You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
G/f has finally decided were gunna give up sky (I've been saying it for years), and just use Amazon prime and freeview. So are there any recommendations for freeview box with recording facility? I was actually asked about it but a work colleague lately, I obviously couldn't answer, but he said from his research the humax boxes seemed popular but still had loads of rubbish reviews on amazon.
Get a BT branded (Humax underneath) one. They work fine without a BT subscription, it only prompts for them if you try to use the paid channels. Loads secondhand so cheap to buy.
What will you want to record? Most things are available on catch up these days.
We don't use our recorder any more - catch up. I can recommend Netflix as well as Prime.
I'm still using a Huawei YouView box I got from TalkTalk 5+ years ago and it's worked fine despite appearing to be a flimsy POC. The interface is stock YouView now that the TalkTalk skin's dropped off with a couple of changes of ISP since. Pick something similar up secondhand off ebay or wherever for about £50, it's what I'd do if it broke. Probably not up to whatever the current xxxxp is these days, so if you're all 4k'ed up you might want to bear that in mind when you're looking.
But catch up services have stuff just disappear after a while, and other than the BBC make you watch unskippable ads.
I’d rather record by default and have catch up as a backup if I missed it.
Just replaced an old Humax with one of these,
https://www.johnlewis.com/bt-youview-smart-500gb-freeview-hd-digital-tv-recorder/p1339313
Very good so far.
Also, I like the YouView EPG for catch up. You just scroll back over the last 7 days in the EPG and select the programme you missed, it'll launch the player and the programme for you. And there's a built-in player for Netfix and Now movies if you've subscriptions to those.
Haven't worked out exactly what it'll let me do, but have just plugged in a bog standard USB portable HDD to a Panasonic TV and it now lets me record Freeview channels using the TV's programme guide to schedule the recording. Was refreshingly simple and straightforward to set up.
Cheers people, looks like the ex-BT box might be the winner but then I do have a new TV, so may take a look at it's features.
We use a Humax freesat one thats worked perfectly for a several years. The house once had Sky (so we had and dish to connect to) and no regular aerial.
As mentioned above, many newer TVs will let you just plug in a USB drive to record stuff to. I'd check for that first as the simple option.