Review: Humax PVR-8000T/80

The Humax PVR-8000T/80 is a single tuner Freeview PVR with an 80-gigabyte hard disk (enough for about 40 hours-worth of recording). It's been around for a while (in a 40Gb version), and although (as with most early PVRs) it gained a reputation for having a few bugs, the software has been updated and can now be considered mature enough to have any "quirks" ironed out.

 

The PVR-8000T/80T does all the things you would expect from a Freeview PVR:-

• Pause and play with button during A/V watching.
• Fast Forward & Fast Rewind in various speeds.
• Jump to live program.
• Slow Motion to Forward & Backward in various speeds.
• Automatic rewind for a time and play with button (Instant Replay).
• Time shift recording for 30 Minutes Repeatedly.
• Recording live channels and stop.
• Recording reservation in EPG information.
• Recording reservation with setting start time and duration.
• Play back of recorded services with Trick play modes.

One neat feature the Humax has is the ability to search for programmes by entering some text i.e. find all upcoming episodes of Little Britain in the EPG by typing in 'britain' using the remote. I was also impressed by Humax's technical support:- I wanted to ensure I was using the latest software so tried doing an upgrade as it said there was one available over the air. Unfortunately, another manufacturer had an upgrade available that conflicted with the Humax's, so it wouldn't work (the PVR-8000T/80 sensibly did not load the wrong software). I rang their tech support and got straight through to a helpful person who told me that they knew of the problem and that a proper Humax update would go over the air the next day. The update was successful!

The PVR-8000T/80 did everything I expected - I set and recorded programmes from the EPG, was able to pause/forward/rewind live TV. It was a fairly uneventful experience, which is how it should be. I am quite sensitive to noise, and although the Humax did rattle the hard disk a bit at start-up, once in normal mode it was unobtrusive inside my video cabinet. It was definately a bit noisier than the Inverto or TiVo though.

The PVR-8000T/80 is however, a 1st generation Freeview PVR - it only has a single tuner, so you can only watch or record one programme. The thing that surprised me was that you cannot watch a previously recorded program while recording - my Inverto can record 2 programmes while I watch another! Unless you have a TV with a built in Freeview decoder or already have a seperate Freeview decoder, I suggest you look at one of the newer twin-tuner PVRs. Humax do have a twin-tuner PVR of their own coming out soon, the PVR-92000T, and we hope to get hold of one for review.

The Humax PVR-8000T/80 is available from around £130.