As noted elsewhere, I grew terminally irritated by the Humax FPV-500T PVR I've had for about 18 months. It's my 3rd Humax, bought about 18 months ago as it had triple tuners, doing away with clashes almost entirely, plus it has the usual "catchup" apps. What more could one want?
Humax users will know that the firmware has always been flaky, and the OS is slower than a slow thing. And for ages at different times iPlayer and whatever Channel 5's app is wouldn't work. This I tolerated (I can get the apps on the TV iteself), but recently it threw up a new twist. On powering up, and going to the recordings list, none would there be. The only way to get the list back is to "turn it of and turn it on again". Factory reset didn't cut it. Perhaps if I formatted the drive as well, but then there really would be no recordings (ok, not totally true, as I have many stored on an attached SSD).
Whatever, I decided enough was enough, and a-Googling I did go. And I've ended up with a Manhattan T3-R PVR. It's not as sophisticated - twin tuners, no external storage available (at least not yet - the firmware is constantly being updated - a recent update allowed one-touch recording of live TV, and apparently - not tested by me - it'll back-date to the start of the programme), no HDMI-CEC option, maximum 1TB storage, no Netflix or Amazon Prime apps (Manhattan being too small to bother dealing with apparently) butt I can. should I wish, get them on the TV itself (I don't).
Set-up was a doddle, the only slight complication was sorting out the volume control (my TV sound outputs optically to a Sonos playbase) but it wasn't difficult, although did require a quick Google (default is to output Dolby 5.1, and a setting needs changing to something else to suit the playbase). Took all of 5 minutes. Playing with the minimal settings another 5. The remote can be programmed (by putting the 2 units face-to-face on a table) to turn the TV on and off, and mute it. That's about it. EPG is different, but easy to negotiate. And the lack of additional tuners is taken care of by the "watchlist" facility. See a programme you want to watch? Can't set a recording to an alternative slot? Put it on the watchlist - and when you want to watch, press go, and it'll pull up the programme from whichever catch-up
service it's on.
OS is very snappy, and the system wakes up almost instantaneously (as long as you select the relevant standby option, I leave the loop through powered). One small issue I've found - that may be related to my running the output from it and the redundant-but-full-of-recordings Humax through a manual 2 to 1 HDMI switch - is that if I turn on the Manhattan, then turn on the TV (no CEC remember) the TV input doesn't always sense the output. A quick turn off and on again of the Manhattan (no 1 minute Humax restart) and it's fine. Or turn on the TV first, let it settle and then turn on the Manhattan.
Oh, and customer service / support. I emailed for some info, and got a response back inside 4 hours. It's nearly a week since I emailed Humax about my issue, and zilch.
All in all, so far very positive. And the volume level between the PVR and the TV is very similar - with the Humax there was a huge disparity, resulting in shocked eardrums when switching to TV watching.
Gets my vote.
