Are there any Freeview HD PVRs that don't totally suck?

October 18, 2016 3:43 AM

My parents Humax YouView Freeview HD PVR has died after only two years. They are less than keen to get a Humax again but, last time I tried to find a Freeview HD PVR for them, the options out there really sucked. What's the least sucky option now?

Firstly, Sky, Virgin Media and BT are off the cards. My parents don't watch enough TV to justify the additional monthly cost. They'd rather the initial upfront cost and then be done with it.

Two years ago I chose a YouView box. YouView was the bright spot on the TV horizon that was full of buggy, ugly and confusing products. However since purchasing the box, they've issued about two software updates to it and then appear to have completely given up on the product. In 2015, they added channel logos, live restart for on-demand players, tweaked the UI of the on-demand section and added a deep sleep mode between 1am and 5am. In 2016, they did nothing. Remote recordings is still half-baked and nothing major has come along which I could get excited about.

The John Lewis website reports people complaining that their Humax boxes have broken (in similar ways to my parents) after only 6-9 months. As a result, I'm not keen to recommend that they buy what appears to be an abandoned software platform on hardware with lousy quality control.

Has anyone found a Freeview PVR with a sane and sensible UI, good set of useful features, a remote control that doesn't have 10,000 buttons for the hell of it and decent hardware quality?

(I'm fully aware that the quality bar for Freeview HD set top boxes is extremely low)

posted by mr_silver to Technology (4 answers total)

Best answer: Earlier this year I looked into Freeview PVRs and concluded there wasn't a good one. The YouView UI is still the best for usability but the platform is now controlled by BT and TalkTalk so enhancements only now seem to happen to support their own services and boxes. You can use a BT-branded box (made by Humax) without taking BT TV or even being on their network, although even those don't seem to have had many updates in the last year.

Freeview Play defines a set of required features but leaves the UI up to the manufacturers. However, the Panasonic ones were ugly, very dated and buggy when I looked at them and the Humax I saw was not much better. I also didn't rate the build quality of the Humax boxes. I think the days of the PVR are numbered with the rise in streaming so no manufacturer now wants to invest any more than the absolute minimum in developing software for them.
posted by kerplunk at 4:32 AM on October 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

My parents have two of these Panasonic ones and really rate them. I haven't used them myself, but my parents are people who value simplicity and ease of use.
posted by daisysteiner at 4:53 AM on October 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: This is a lot harder to answer than a few years ago when TVonics and Topfield were still on the market. Now it seems like most people look for streaming boxes (often Kodi boxes set up for content of dubious legality) and the PVR market is down to Humax and Panasonic hardware with a declining chance of regular updates.

So, maybe get the Panasonic or alternatively the BT-branded YouView box, because the UI will be familiar to your parents, pay for an extended warranty, and don't get your hopes up. (I've seen people argue for buying an old Humax -PVR FOX-T2 on eBay and installing custom firmware, because the hardware is more solid, but that makes you tech support, and having to be remote tech support for my dad and his TVonics box isn't fun.)
posted by holgate at 10:37 AM on October 18, 2016

I had a similar problem recently - PVRs outside of the BT/Sky/Virgin ecosystem seem like a dead end and none of the recent ones seem to be much good - Humax seem like the best of a bad bunch. In the end, I got an XBox One and connected a TV tuner stick to it for basic Freeview HD (with pause/rewind, but no recording) and use the iPlayer/All4/etc apps for streaming/catchup. It's unsatisfying knowing I can't record stuff and really it feels like I'm losing the control/options unless I want to sign up for a monthly subscription.
posted by parm at 3:30 PM on October 18, 2016