Comments on: Humax Freeview playback Digital TV Recorder PVR-9150T 160GB Twin Tuner PVR

By: C. Stibbs

C. Stibbs — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:17:38 +0000

I BOUGHT THIS AS A GIFT FOR MY DAUGHTER WHO PREVIOUSLY HAD A FREEVIEW BOX. SHE IS VERY PLEASED WITH THIS AND WAS SURPRISED HOW MANY PROGRAMMES SHE CAN SEE ON IT AND HOW EASY IT WAS TO USE.
Rating: 4 / 5

By: Stephen M.

Stephen M. — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 22:33:49 +0000

I’ve been using a DVD recorder for some years now and I was getting fed up with scratched disks failing to record properly and not play so I wanted to upgrade to a PVR with a hard disk option. I looked for a long time at many makes and models and landed on this one. This one has to be the best spec, biggest hard disk and best reviewed of all the PVRs for the price. After using it for a few weeks I can see why. Series link, one-touch recording, dual recording, TV planner, user-friendly screens and remote and the excellent picture-in-picture. If you’re a heavy recorder perhaps the larger 320Gb option would be better suited but for the average record, watch & delete user this 160Gb is more than adequate. Some reviews mentioned the loud fan but that is literally for 5-10 seconds once the machine is started and then it’s perfectly quiet and even the fan noise for those few seconds is perfectly tollerable.

I’m very happy to have made the upgrade to the hard disk recorder and I’m very pleased with the Humax system. I would definitely recommend not looking further than this model and ignoring that niggly feeling inside telling you “But I’ve never heard of Humax”.
Rating: 5 / 5

By: David M. Lowe

David M. Lowe — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:31:17 +0000

THIS REVIEW IS NOT FOR THIS PARTICULAR MODEL NOR SUPPLIER, BUT GENERALLY TV RECORDERS BOUGHT FROM AMAZON "NO NAME" SUPPLIERS

I have bought two tv recorders through Amazon and although I had no initial problems over the first few weeks, they have both become progressively more unreliable and crash several times every evening - rebooting themselves and restarting.

It has not been possible to contact the original sellers and they have just made me somewhat jaundiced about buying cheaper products off Amazon ... I think they were probably returned with a fault, nothing was found and they were just sold again as new. Then the company disappeared.

So warranty claims on Amazon purchases can be very problematic and the problems more than outweigh the initial low cost

AVOID

David Lowe Rating: 3 / 5

By: ricamon

ricamon — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:45:13 +0000

Unit was easy to set up. I live in a poor reception area, but have only had very occasional problems, unlike a previous make which was rubbish, hence the purchase of this product.

The programme guide does take a few minutes to populate, but is not a big problem.

Has frozen twice in the couple of months that I have had it, but a quick switch off and reboot fixed it.

Did’nt record a couple of programmes that I thought I had set, but that may have been my mistake.

Overall then, a good product for the price. Recommended.
Rating: 4 / 5

By: Daniel

Daniel — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:52:14 +0000

GOOD POINTS

Very quite (virtually silent).

Unit looks nice.

Good picture quality (not quite as good as the Topfield in my opinion).

Responds quickly to remote control button presses.

Single aerial input socket (unlike Topfield where you have to use two aerial inputs).

BAD POINTS

Freezes – I used this for up to an hour a day for one week and it froze at least once on each occasion, requiring a reboot.

No USB connection – no way to archive recordings, other than recording them to a VHS or DVD recorder via the second Scart socket. Apparently, Humax could not get it the USB functions to work, so they simply removed the feature entirely.

No audio outputs – you cannot connect this to your sound system directly.

Very large remote control; useful buttons such as the TV/Radio button, screen ratio, picture-in-picture, etc are hidden under a slide-down panel (which extends beyond the bottom of the remote and is prime candidate for breakage if not closed after use).

EPG is reloaded every time the unit goes into standby (or crashes) and this takes around ten minutes to load.

MINOR POINTS

No printed manual (comes on CD as PDF).

Recordings have to be assessed by going into the MENU and selecting RECORDING, whereas Topfield has single button press (ARCHIVE). Actually playing a recording is quite an awkward process – you have to press EXIT to go out of the RECORDING section rather than PLAY.

When switching between TV/Radio, it returns to radio channel 700 (Radio 1) everytime, and not the station you were previously listening to.

No HDMI connection.

Could not record two consecutive programs on the same channel, despite having a twin-tuner. The program was listed in the Recordings screen but was not present. An error message stated it was unable to record because of a schedule clash.

When fast forwarding through a program, it will return to the very start of the recording after being paused, losing your place.

CONNECTIONS

Aerial (input and output for passing analogue signals through to your television)

Scart (two – output to TV and a recording device)

PC serial connection (one – for updating software; cannot be used to transfer programs)

There are no audio connections

There is no a USB connection
Rating: 3 / 5