First look: Humax Freeview HD set-top box

 

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Posted on 10 Dec 2009 at 10:22

We got our hands on a working Freeview HD set-top box at Humax's pre-release demonstration in Central London last night. The £170 HD-Fox T2 isn't much to look at, just like most Freeview set-top boxes, but the picture quality was as good as we'd hoped.

The BBC HD channel is broadcast in 1080i, and the quality looked incredibly sharp, just as it does if you receive it via Freesat HD or through Sky HD. If we're honest, though, it looks no different from the Freeview HD trial which was conducted around two years ago, but was viewable using standard hardware. Annoyingly, due to the switch to the DVB-T2 standard, rather than the current DVB-T, it means you'll need to buy a new set-top box such as the HD-Fox T2 in order to receive the new HD broadcasts. These have just been switched on at Crystal Palace and Winter Hill in Manchester (we reported the timetable for Freeview HD rollout a couple of weeks ago).

The HD-Fox T2 upscales all signals to 1080p (at 50 frames per second), which is welcome since it means that the HDMI signal doesn't change when you switch between HD and standard definition channels. This leads to much faster channel changing, as your TV doesn't have to redetect what's being sent to it.

More interesting than this, Humax has put a USB port on the rear of the HD-Fox T2, so you'll be able to connect a USB hard disk and turn it into a single-tuner PVR. This is a massive boon since you'll be able to pause and rewind live TV as well as recording shows. This is especially generous of Humax given that the company could have just left this feature out and forced people to buy its dual-tuner PVR model, which is expected around April 2010 with a built-in 500GB hard disk. However, as the HD-Fox T2 has only a single tuner, it means you can't watch another channel beyond the one you're recording - you'll have to use your TV's own tuner or another set-top box if you want to do that.

Yet another surprise was the completely redesigned menu system, which is much cleaner and faster than on previous models. We were particularly happy to find that the EPG will now be cached (where a hard disk is present). This was a major bugbear with previous models, which discarded the seven-day programme information when you put them into standby mode, requiring you to wait several minutes for it to load over the air each time you turned them back on.

Also, as there's now automatic channel detection, there's no need to ever manually rescan for new channels, so the menus are simplified. Next on the long list of features is a built-in UPnP client, which allow you to stream media from computers or a NAS on your network (the box has an Ethernet port for connectivity). Humax says it plans to enable a UPnP server later on in 2010 so you'll even be able to stream programmes recorded on an external hard disk (or an internal one in the case of the PVR model) to other Humax products. After this, the firmware will be updated to allow computers on your network to stream the content. Of course, thanks to the USB ports, you can also play media stored locally, including H.264, AVI, XviD, MP3 and JPEG formats, although Humax also plans to expand this list by the time the HD-Fox T2 launches in February.

Finally, both boxes are 'portal ready'. This makes sense as Humax's German set-top boxes already have internet connectivity and plenty of on-demand content. No details were confirmed about what the UK content will be, but it's likely to be a mixture of on-demand TV (from YouTube, iPlayer, ITV Player and more), photos from Flickr, internet searching via Google, information from Wikipedia and even access to eBay.