Humax Foxsat HD review

[BGonaSTICK]

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Had mine for a few hours now, so I thought it was about time to chuck some info up here.

I'll cover some of the more interesting parts of the setup and testing later, but here's how the box looks, and how the basic install went.

I have to say that I'm very impressed, and haven't found any bugs so far. This was a relief, as I'd heard rumblings about such niggles, though Humax are generally well respected for their prompt and frequent firmware updates.

I set my STB up very simply at first - rejecting the opportunity to upgrade the firmware as part of the initial install, buy I soon went back and updated that too, pretty soon in fact after I couldn't get anything out of the leaked ITV HD remote shortcut 

[BGonaSTICK]

Under the left hand flap (push to open) are the blanked-off single card reader slot (top) and CI slot (bottom). I haven't opened the case itself as it's security-sealed, but I assume there is nothing but fresh air behind there.

Under the right hand flap are some of the basic controls  - which simply duplicate those found on the remote. This allows the operation of the main menu system, channel-hopping etc. (though I haven't actually tried these out yet.)

The remote control is excellent by the way, and is identical in shape and feel to the remotes found with many other STBs from the Humax stable. It's light, responsive and fits the hand well. It's also black. Thank God.

The rear panel is fairly predictable, though I don't know why Humax bothered with the component output, seeing as they then decided to 'encourage' you to disable it (see later comments on firmware upgrade.)

There is also a very wise warning in sticker-form, applied to the top casing. You would be well advised to follow it - unless you like the smell of electrical toast 

[BGonaSTICK]

I've run out of brownie points to be alowed any more dishes, so I'm using the loopthrough on one of my existing receivers (Dreambox 7000).

This isn't as daft as it might seem, and actually works very well. With the Dreambox in soft-standby, the Humax is allowed to take full control of the LNB. Which is nice.

For a laugh (and because I hate unused ports on gadgety things) I decided to network the box right from the word go. Actually, this is mainly because you have to be a contortionist to get to the back of my AV cabinet, so I figured that it would save a few swearwords in the future.

The Foxsat HD comes with an HDMI lead already in the box. Hooray for Humax! It's sh!t! Throw it away!

I replaced it with a cheap (£15) one from Datawrite. I find them good value and reasonable performers.

Ventilation is a bit of a concern in my case. I've had to put the Foxsat on top of the Dreambox. Fortunately, the vents on the top of the latter are all on the right-hand side, so the addition of the Humax to the left doesn't block them at all. The cabinet is not enclosed, so I'm OK with that. Just about.

The Foxsat has good ventilation slots on both sides, and also on top. It doesn't appear to get unduly hot during normal operation.

Also worth mentioning is that the power cord on the Foxsat HD is permanently wired to the STB, and doesn't employ a 'figure 8' lead, like most receivers.

[BGonaSTICK]

Right. Hit the power and off we go.

After the excitement of seeing the Humax logo in HD, you get to do some basic setup.

Chose your weapons! You can change these later, so don't fret. I've included screenprints of all the available options in the 'first stage' of the install.

[BGonaSTICK]

More of the same...

[BGonaSTICK]

Now it starts to earn it's money by sniffing at the coax to see if you remembered to add a dish.

My Dreambox is actually connected to a motorised dish via a four-way DiSEqC switch, just to make things complicated. The motor isn't in line - the motorised dish has a twin LNB and the motor is driven by my PC via the second coax. The DiSEqC switch itself is connected to three LNBs on another fixed dish - the fourth being the LNB on the motorised dish. Sorry about all that 

With this setup, the Dreambox has access to Astra 1 on DiSEqC port A, Hotbird on DiSEqC port B, Eutelsat W3 on port C and whatever the motorised dish is pointing at on port D. For the purposes of this test, the motorised dish had previously been positioned on Astra 2. The Foxsat should therefore see the same as the Dreambox. In theory. Would the Foxsat actually find 'Freesat' (Astra 2)?!?!

Yay - no problem! Impressed, I was! 

[BGonaSTICK]

The Humax Foxsat HD wasted no time in getting right down to it, with the offer of an Over The Air (OTA) firmware update, which I politely declined at this stage.

As part of the Freesat regionalisation setup, it then requested my postcode, which I entered. You can change this later on too, if you goof-up or want a different version of the BBC and ITV channels as default in the EPG.

The box then duly went to work scanning the Freesat transponders, which only took a few minutes. 74 channels found. That sounds about right. The box is in 'Freesat mode' at this stage after all - so it doesn't seek out all available FTA channels at 28.2E.

[BGonaSTICK]

After saving the results of the manual setup and automatic scan, I had a quick play with the box, rummaging through the menus and whatnot.

I then went back and performed the firmware update from the system menu, as shown.

As soon as the update had completed (I already had the box tuned to BBC HD, naturally) the rude warning dialogue regarding component output was displayed. As if I would bother ripping the HD content off over component anyway... 

[BGonaSTICK]

To conclude my initial foray into the world of Freesat, I had a quick tweak of the Network/IP settings. The box didn't want to actually save the router and DNS IP addresses, so I eventually set it back to 'DHCP' from 'manual' and gave up for the time being. Neither Freesat nor Humax are ready for this just yet, so I won't get too agitated.

I turned off the analogue HD output to avoid being bombarded by the 'nag' message, checked the diagnostics screen (no diagnostics to run as such, just a very un-interactive info panel) and sat back to survey my work.

A morning well spent, methinks.

I'll tell you what I did next in the second instalment. Stay tuned for that lovely EPG, hidden menus and multi-satellite configuration!

[BGonaSTICK]

Apologies to those that have asked me about the multi-satellite configuration in the past few days. I can assure you that it does work just fine, and I will be getting part two of the Foxsat review done in the next week or so.

Regards,

STICK