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I've got 2

Can get them for around the £30 mark that man, but there is some rare hardware faults that can be relatively easily fixed.

You should be able to swap the hard drive and keep the old recordings, providing the old box was running the latest public release (v5.12) when it died as new boxes dont usually tend to have older code images to roll back to.

If you want me to take a look at the box for you, drop me a PM.

Humax are certainly very good, as are Toppys and and Pannys. Philips and Sagem are okay, but tend to be buggy. In the latest release of our TopUp TV software, there is basically no bugs at all (bar a couple of glitches which in no way affect your usage of the box), but I think all-in-all, we have the closest interface to Sky+, which is certainly a plus-point, plus we have many more features than most other boxes (I say most, because there is a large hacking community for Topfields, who release all sorts of wonderful features). Our G1 boxes date back to 2005, and yet have Freeview+ capabilities along with support for many other new (more recent) features and standards, because unlike other manufacturers, we have a duty to keep the boxes updated and launch new features as and when we can, because of our subscription customers.

top up tv is a bit of a rip of 10.99 a month for repeats. New service real digital looks good, wonder what there monthly charge will be?

Some people may say the same about Sky and Virgin, if it isnt something that appeals to them to be paying £50 per month for 300 channels lol. It is and it isnt - we offer choice, plus a couple of extra channels, that we don't advertise on the website, are thrown in during non-VOD hours. There is also a hell of a lot of programming, that quite simply cannot be seen on Freeview, and thus you need Sky/cable to view it, programming from some of the top subscription broadcasters such as Discovery, Nat Geo, Living, C&I, Nickelodeon etc, so for people that want just a little bit more besides the standard Freeview offering, on-demand, with no contracts, and cheap/free digital TV recorders, the service is perfect.

I wouldnt personally subscribe to it, because there isnt quite enough value in it for me, and I wouldnt use the service enough, but 300,000 people are more than happy to do so, so there is a market for the product, albeit a niche one (consider we lost half our capacity so no longer offer loads of full-time channels like we used to, and we don't have any significant marketing budget like the mighty Sky, Virgin and BT).

To be honest, we are moving further towards the subscription channel market, and then into HD/IPTV with our forthcoming boxes. These things take time, and apart from the £600+ Panasonic BW-780 and BW-880, the other Freeview HD recorders on the market are plauged with problems, thanks for to them leaving everything till the last minute, which meant manufacturers have essentially had to launch bleeding edge products. Expect this to change soon.

I just bought the Humax HDR Fox T2 and am still finding my way round it, but even at £290 (Richer Sounds in Liverpool) i think it's great. High Definition picture, twin tuner (record 2 shows at once etc) series link, pause live tv, ethernet port to join home network -to play video off your computer; usb ports front and back, also to play video; can transfer SD recordings FROM internal hard drive TO external USB. Blurb says it will play vobs, divx, and mkv files, although i've not tested these latter features out yet. For those who don't know; vobs are files 'ripped' from DVDs; and divx and mkv are compressed versions of video recordings, popular with the internet community. Come to tvchaosuk.com to catch up on uk tv shows you have missed! No stolen latest music or films, just tv shows, and, like in here, a friendly community.

all sorted thankyou Matt many thanks for your help it is greatly appreciated
JOHN

Glad you got it sorted John