Humax HDR-1100s 500GB

This is a review based on out of the box, replacement for SKY whose prices are SKY rocketing, for people who are worried by new tech stuff or have not time to spend reading through manuals! All the other stuff is on reviews. Opened the box, and had left the SKY cables just where they were when I pulled the box off the shelf and removed it. Put the much, much smaller and well-styled HUMAX HDR-1100S on my knees and connected the cables where they obviously went in the back and put the power on. It has one of those box transformers and not just a plug. Put the batteries into the remote and then actually looked at its face. The first "Wow! with 'Recordings' written on a button meaning 'recordings', etc. etc.was a revelation. You know that people with experience have designed this! I did not even need the quick guide to get around the menus. ^ P is page up on the guide or programme up, Home is every option, like settings etc., listed beautifully clearly and the record button is a red R in a circle. There ends the need to think, in my opinion except a button marked STB, top left. I used it following instructions for setting up my television to work with the remote. My Samsung used code 115, a common model. The only thing that I was stupid about was realising that the 'Remote Guide' at he back of the manual, was in double columns, but that was seconds in finding out.. One feature that I found really useful, not having a written guide, was the SHOWCASE option. It was a quick way to pick up a programme that I had missed and was like the 'recommended viewing' of some written guides. It is actually created by real reviewers it seems! All so logical. A 'TV guide' page own screen that is so intuitive and CLEAR! My BT freeview box was like a maze in comparison. CLEARLY and IN EASY TO READ PRINT, I recommend this product!!!! It just works!

Finally ditched Sky and chose this as my replacement. It arrived today. Took out of the box, looks quite good but felt nervous at the lightness compared to my old Sky box. It came with everything needed (including remote batteries). Switched satellite & HDMI cables out of the Sky box in the easy defined new locations. Connected power and hoped the wireless connection would work. All very easy and only took a couple of minutes. Turned on and followed a simple step by step process that came up on the screen. Entered postcode to get channels, it auto checks the signal strength and auto connected to my Wi-fi just needed to add my security code. All set up and ready to go. Quick and responsive with normal TV. Guide - easy to navigate and record, series link etc. 'On Demand' only had a couple of channels, so I went to the settings menu and checked for an update (which installed in about 3 minutes). Re-booted and the when accessed 'On Demand', much more available, including YouTube and Netflix (with 1 month free trial and packages starting from £5.99 after that). The picture quality is very good and the unit is quite responsive. I live in a rural location with very low internet speed and had no problem streaming BBC I Player and Netflix. Has a nice little feature that if you watch a channel and there is an HD version, a little prompt pops up and you can push 'OK' to take you there immediately. Also, if a new programme taster clip appears between programmes a pop up gives you an option to set up recording without moving away from your programme or into other menus. Not very keen on the remote - clicking noise when you press the buttons. That said, the layout is good with all the main buttons in the middle and the icons easy to follow. Obviously, only day one for me, so cannot comment on reliability. I've had no problems and am pleasantly surprised by the product. The performance and features are much better that I was expecting. Also, comes with a 2 year warranty. Very happy with the purchase and think it is good value for the money. With this and my 'Now TV box' can save loads compared to my old Sky package and still watch much the same!

I brought this product to replace Sky as I wasn’t watching anything other than the terrestrial channels and frankly Sky had annoyed me by refusing a discount to a loyal customer. I was put off by the price but reasoned that it would pay for itself in a few months by not paying for Sky tv. On the positive side. It records TV whilst you are able to watch another channel. You can pause live TV ( for 2 hours ). The picture quality is easily as good as Sky and the program guide is nearly as good as Sky On the down side; Humax have done some really dumb things that would be easy to fix but they haven’t. Chief among these is the remote control. It has two modes TV and STB. STB is set top box and is used for Channel selection / recording etc. This is the mode you are in 95% of the time unless you want to turn the tv off. The thing Sky does that Humax doesn’t is it auto switches to STB mode when you press a button that is only relevant to STB such as record / TV guide / pause / play. With the Humax it just looks like it is not working ( because it is in TV mode not STB). I have read reviews where people are sending the boxes back because they think they are flaky. Humax are really being dumb here by not taking into account how people would use their product. Another idiosyncrasy is that they have an App Store that you would think you could get Netflix or Amazon Prime on. But noooo - it looks like it was knocked as a school kids project with apps that nobody would use - ever. And you can’t even download anything useful either. The really annoying part about this is you think it must be you doing something wrong because nobody would go to the trouble of creating an App Store and then put nothing on it. I mean what were you thinking Humax! The last annoyance is catch up tv. You can use iplayer and itv hub but you must watch it live. Sky would let you go to catch Up and then record to watch later. In summary then. It sounds like I’m dissing the Humax but it is a really good box. It is worth the money. Humax are 90% of the way to making this box a Sky killer but for some reason Refuse to land the killer blow. Come on Humax - all it would take is a software update!

I've been eyeing up this box for the last 18 months to replace my extortionate sky subscription. I've read the Amazon reviews again and again for reassurance! My father in law finally took the plunge a few weeks ago and since seeing his box up and running I've followed. The box takes seconds to set-up, the LAN and HDMI cables supplied are good quality which was a nice surprise. Yes the buttons around the circle in the middle of the remote make a small clicking sound which I only noticed due to it being mentioned on these reviews so much. The unit is much more compact than my old Sky HD box which is a positive and is finished in gloss black with a subtle blue light (on) and red light for standby. I like the guide, it's clean and easy to navigate, I also like the feature that prompts you on screen that you are watching a SD channel that is available in HD and with one click of OK it switches over for you. The best thing for me (and I saw it mentioned here a lot and hoped was true) - picture quality! HD channels are much more vibrant and sharper than Sky, I found it very noticeable (just remember to select 1080p if your TV supports it during the initial set-up, the box defaulted to 1080i despite my TV being 1080p). I can't comment on the catch up features as I use my PS4 for iplayer, All4, Amazon, Netflix etc. I'm now saving £40 a month which means the box pays for itself in under 6 months. Any 'must watch' Sky exclusives I might crave like Game of Thrones, Westworld can be viewed using a £7 a month Now TV pass. Sky TV is dead, this box makes the transition vey easy!

I did a lot of research before buying this box, post Sky. I had reservations, based on the reviews but if you want freesat this is it (more on that later!). On the surface this is a great box. Sadly it is is totall unreliable, for the following reasons: - it frequently won't switch on, or rather will switch on for 1 second then switch itself off and on for 1 second in a never ending cycle. - it frequently won't record. No matter how much you push the record button nothing happens. It's normally ok within a couple of seconds, but around 25% of the time you get no recording message then have to go through the menu to recordings to verify it is not recording, go back to the tv hit record and start the whole verification process again. The only way to get it to record when it is being miffy is to switch it off and on. It will then either come on and record fine, or it will go into the on-off cycle above and you will have to switch it off and on several times before you can use the box at all, let alone record. - It frequently works in single channel mode. By this I mean you should be able to record one channel and watch another. Nope! You will be watching something when a single planned recording starts and you will get the message that you have to either watch the channel being recorded or cancel the recording. In short, this box goes down as my worst purchase of 2016. But here is my 2017 present to all you nice peeps - you don't need this box for freesat of you have one of a lot of smart TVs! I've recently caught on to the fact that record to USB is supported by a lot of smart TVs. I've contacted the major vendors with the following replies received to date: LG: all smart TVs Sony: model dependent Samsung: waiting for reply, but looks like it will be model dependent. So big thumbs up for LG for updating all their TVs to support this! I'm currently working out what new tv to get, but LGs support for this has put it top of my vendor list at the minute (and with it not being model dependent it means I can easily get something well within budget). So, in actual fact all you need is a smart tv with a freesat tuner built in and and a USB hard drive. It will only work with single channel (haven't seen any dual channel receivers on TVs) but you can set it to record series. This box is only operating in dual channel mode sporadically anyway. So my advice, if you are even thinking of getting yourself a new tv is to check that it supports USB record and put the money towards that (and the USB hard drive!) and don't waste your money on this piece of garbage. If you already have a smart tv check to see if USB record is supported and all you'll need is a hard drive :) I've no idea whether there will ever be a freesat 4K, but I'd be more hopeful of the tv vendors doing a firmware update to support it than Humax who will want to sell you another (awful) box. I can't wait to get a new smart tv, and am already getting excited at the thought of putting on the safety goggles and beating the **** out of this thing with a hammer!

This is our third Box in 14 years. It works well and we tend to record a lot and watch later due to the time difference. We tend to fill up the box with a load of favorite films as they show up on TV. Over the years we accumulate a lot. Then it just stops and it seems there is no alternate but to buy a new box and start again. Subject to that we are very happy with the machine, simple to use easy to set up

Ordered Humax HDR1100s to replace our old box which had given up the ghost. Easy to set up and crisp HD. So much better than the old one. Ordered on Saturday with expected delivery the following Tuesday (I presume because of May Bank Holiday). Arrived next day, Sunday. Can’t fault. Great company.

I cannot fault the product itself, it works well enough and does what it should do BUT it is in no way a replacement for SKY+ if you ask me. Sky UI is faster to respond and lets you hire films and so on without the need for another app to do it. The built in media player didn't like quite a few formats of film I had, including AC3 sound, even with the latest updates, so it didn't really help me there, when I thought it would. If you are considering replacing Sky using this, think about what you really need first, you might only need a simple single channel recorder. I couldn't get half a dozen or so channels on anything other than Sky unless I was prepared to hack it a bit.

mucho bueno