Humax Foxsat HD Receiver

[laserblazer]

The guy who is quoting to put the TV system into our place in Portugal (we need UK, German, Portuguese and Dutch channels) Has recommended a Humax Foxsat HD receiver. Amazon have them for £120 with free delivery to Portugal. They seem to have some nice lock-down features, which is important if we are going to have guests using it. Humax seem to have a good reputation bt I do need something that is fairly idiot proof. Has anyone any views on this?

 

I appreciate we won't get the foreign channels. I did look at putting two offset LNBs on the big dish but Astra 2 reception can drop out when it's raining, so I don't want to risk making it worse. We are going to have a separate 80cm dish and receiver for Astra 1.

[m25man]

This is a great box I have the PVR version myself and have been really pleased with it.

The EPG however is going to be a bit messy for you I think, the box has two modes Freesat and Non-Freesat.

The tuning is selected based on your initial setup preferences such as Country and Postcode.

 

The reciever is slightly deaf in that i cant get a decent lock on some of the channels with a 60cm Sky Dish. I think you are going to need a 1.2m dish with a very low noise LNB to pull in BBC and ITV in all weather conditions.

 

You might be better off with one of the more generalised HD Sat Boxes that is more Euro Friendly as the Humax does seem to localise everything quite well especially if you want a wider choice of channels.

My Humax has dual tuners and a pass thru so you could easily stack it with a different box one for UK specific reception and another for Euro Channels.

 

Your better off spending you money on a good quality Dish/LNB package as Tuners are cheap as chips and obsolete it seems in a matter of months... you can then change your STB as often as your shorts

[plexer]

We are going to have a separate 80cm dish and receiver for Astra 1.

 

So which channels will the humax be used for? sounds like you will be able to use the humax for everything else and use the pass through on it to make installation easier?

 

Ben

[laserblazer]

The Humax will be used with the 130cm dish for freesat. The 80cm dish will go to a receiver I will buy in Portugal for the European channels. As I understand it, the only way you can get access to Astra 1 and Astra 2 from one dish, is to use two offset LNBs. I assume that the signal hiting the LNBs is going to be weaker if they are offset and as the Astra 1 signal is pretty weak in Southern Portugal anyway and an 80cm dish costs peanuts, I figured separate dishes is the way to go.

 

Presumably pass-through is taking the feed from the LNB through one receiver and then into the other one, which would only work if I was planning to access one satellite.