It looks like a cross between and large DVD player and a VHS machine minus the VHS tape slot. Styled in silver with a highly reflective front panel it doesn't look too bad but it's not going to win any consumer electronics catwalk prizes either. However the 9200-T is likely to live under the TV or LCD screen or even tucked away with your other HiFi kit so looks are only a very small part of what makes a good unit.

The specification of the Humax PVR is however much more likely to get you excited, it boasts twin DVB-T Freeview capable tuners and whopping 160gb hard drive which can hold over 80 hours of recordings and a slick integration with the 14 day EPG. Going back a few years the Freeview EPG was a now / next type affair with 1 days listings at best, this has slowly increased to the point that 7 days worth of forward EPG are now broadcast for most channels and devices like this Freeview PVR are ready to suck in that data.

The Humax 9200 connect via SCART to your LCD / Plasma or CRT telly, while this is fine for most those with the latest LCD screens will be after a component signal rather than RGB and Humax do not provide this meaning pictures are not going to be the best on some screens. However this PVR does have a Dolby 5.1 audio output which will work well with a suitably equipped HiFi or TV set-up. With the RF signal that normally goes into our standard Freeview box diverted into the 9200T we were able to power up and set the Humax looking for channels. It quickly located all of the available services and started to suck in the EPG a process that took a good 30 minutes before there were 14 days for almost all channels.

This data plays the key role in making a Freeview personal video recorder viable, with the Humax you can press the guide button and start to search through a timeline style view of the EPG. 4 channel are displayed within the timeline view and you use the remote to navigate up and down through the complete list and left and right to move forward / back in time. Pressing the green button brings up the time bar allowing you to skip a day at a time, we found this most useful in being able to quickly check prime time each night for things we might want to record.

To select an item to record you only have to press the OK button and a little pink timer box is marked on the EPG, you can also press yellow to see all programme you have tagged to record. Having twin tuners means you can record 2 programmes at the same time, should you try and exceed this the Humax will warn you and does not accept the 3rd recording.

Sadly the one feature missing that any Sky+ user will miss is the series link feature, one that would let us record our favourites like Dragons Den or the West Wing automatically each week. This is due to the Freeview EPG not having the series link data rather than Humax not implementing it, so for now you have to scoot through the EPG a week at a time and tag the next episode manually.

Having recorded a crop of programmes over a week we set about checking the video and audio quality. Compared to the other units we've tested the quality is up there with the best and much better than the shocking performance of the Sony model that this unit competes with. Images are compressed and you can see this but even full screen on our 26" LCD screen he recordings were quite good and very watchable.

Playback is simple enough and the latest firmware version allows quick access from a set of buttons hidden in the base of the remote control, you can quickly select a programme and start replay, there is also Fast forward and rewind at up to x64 which means you get through an ad break in seconds. A few little niggles emerged here like the lack of thumbnails of recorded programmes, this is even stranger given that there is a little black thumbnail box on the screen! Also hiding under the remote cover is a series of editing buttons that when you enter edit mode allow you to trim programmes and even split parts into separate files ideal if you intend to use the inbuilt USB connection to offload recorded files to a PC.

Like so many disk based systems the Humax 9200-T PVR constantly records the channel you are watching (subject to 1 tuner being available) so you can rewind live TV or even pause it while you go to the loo. It's little features like this and PIP or picture in picture that show that this is a quality gadget. Perhaps the ultimate test is usability and the fact that the only reason we used the manual was to find out where all the extra buttons were. The answer points at the remote control which is a bit of a disappointment in being quite large, ugly and cheap feeling, it does it's job but is hardly something you'll want to hold for long.

As with most PVR's the firmware of the Humax is being updated regularly and those early adopters of this unit had a torrid time with it crashing while watching ITV or losing recordings!  We updated our firmware over the air as soon as we powered up and the version 1.00.06 is very stable and introduced a few tweaks too. It was just as well that the update is currently being transmitted as the method of downloading it from the Humax website sucks. You are expected to do this via an RS 232 cable or null modem cable as its known, this is not provided and if you PC lacks RS232 (which most do) you'll need a USB adaptor too, also not supplied.

The media manager software supplied on CD is fairly basic and allows you to use the USB connection to hook up a PC and extract files which is quite a slow process. Alongside the USB slot under a flap on the front panel is the Top Up TV common interface so you can use your Top Up TV card in the unit.

We did find a new bug which is created by a change in the latest firmware, you are now able to set an offset on each recording so that the Humax records a handle top and tail on each programme. However this global setting means that you can't start an instant record within the handle time of a programme start. Presumably the unit says ok you want to record that but in order to do it with the global handle of say 5 mins then I'd have to recorded 2 mins ago!  A small problem but it is an indication of just how cutting edge devices like the Freeview PVR can be and how a firmware upgrade can bring new funnies too.

Unlike the Sony unit the Humax is pretty quite with only a small amount of hard drive noise, this can almost entirely be eliminated if the unit is placed on an absorbent material rather than a hard surface. We'd recommend you do this if the unit is going to be anywhere near an area you take a nap as the waking hard drive on a timed record can cause some vibration.

Overall we are highly impressed with the Humax 9200-T Freeview PVR and our week long review resulted in us recording a huge number of programmes that we'd have otherwise missed. this is testament to the usability and reliability of the unit and having lived with it for a week we can honestly say it's the device that every Freeview viewer should own. Priced between £188 and £250 at the time of writing this 160gb model is great value for money and will give you a taste of what Sky+ users have been raving about for so long.

Published - 20/08/2006

More Freeview PVR Reviews-

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