Freeview HD TV Set Top Box Recorder - August DVB400 - Watch Live, Schedule Over 8 Recordings, Play Pause Rewind in 1080p HDMI High Definition - Black

This product has a lot of irritating things about it but I so far have found very little that doesn't work or can't be sorted out. For the price, I think it is extremely good value for money.I will start on the outside of the box. It is tiny and incredibly lightweight. One thing that I wish the manufacturer had done was make the power supply longer or detachable. I ended up taking the plug off and wiring it up again to get it where I wanted. it is just around 1m long which is a bit tight in my opinion. On the front, it has got a USB port. August say it can have a hard drive up to 1TB. That is pretty good. But then the format it records TV in is mts. Those files seem to take of over double the room of MP4 MKV and similar. I just have a 64gb Lexar stick and that is enough for me.On the back, it has HDMI, SCART, COAXIAL, RF in and the RF loop through. I have used all of them at times. Some people will probably think that scart isn't really relevant but I find it very useful. I use a scart to phono adaptor. I was looking for a cheap way of getting an analogue audio signal to my amplifier. That has done the job well. I use HDMI to go to my PC monitor.Like others have said, it is very simple to install. I think that the only channels that don't work smoothly are the ones that my aerial didn't work with very well anyway.I do have one of the problems that some people find very irritating. Every now and then, channels such as 4 +1HD and several others move up right up to the channel number 800 or so. Very strange. This doesn't happen often but all you need to do it retune the box and it fetches them back to where they should be.I agree with others here, the user interface is poor. Even so, I waited until I got used to it and I'm still learning now about how many things that is actually capable of. It is nice that you can record anything on any channel. It seems unlimited to how many programs you can set to record. I once had 20 set to record and it did the job just fine. When you set programs to record, you have the option to set the time they start. This means that you will be able avoid cutting off the start or end of programs if they don't run on time. I tend to set them to start recording 5 minuted before and add 5 minutes after too just to make sure I won't miss anything. You can even set a program to record daily and weekly.One thing people might not like is that if you are wanting to put what you have recorded onto your PC afterwards, it actually splits the video up into several files. They are called the channel number, then the date, then the time so it can get confusing. If you want your computer to play them, you will need to rename them and add on part 1 part 2 etc. On the media play on the DVB400 though at leased, it will play them fine as one whole program like it was originally!A smart but slightly hidden feature is when you play back TV you have recorded. If you press the stop button on the remote, and select that video again sometime later or even another day, it pops up with a message saying start/resume. If you select resume, it will remember where you were last time in the video. However, the pop up message is very hard to see or even notice. If you press exit when you are in a video that you have recorded, it then won't remember where you last were. You need to think to press stop and look very carefully for the start resume text. This is one place where the UI is really poor.Even the guide of the HD channels only has the times. Only the SD channels have information of what the programs are on the guide. Another thing that would maybe bother others is the style of the guide. Each channel you view, you can only see one at once and you as you view each channel, you can't stay on the one you were on. So if you were watching the news on BBC 1 and you wanted to see what was on BBC 2, you won't even here BBC 1 any more. As I said earlier, there is no information other than the times for the HD channels. If say I wanted to know what was on Channel 4 next, and I was on Channel 4 HD I would have to press 4 and then EPG then go back to 104. The RECALL button is also the previous channel so that would get you back too.Timeshift works well. How it works is it pauses the TV and records what is currently playing. The time shift space is 1gb when you first get the DVB400 but you can put it up to 4gb.Something that most TVs don't seem to have is a button that switches it over from TV to radio. You can press the tv/radio button. This will then take you to the list of radio channels. If you mainly listen to 1 channel then you can press the that button again and it will take you back to the TV channels. It only takes one press of that button and it will take you back the the exact same radio channel you left it on. On a Samsung TV in my home you need to dial in the radio channel number each time you want it which to me isn't as simple as this.The remote is quite poor too. It is very small and takes a while to get used to. Some of the buttons don't do what you would expect and are labelled in an unusual way. Such as the goto button. This to me makes it sound like it will bring up a menu of different places you can go or something like that but no. It is only for when you play stuff on media play. You play a video, press GOTO and 00:00:00 pops up. you dial in the time of the video you want to get to. It is pretty hard to skip to it the other way as there is just a fast forward. Although this feature is a little tricky to get used to, it is very useful at times.Although it has many niggles, I really can't complain for the price. Now at only £24. That is really good value. I got it at around £26 - £29 and I still think that is great value. The value for money is the main reason why I have given it 5 stars.Update - 26/04/16I have recently worked out the reason why this Freeview HD box didn't record a program all as one file. It was because my record device was formatted to FAT32 and it only had a limited amount of space single a file could take up before having to create another.Now I have a bigger portable hard drive connected to it that I formatted to NTFS. It now will record everything as one video file.

I REALLY wish I could give this a 0 star rating! This is an awful little product, it is sluggish, needs to be retuned every week and the record function is embarrassing!I bought this for my grandma who still hasn’t got the internet or satellite TV! She already had a free view box that she could record programmes and set reminders from but this still worked off the SCART connection on her TV, I thought I’d get her one that she could could utilise her HDMI connection with, but I want to emphasise the fact that THIS BOX IS THE WORST THING IVE EVER BOUGHT FROM ANYWHERE!Just to summarise why...1) It took 2 attempts to programme the box initially, the first time it found 8 channels!2) When I finally got the channels to install, it takes the EPG (programme guide) around 5 minutes to load the channels3) The EPG itself is less advanced than a free view box I had 10 years ago, you have to change the channel to see what is on that particular channel4) The lag is ridiculous, this alone makes the box a waste of time, you press a button and nothing happens, press it again, still nothing, so you press again, this time after a few seconds it receives all 3 commands at the same time and you’ve skipped 3 channels; and so the process starts again...5) The ‘record’ function! This is not a function that this box should have! It hardly has the CPU power to run the EPG, try running the box while it records another programme! WASTE OF TIME!6) Just to top it off and to to put the final nail in the coffin for the box, it randomly decides to factory restore itself every week (the only thing that it does consistently!) meaning that you need to go through the whole process of retuning!These are only the 6 most frustrating things about this box! I will be returning!Don’t waste your money and I would strongly recommend that you disregard all reviews of this product that praise its performance.DO NOT BUY!!!!!

Does what I need it for but very basic

Received item quicker than expected. I have not set up yet but looks like it is what I need.

I had to send this product back, although most functions were ok set up and use - the set up to record was highly frustrating because you have to put the date and time in exactly or it would come up entirely wrong and if you entered the number 6 it would switch off.