HUMAX PVR9200T REVIEW

Performance: all the good things have already been said, but I cannot resist saying again that its reception is outstanding – best I’ve seen from a freeview box – and recordings are made with superb clarity. A good range of playback speeds is available too. And those thinking about top-up tv may be interested to know that, yes, it will let you record two topup tv channels with one subscription!

The reception and recording/playback facilities alone make the machine worth having, which is just as well, since there is little else it will offer to many purchasers. Will you really download photos from your PC, create multiple favourite channel lists, or title your recordings? The editing function may seem attractive but it is easier to skip unwanted sections when watching – anyone thinking they might use the edit feature to dub recordings will be disappointed by the jitter at the edit points. Nice to know these facilities are there, but don’t be impressed by salesmen enthusing over them.

One other feature may seem attractive, namely the chance to replay what you are watching. The price for this is that for as long as the machine is switched on, it will be continually recording to the hard drive. I may be old-fashioned about these things, but I don’t like unnecessary wear and tear. If you like to leave your machine on all day, you might want to be aware of this.

Gripes: one of the curses of modern electronics is that designers love to build in pointless features simply because they can, and Humax engineers have fallen into this trap. If you are watching when a timer recording starts, a message insists on flashing up on screen to tell you – why? When watching a program, you can’t press a single transport button (play, fast wind etc) without an irritatingly intrusive progress bar appearing and filling almost the full width of the bottom of the screen, with no way of disabling it permanently (you can remove it manually, but the moment you press another button it will be back) And although a SCART has been provided to let you record to a video or DVD recorder, the machine does not actually output a signal unless switched on and tuned to the channel you want – no use if you plan to dub a timer recording to tape or DVD. On the subject of SCARTS, there is no input to record an auxiliary source – so you can download photos but can’t record your camcorder footage!

There are software bugs too, the most serious being the inability of the machine to recognise when a channel starts broadcasting. Many freeview channel have limited broadcasting times, and simply show a cue card until the start time. If you want to record a program at the broadcasting start time, and like to record a couple of minutes in advance, or even if you select the exact start time and the broadcast is a few seconds late, you are liable to end up with an hour of a recorded cue card – even if you manually tune in the channel to watch it. This is not a broadcast issue – my cheapo Argos freeview box does not suffer from this.

Finally, the manual is not very good. Humax have at least attempted something better than a folded sheet of paper, but there are sections where it is inadequate to say the least – try following the instructions for editing.

In the machine’s defence, I cannot say I have suffered the niggles reported by other reviewers. Yes, it takes a short time to load up when switched on, but this is little more than 10 seconds – about the same as some other digiboxes. Personally I find timer setting quite easy wand flexible; nor do I have a problem with the remote control, which has much more positive buttons than many these days. And if you don’t like the cover hiding some buttons, slide it off altogether!

Reliabilily: has it been reliable? I’m afraid not – in fact I’m taking it in for repair this weekend. The box has frozen several times while I’ve been watching and the only answerhas been to unplug and replug it. One one occasion I disovered that it was still writing to the hard disk even when switched off, and again only rebooting cured this. The timer has proved very unreliable with several recordings simply not present even with programs scheduled for daily recording. One timer event seemed to have recorded the correct length but it would only let me play it from half-way through. And even the clock has lost 3 minutes in the past week or so – how can this happen with automatic setting?

Rating: on the (I hope not over-optimistic) assumption that my problems are a one-off, and that they can be fixed speedily, I’d still give the machine 4 out of 5. To be able to record two programs without worrying about overlap is revolutionary! I just hope the problems will be ironed out soon