Humax HD-Fox T2 review

The remote control is well designed and responsive. There’s a tantalising TV Portal button, but sadly it doesn’t do anything. Humax promises that it will be enabled later this year, to provide you with content from partners such as YouTube, Flickr and possibly even BBC iPlayer. This is a far better use of the Ethernet port, and we hope Humax comes through with the goods before too long. BBC iPlayer alone would make the £170 price a lot more bearable for most people.

Of course, what you really want to know is whether BBC HD and ITV HD are any good on Freeview HD. The answer depends on how large your TV is and how far you sit from it, just as with any HD content. We tested the HD-Fox T2 on a 32in Philips, a 37in LG and a Panasonic PT-AE3000E projector. Naturally, the biggest display showed the biggest improvement in quality between the HD and standard-definition channels. Watching documentaries or sport on a 100in projector screen is very impressive on BBC HD. Textures and details are crisp, whether it’s a player’s face on a football field or the brush strokes in a close-up of a painting. Standard-definition broadcasts, by contrast, look like a blocky mess at this size.

Watching the same broadcast on a 32in TV, it was hard to tell the difference between the HD and SD channels from a normal eight-foot viewing distance. The difference was more pronounced on the 37in TV, but still subtle. In general, we’d say that you’ll notice the extra resolution of HD channels only if you have a 42in TV or larger.

It’s worth pointing out that the BBC HD feed is identical for both Freesat and Freeview, so there’s no difference in quality between the two. ITV HD has a dedicated channel on Freeview HD – channel 51 – which is more convenient than on Freesat, where you press the red button to access it from ITV’s standard-definition channel.

Unlike BBC HD, where everything is broadcast in 1080i, ITV HD’s content varies from true HD programming to upscaled SD content. Upscaled content didn’t look much better than ITV’s SD channel, mainly because our test TVs and projector were all fairly capable of upscaling SD content to 1080p anyway. Currently, there are only one or two HD programmes shown per day. BBC HD broadcasts from 4pm until midnight each day, but it’s all in HD. Channel 4 HD is expected to arrive by the end of the year, but an HD version of channel Five won’t appear until 2012.

At the moment, then, there’s little reason to rush out and buy the HD-Fox T2 or any other Freeview HD product. It’s certainly the simplest way to get HD without a subscription, but with so little content, we can’t recommend you spend this much money. If you’re planning to buy a new TV before the World Cup, it makes sense to buy one with a Freeview HD tuner so you can watch England’s mistakes in their full glory, but not a dedicated set-top box that costs almost £200. By the time Humax enables the PVR functionality and the TV Portal, prices are sure to have dropped considerably, and that will be the time to buy either the HD-Fox T2 or Humax’s dual-tuner box that will have a 500GB hard disk. In the meantime, Virgin and Sky are the HD leaders, but you’ll have to pay for a subscription for both of those.