Teknikal HD Freeview Set Top Box Receiver Plus Recorder for Digital TV Channels Tuner HDMI / Scart Outputs USB Memory Slot DVB-T Digi Box 4 Switchover

Rejuvenated an old tv and reasonable price to make it worthwhile. Simple to install.

This recorder works quite well for me, and better than I expected for the price. Some have said that it will not record HD channels, but this one does, and plays back successfully. I found that an external hard disk was not reliable and had problems with a 64gb USB stick, so am using a 32gb USB stick formatted as NTFS. A super-fast USB stick makes no difference as this only uses USB 2 anyway.

Bargain

Had this set top box for 6 days and it has failed. During setup, couldn't get out of factory test screen. Box wouldn't react to remote, but eventually managed to get it installed. However it switched off programme and started scrolling through stored programmes. Managed to restore programmes, for it to happen again. Now box doesn't switch on or off with remote, red power light is permanently on and programmes can be viewed on TV and we have to switch the box off by switching power off at the socket. But still each time the box is switched on, the factory test card appears and has to be got rid of by using the exit button on the remote. Tried to apply for a refund via Amazon, but told I have to give seller 2 days to reply. What happens if seller is not cooperative, do I get my refund, WHO KNOWS.

Not a very friendly user device

Item arrived as described, well packaged and on time.

Excellent Product! Highly Recommend!

I got this to use with an old TV that whilst it has freeview, its very early generation and things like the EPG often doesn't populate properly, it doesn't record etc. This device was easy to set up, it quickly tuned in every possible station so it is very sensitive. The picture is excellent and the unit sensitive enough not to get any break up or blocks on any channel. The picture on HD channels is superb. The EPG is better than the TV's own one as it populated fully and quickly but annoyingly it changes the channel as you scroll through them which slows it down, it should only change when you select a channel. Also very annoying on the EPG is there is no page down/ page up buttons so scrolling to up and down can take forever. I have partially fixed this by using the feature to renumber all the channels I would ever watch to low numbers so they are all at the start of the EPG, much better. The remote buttons work OK for me but you do have to remember to point it directly at the box and not the TV as is instinctive. Also the button layout is a bit random, its not intuitive at all so you have to keep looking at it to see what your doing. I have some spare learning remotes around so I might try programming one of those, they may improve range too. Initial test of recording showed it really doesn't like cheap USB sticks. So I got a fast 128gb one, its one of those tiny stubby ones and clocks 45mb/s write and 128mb/s read. You would hardly notice its in there in the front. Some said you could only use up to 32gb but my 128gb works fine too. Some have said you can't delete recordings, when you first press the USB button, you can scroll sideways on the top menu to the disk manager, there you can format your USB stick, delete, rename files etc. I wanted such a big stick so I could store movies from other sources to play when nothing on to watch. I have tested the recording functions. I have had no problem recording and playing back SD channels. However HD channel recordings are unwatchable due to break up and blocks. Testing the recorded file on a PC I can see the issue was at the time of recording, this box simply doesn't have the horsepower under the hood to correctly encode and record an HD signal in real time. Further confirmed by putting a very high HD movie file on the stick, the box played it beautifully so decoding/playback is not an issue. So if your happy to record and watch the SD version of channels, this box is fine, but don't buy if you want HD recording. For the cheap price, and there is limited choice in such boxes these days, it does mostly what I need.