Humax Foxsat Freesat Review

The credit crunch may be starting to press but the last thing to go is the Sky package. Strange as it may seem satellite TV clings on long after life's other luxuries have been consigned to the bin and we have started to look in the dented tins bin at the supermarket. So the box on review this week may come as a welcome surprise, satellite TV that uses your standard mini dish without a contract, welcome to freesat and the Humax
Foxsat HD Set top box.

HD is certainly a must have if you are buying a new TV but when combined with a Freeview box you could be waiting a few years before you get a terrestrial HD signal. So if you want true HD telly you need satellite from Sky or now freesat. Freesat currently has just over 130 channels and is adding them at a rate of about 5 a week, it won't be long before they have all the Freeview channels plus many more free to air ones. Lastly the killer blow is that freesat will start to feature Freesat only channels like the ITV HD service that will not go up on Sky.

Sat under our TV this week is the freesat box the market has been waiting for the Humax Foxsat HD. The early freesat units were from global brands like Alba and Bush, hardly a good way to launch a new service and the forums were fully of flaky box stories. Humax however is a different league and you can tell this from the moment you start up the Foxsat. Measuring 280 x 45 x 200mm the Foxsat HD is a small unassuming box that will sit under the TV, its green LCD display is easy to read and there is a small red LED to show the standby mode.

The setup wizard guides you through and all it needs is your postcode to get started, once verified it starts to use the Freesat EPG data to check through the same transponders that BSkyB uses to uplink the shared services. The beauty of this is that Freesat uses the same 28.2 / 28.5 degree orbital slot so you can use the existing mini dish you have hanging off the wall at home. Just unplug the cable from an existing Sky box or where the skybox may once have been and plug it into the Humax Foxsat HD.

The first tune took around 2 minutes and prompted us to save the channels at the end having found 133 in total, these are a mixture of TV and radio. Our first glimpse of the EPG proved that this is no Sky+ but it's no ugly duckling either, its pretty swift, readable and easy to navigate too. Soon we had BBC services on screen looking colourful and clear as good as any Sky box we've seen. The BBC's HD service is available and the Humax has full HD connectivity via HDMI, YPbPr or Scart, worth noting that the box will stop you watching some services if you have the scart enabled as party of a copy block system. The set top box supports 1080i, 720p, 576p, 576i resolutions and so is fully equipped for all the announced services.

Humax HD set top boxAudio is acceptable even when using the digital optical output it lacks a bit of oomph and could be accused of sounding thin which is most noticeable on movies or music, this applies to both SD and HD programmes.

Humax boast a low power consumption in standby of under 1 watt, which is still not excuse for leaving it on 24/7 but as so many people do its good to know its not eating too much. Also worth noting that the Foxsat does not come with an HDMI lead you'll need to buy one if you want to watch HD on your set using HDMI.

Overall Humax have done a good job with a solid if not sexy set top box, it does the basics well receiving Freesat and displaying quality images and passable sound all with an easy to use EPG. We fully expect Freesat to be up to nearly 200 channels by Christmas and perhaps even a few Freesat only services, what we really like is the unique mix of Freeview favourites like More 4 and some of the Satellite only services on one box. There is also a Freesat PVR unit on its way, a kind of Freesat+ box that will record programmes from the epg.