Humax HD-FOX T2 is first Freeview HD box in the UK, garners positive review
By Vlad Savov 
posted February 5th 2010 7:29AM
posted February 5th 2010 7:29AM
[Thanks, Dave]
posted February 5th 2010 7:29AM
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What is ironic is now that we have crap loads of channels...Those original 4 channels (minus the 3rd one if u ask me) are still the only ones worth watching...
@Hobsie
Hahah! It's funny cause its true
@Hobsie You beat me to it. How come there was more worth watching in those days?
@Hobsie
I donno -BBC Three & Four are pretty good too but to be honest, with services like iPlayer and Hulu I barely even watch freeview these days
Isn't PlayTV HD ready as well? Maybe this is the first dedicated hd freeview box...
@s1xtyn1n3 PlayTV isnt compatible with the system they are broadcasting hd freeview on (dvb-t2).
Looks good, but the lack of PVR is a dealbreaker for me.
@dd
I agree. :( We'll be sticking with the old Humax 9300T until there is a freeview HD PVR.
Are there even any terestrial channels broadcast in HD? Does it just upscale the same crappy channels?
I think someone should invent a box that automatically filters out Channel 4's relentless playing of Friends.
@krs360
So that would just leave you with Big Brother then? :P
@Hobsie - If there was only Big Brother on TV, then me and my 40 incher would have rather a large falling out by now!
@Hobsie And by the time the final Big Brother series this year ends, there'll be nothing on at all!
@krs360
Yup, there is already BBC HD and ITV1 HD and Channel 4 HD launches soon.
As for the endless friends repeats, I guess you missed this news:
http://bit.ly/Channel4friends
yes BBCHD airs on hd freeview, ITVHD will be launching too along with Channel4HD. Some more will probably arrive but not for a while.
People struggle with standard definition in the bad signal pockets of the UK. How on earth are they meant to cope with HD! This product may not sell well here :S
We've never had free TV have we? The licence has always been there. Not that I'm complaining, I'd die without the BBC!
Its free if you live outside the UK. Anyway, any chance F1 is being transmitted on BBC HD ??
@Abreu
F1 will not be broadcast in HD because Bernie will not stump up the money to buy the HD equipment. Nothing to do with the BBC.
UK tv really sux. All there is to watch is old repeats and more repeats and stupid reality shows. Channel 4 is a dedicated Friends channel, Sky 1 is Simpsons, ITV is rubbish reality, UK Discovery channel shows old repeats. Comedy Central shows old Everybody Loves Raymond, Two and a half men, King of Queens and Southpark episodes. Sport channels are mega expensive and don't even cover much except soccer.
Is is too much to ask for new and current shows? I mean seriously I have to watch tv shows on my computer with a US proxy server to see anything decent.
@Wesley
You need to move to the US then. I personally love UK Tv apart from the relentless Reality TV shows. Good luck in the US though as they are also full of reality tv shows (even more than here). You clearly are not looking very hard if you can't find any good original programming. The BBCs documentaries are worth the licence fee alone!
@coolblue2000 Agreed! BBC is genius tv. Just things like Planet Earth is worth the licence fee. I'm also annoyed at lack of F1 in HD, but it's soley down to FIA. I also have Sky HD, but essentially just for Sky1! New Band of Brothers (Pacific) is going to be on Sky Movies only :(
@Wesley I live in the US, and despite having something like 300 channels available there's nothing worth watching. Even on one of the rare occasions when you can find something decent, the commercial breaks every 5-6 minutes completely do your head in!
Forgive me for not being tech savvy. Is it possible to get free tv? Like cancel my150$ month cable service free?
@Tangerinescream
WARNING: Crack smoker alert!
@Tangerinescream
Technically we pay a yearly amount of around £140 to watch the BBC channels and BBC iPlayer, however I am pretty sure you could watch ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 for free (Possibly also ITV2, ITV3, E4 and More4 but I can't remember if they are on Freeview).
@coolblue2000
While the others are free, you still have to pay a TV license if you have a TV despite that money going to the BBC...and if you don't have a TV then you get badgered about a TV license anyway as they cannot accept for some reason that some people just don't have a TV like an old lady I know.
@coolblue2000 You don't need a TV license to watch the catchup part of the BBC iPlayer, only if you watch the live streams
I am in the us so it probaly wouldn't be any good for me?
@Tangerinescream Move to Britain and you'll get your free TV through terrestrial or satellite, aside from the TV licence of course. Both freeview and freesat are quite acceptable alternatives to paying money to Sky.
I cancelled my Sky sub nearly 3 years ago and aside from a few pangs I'm quite happy I did so. I must have saved £900 for the sake of a handful of Discovery shows I may have cared about.
Umm...in the UK in the 1990's I had five terrestrial channels, not four and I also quite happily enjoyed free OnDigital built into my Sony TV at home for a least a few years at the end of the decade.
@DampLondon : Five didn't launch until the late 1990s. Given that there was little to watch on it (except, my memory suggests, Lexx) for several years , I can't blame them for overlooking it. ;)
@sockatume The People vs Jerry Sadowitz justified Channel 5 until they canned it. And all the soft porn of course.
I'm surprised at the price, although I assume they're trying to milk insane early adopters/idiots.
DVB-T2 isn't that much different from standard DVB-T. output of 1080p and upscaling will add some cost though, although they probably ripped the guts out of their freesatHD box.
If anybody buys one of these before they have PVR capability they are nuts. And I buy anything shiny.
Hope the price drops before the World Cup. Then it'll be worth getting one. I had a freesat box when the Olympics and Champions League were on it was pretty great to watch in HD.
I read that as "Gamers Positive Review".
humax device is very cool
finally - free to air HD. now my HD tv is finally worth it.
You'd be better off buying a Freesat HD box for under £70 than this.
The real problem with freeview is that most SD channels have too much data compression so the images look like they're made out of Lego!
For 170 quid I could build a HD HTPC with DVBt2 decoding...
Why would a spend 170 for a stand alone box?
They need to explain the name. T2 was distributed by TriStar in the US and Guild Film Distribution in the UK. According to IMDB, Fox's only involvement was to distribute the VHS version in the Netherlands.
:)
Engadget:
Can you guys increase the "kern" on your headline font? It took me like three reads to realize that said "garners" and not "gamers."
Cheers,
Bandigolo
@Bandigolo True. For a second I thought this was one of those new gaming over service provider devices.
Why doesn't the UK use OTA/cable/satellite like we do in the US?
@markntravis
What are you talking about? We do
Freeview = OTA
Virgin Media = Cable
Sky/Freesat = Satellite
@ScottishDan If you already have OTA why do you need this Humax HD-FOX T2?
I don't need any box to watch OTA high definition TV.
I don't know if it's different to what you mean, but the UK has fibre-optic cable TV, two forms of satellite TV, over-the-air digital TV (Freeview) and until recently, analogue broadcasts over-the-air. We've had a lot of choice over the last couple of decades.
I've got a Sagem Freesat box
http://www.sagemdigital.co.uk/freesat-product-DTR94500S.aspx
works a treat - great HDTV
I've had issues with Humax before - had a 9200t that just used to freeze up - regular thing apparently with a lot of other users