[slackline]

Ditching Virgin and not interested in Sky so am switching to digital, and going to go with FreeviewHD (as oppossed to FreeSat).

There are hundreds of PVRs out there, but I'd really like one that is uPnP & internet enabled so that I can watch films of my NAS and also surf Flickr/Vimeo/YouTube etc.

Read various reviews of the best available (e.g. 1, e.g. 2), but am struggling to find many user reviews/experiences.

Any thoughts/recommendations on boxes that will fit the bill greatly appreciated*

Cheers

slackers

EDIT : Typically I now find a promising option straight after posting! Although it states that its needs WMP to play networked data and a few other reviews I found suggest initial releases had bugs which have since been revised by firmware upgrades, not many places have them for sale though.


* I did originally have the intention of configuring my PS3 with a Gentoo Linux install and using that to do everything but the cnuts at Sony put paid to that idea by removing OtherOS functionality and I don't want to build a custom PC to do it all (although have toyed with the idea of an Acer Revo of sorts to do the job, but would rather not have another PC to tinker with, just want something that works out of the box for once!).

[tomtom]

Hmm.. The technicha junk, sorry I mean goods I have bought from Tesco's have been functional but not very long lasting.. MrsT's freeviewhd stb is from them and it's 'well flakey' (technical term). But this may turn out to be a gem!

[slackline]

Read of problems with it as I quickly found & added above.

Done a bit more research and the Humax HDR-Fox T2 is looking very promising (if a bit pricey), its one of the few mentioned in this review (although not on the "official" spec) that is DLNA enabled (some year-old reviews on Amazon say the menu system for navigating DLNA content is crap/annoying, but thats something I can live with).

[Paul B]

can a boxee or its competitors act as a recorder? I'd be suprised if not.

[slackline]

That would probably be sufficient for me, but not the mrs (she's addicted to soaps & wank reality TV )

[butters]

Humax is solid gear and I can not recommend it enough from a general hardware perspective. We have one at work and it has been running pretty much continuously for the best part of two years and then some without bother and it wasn't new by a long way when it arrived here. The HDD is now getting a bit noisy (quelle surprise) but I can probably find something in the parts bin to replace it with if I have to. 

[ChrisC]

Read of problems with it as I quickly found & added above.

Done a bit more research and the Humax HDR-Fox T2 is looking very promising (if a bit pricey), its one of the few mentioned in this review (although not on the "official" spec) that is DLNA enabled (some year-old reviews on Amazon say the menu system for navigating DLNA content is crap/annoying, but thats something I can live with).

My dads just got one of these. I've only used it briefly, it's got a couple of usability quirks but on the whole seems pretty good.

The dlna menus are a bit slow, the tv guide is good but lacks ability to skip weeks/days, no way of seeing if you have already viewed something recorded. All pretty minor things, but you are used to them from virgin etc. Over all though it's really good and simple to use, can't see you'd go to far wrong and it seems to be the best of the bunch at the moment unless something else has come out recently

The remote can be programmed for most tvdvds etc.

[Jim]

the mrs (she's addicted to soaps & wank reality TV )

divorce is the only option I'm afraid

[slackline]

Its been considered in the past, but the  is good so I can overlook that foible.

[slackline]

Done a bit more research and the Humax HDR-Fox T2 is looking very promising (if a bit pricey), its one of the few mentioned in this review (although not on the "official" spec) that is DLNA enabled (some year-old reviews on Amazon say the menu system for navigating DLNA content is crap/annoying, but thats something I can live with).

It looked so promising I went ahead and bought it.

John Lewis were selling it at £279, Richer Sounds for £249, opted for the former as there is a free 2 year warranty (making it easier to repair/exchange should it go wrong, although it doesn't affect your statutory rights that items are to be of "satistfactory quality" and last a reasonable amount of time).  Hanidly though they do a price match so got the difference back 

First thing to do was update the firmware which was a piece of piss (extract and copy the file to the root of a USB stick and have it pugged in when it boots up and it all "Just works^TM").

Very easy to use, detects NAS and other uPnP enabled computers no problem so all music/pictures/videos can be played back through that.

Picks up all the channels (with an external aerial), including the four freeview HD's that are now available in Sheffield.

Guide/menu/scheduling recording is a piece of piss, wife has picked it up straight-away (although some tweaking is required, quite why she recorded the same episode of Eastenders twice on the same day when its available via iPlayer anyway is beyond me).

iPlayer via Ethernet is fine, as is YouTube and Flickr (annoyingly the "Search" function won't find my photostream so I can add it as a Favourite, but thats minor).  Would be nice to see 4OD and ITVPlayer available as they are under the PS3, perhaps in due course a firmware upgrade will resolve that (but since we can view those via the PS3 its no big deal), more generally having a general web-browser through which any browsing can be done would be useful for occasions I can't be bothered turning a laptop on/walking upstairs to the computer.

All-in-all a very nice piece of kit that worked out of the box (plus its using GPL'd software as there was a copy of the license in the user manual, perhaps some smart bods will hack it and add additional functionality