Manhattan T2-R 500 GB Freeview HD Recorder - Black

Product Information

The epg has to be cached, to download a new epg from the freesat home transponder takes about 30 seconds or so and depends on a free tuner being available to connect to the home transponder. And because it can control your TV’s volume, power and input selection†, you won’t need another remote. Indoor aerials are particularly poor and extremely sensitive to direction, meaning they will often tune some channels when placed in one position and a whole different set when placed in another.

Some (for example, Planet Knowledge) are slick on-demand portals where ad-supported programmes are selected for playback. I appreciate the use of the left and right buttons to skip a set number of seconds (configurable) while playing a recording. On the back of the box, you’ll find the power socket, an optical audio port (for connecting directly to speakers/soundbar), an AV minijack, an aerial socket where you plug a coaxial TV aerial cable (from your indoor or outdoor antenna), Ethernet and USB ports, and the HDMI port. Connecting all our boxes to the internet is also the easiest way for them to receive software updates, ensuring you’re always receiving our latest and greatest service.It was not immediately obvious that deleting a recording must be done via "Recording options", but it's easy enough when you know. The only negative is that sometimes whilst watching recorded TV, it freezes, and the TV has to be switched off, and started again. But for a major drama or film, I stick to recording on my TV, which has the facility to record on a USB. It has the capability to record two channels whilst watching a previous recording, it buffers up to two hours of live TV with this buffer being able to be saved to the hard drive as a recording.

Every now and then the picture seems to run as if in fast forward for a second or two while it catches up with itself, then the lip sync will be OK for a minute or two before drifting off again. The following day, even when the machine wasn't recording, the interference was so great we could not watch the TV. No streaming apps (such as BBC iPlayer, Netflix, etc’) – which means you have to get another streaming device for those. I thought that the SD ones just looked very, very slightly less sharp than they did on previous boxes, but without a side by side comparison it is difficult to make any meaningful comparison.g. 'HD Channels' and then 'BBC One HD'), as long as the channel being viewed is on that list when you re-enter the TV Guide, the list will continue to be selected. I can’t stress the importance of the speed factor enough – Freeview on many TVs, as well as on cheaper dedicated boxes, is often an excruciating experience due to the interface’s speed. All the features of the sky+ box, such as pause and rewind live TV, record 2 channels at the same time, set timer for up to a week in advance via the TV guide, set a series link, get on-screen info at the press of a button, etc. Enjoy crisp, high-definition viewing with unbeatable sound quality, while the 500GB of recording storage prepares you for a world of entertainment. And of course – if you have an older TV that doesn’t have any Freeview support, you would need an external Freeview box either way.