GT-005F Digital Freeview HD Set Top Box Digibox Plus USB Recorder

This was an excellent buy, really easy to set up and loads of freeview channels now available with great reception,

Box is small and easy to use. Picture quality in hd is absolutely perfect, the only drawback is the remote which is cheap and unresponsive unless pointing it straight at the box and nowhere else which can be frustrating but overall for the price it does the job very well

Arrived very well packaged with clear instructions, so it was very easy to set up. I used the SCART lead as my old telly doent support HDMI. I found far more channels than my old set top box and the picture quality was excellent from an indoor aerial. The remote was perfectly responsive and overall I would say it is great value and I couldn't be happier.

Let start with electrical safety. There is some good and bad. Good: Passes isolation test at 500V on a fluke tester. Good isolation between mains components and the rest of the circuit. Physical cut outs around the high voltage part. Bad: Vent holes on the bottom of the unit give easy access to mains voltage. Would have like to see this completely covered and the vents put on the other side. Main cable internally is touching the top of the case, yes, the cables are insulated, but play in the cable might cause the insulation to fail. The outer insulation has been stripped back where the mains cable enters the vertical plug. 13Amp fuse in plug, really! 3Amp would have been better. I fitted a 1 amp fuse. Internally it look like it might have a fuseable resistor, but not sure. Quality is not too bad. My only quibble is with the cheap electrolytic capacitors used. These might have failed for the reviewer that had a unit blow up on them. Good remote control. All channel tuned and I was able to watch TV via a scart cable. The image and sound was clean and stable. I replace the main capacitor in the power supply with a better quality one for longer life. This cap has to handle the rectified mains voltage. Probably would have been good to replace the other capacitors, but these work at much lower operating voltage and are less stressed. I used some fish paper, to give a second level of insulation between the case and the mains cable. See photo. While it good that the main supply is self contained, it might have been better to give the consumer a choice of using an external power supply like sone of the other PVRs available on Amazon. The consumer then has the choice of buying a safe and low noise supply and the unit has now dangerous voltages to be worried about. It would also reduce the manufacturing costs as less part would be required. This units real let down is the recording. Even though the live picture is clean, the recorded picture is awful. Broken picture with lots of pixelation. The format of the files created are TSV. These can be played on PC with VLC player or legacy video player. So, a summary: Good for watching live, bad for recording. Yes, I invalidated the guarantee, as I wanted to do a good review and ensure the unit was safe in my mind to use. If I have time, I might try to modify the unit to use an external low noise supply. This might help resolve the picture break up when recording. May be I will buy and review a unit that already has a 12V input!

Excellent

First off, let me state that for £27.99 I certainly was not expecting miracles, or bells and whistles. Having said that...Oh boy. Good points: Easy to set up, great picture, a 3.2 128Gig USB, works just fine, as does a 3.0 and a 2.0, (a 3.2 has the best and fastest download speed) not tried a Harddrive yet and probably wont, reasons given later. Recording is easy to set up and the EPG Interface is great. Everything else, you would really expect it to do, even if some of it badly. Ok, now the bad points: The lead - You only get a meter, so in my case it would not reach anything and had to attach another extension lead to the extension lead, to make it reach where I wanted to put it, which was a meter and a half from the sockets. No Internet connection, which I should have checked first, but to be honest, it never occurred to me that in 2025, it would not have one, as 99% of set top boxes have it now, either through lead, or Wi-Fi. It is not a problem for me, as I can get the stations that are on the internet through my TV, or another set top box I have connected. But for those of you that cannot do that, buyer beware. The Remote...Oh dear, the infernal remote... VERY unresponsive, unless like me, you are using it in the bedroom, where I have a stereo, a light, with a fan attached to it, another set-top box, surround sound speakers, a soundbar and an amplifier/mixer, then it works great! I got home from work, set up the box and tested it out, the problem with that was, I tried it at 2.30am, so my neighbours loved me, I live in a flat. Depending on which buttons you press on the remote, to use the Gumtek set top box, is which other device starts working. Anything else, that needs a remote, is in danger. It will make the light and the fan, that I have, come on, change the light settings and fan speed. It will also turn the stereo on and adjust the volume...not good at 2.30am in the morning, it will turn speakers on/off, soundbar on/off, mixer on/off, even the TV on/off and the other set-top-box I have (a different brand) on/off, it will also turn off whatever I was recording on the other box, which is the most annoying part of all. The only thing the damn remote will NOT work properly with, unless you are pointing the remote directly at it and give it a couple of presses to engage it, is the Gumtek set top-box. So I had a choice, turn off everything else and just have the Gumtek working, which was no good as I then had no sound, or unplug the Gumtek, go on Amazon and buy another, more expensive and hopefully workable one and keep the Gumtek as a spare, so it is now a spare, because sending things back on Amazon, although is not a problem from that aspect, sending return items, where I live and considering I do not drive, is a pain in the butt. So, do the good points outweigh the bad? Not on your nelly. So, you could have the same problems as me, if you buy this set top box....don't say I did not warn you.

Works perfectly, it set up easily and received all the channels and displays them very well especially the HD ones, the EPG interface is a little clunky, but not a problem with a little experience, the remote comes in for a lot of criticism there is absolutely nothing wrong with it tbh, my PC monitor is now a TV, very pleased

Hard to use