Humax HDR-1010S review

PORT SCRATCHINGS

The HDR-1010S’s connectivity doesn’t end there, though. The system also has two USB ports to which you can connect USB drives, a HDMI output, an optical digital audio output and scart and component video outputs. There are two F-connectors to which you connect your satellite cables. You need only one to watch Freesat+, but the second connection is essential if you want to record one channel while watching another.

As with the HDR-1000S, the HDR-1010S is far more than a Freesat+ PVR, as you can stream media from DLNA servers on your network, such as other PCs or NAS devices. The HDR-1010S detected the media servers running on our router and our Synology DS212+ NAS quickly and without issue. As is typical with such systems, you can choose to view photos or videos, or listen to music.

Whichever media type you choose, the interface screens look great and are informative, especially the music screen, which shows the album art for a track and provides a playlist to the right of the screen. You can also play media from connected USB drives and copy media files to the HDR-1010S’s internal hard disk. All these features mean you can place the HDR-1010S right at the heart of your media setup, providing you with access to your music, videos and pictures as well as subscription-free satellite TV.

As much as we liked the old HDR-1000S, it lacked certain online services, although Humax assures us that you can now get the catch-up TV services that were missing. There are no such shortcomings with the HDR-1010S, however, so we had no problem awarding it five stars and a Best Buy award.