this would be to get the basic Virgin mix tv, but TBH I'm tired of them and since we've finally got shiny new fiber, I can ditch 'em and come back as a new customer after 18 months or so.
 
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I had a real joker, the guy calls me back 8pm on Friday and says it'll be around 99 to 120 quid with tax. Okay I thought, bit steep but he could come do it the next day. Then he calls me next day and says, oh yeah I can be there in about 2 hours, and it'll be £199! Go jump in a lake, mate. Had someone else who said he could do it for £65, lets see if the cost jumps closer to the date as well..
 
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SexyGreyFox said:
I've had the same VU+ since January 2021 and it's superb.
Sometimes my Mrs can be recording 5 programmes at once while watching another.
We can also access it with 4x Fire Sticks with KODI 19.4 and an Enigma 2 plugin which works brilliantly.
I've also had other VU+'s for years and couldn't believe it when they bought a version out that could record at least 8 channels at once.
Click to expand...

I've seen comments about Enigma that it's a Linux device with all that it entails, it can pretty much do whatever but it takes a lot of tweaking and isn't very polished to use.
 
SexyGreyFox said:
We always get one, so sad mate - ooh look at me aren't I special.
The only thing we watch live is the News and my football for your information, everything is recorded so we can pretend we're streaming from Netflix but don't pay a fortune.
Click to expand...
And you get to skip ads for free, don't forget about that one!

I had a guy come over on Monday, he did the job for £65 including tax, plus the LNB cost. It took him literally 20min from the time he rang the doorbell to him taking steps back, so someone asking £199 for that was a nice try.

Now I do get freesat on LG as expected but the Humax will take a day or 2 more, hopefully no need to have a dispute on Ebay with a busted one.. Paid £99 for 500GB version from a returns accepted business seller which should help at least a bit in case there's a problem..
 
Hmm. So I can't reorder the channels? TV guide always goes to all channels and you have to pick favourites yourself? Not exactly the best PVR I've used.. Sky Q box is much nicer but then again, it comes with a monthly payment. They don't hand those out anymore I think, everyone's streaming and enjoying unskippable ads.. Unless you pay £5/month extra, of course!

"If you're not watching the ads, you're stealing TV. .
 
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So after about a month with this kit, it works pretty okay for what I wanted it for, i.e. you wanna have something playing on the big screen without having to actually _watch_ something, it's got you sorted. And if Gogglebox or something is on, you can pause it etc.

Humax box is pretty sluggish though, also that annoyance of not defaulting to a favourites or have an option to default to it is just bad design. As I said, at least you can drop all the channels from the master list you don't care about, which is okay as I don't care about all the miscellaneous SD +1 channels and the like. For someone who actually _watches_ telly it'd be more painful.
 
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