Samsung SMTS 7800 v Humax Foxsat hdr 500

footey

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Have managed to get John lewis to do a pricematch and i can pick up the samsung and get a further £30 pounds off for £139, but can anybody say the Humax is really worth the extra as i have always had my eye on it.Only my money situation is forcing the samsung but if it there really is a massive difference i would bite the bullet and force myself to pay the extra.Can anyone give me advice.thanks!
 
The Samsung doesn't have "padding" (adding extra recording time to the start and end of a program) There's no manual timer option or diseqc switching (allows you to view fta channels from different satellites) - if you can live without those features, stick to your budget and buy the Samsung.

Amazon are currently selling the Foxsat HDR 500GB for £220.

Mike
 
I'd hey a 320 gb model and then bung a Samsung f3 spinpoint 1tb hard drive in. Never run out of space!

I have a HDR with 1Tb disk, you do run out of space believe me. The thing that keeps me going is the ability on the HDR to copy recordings off - For films I want to keep I just connect from my PC to the HDR over the network and drag files accross, then you can chop the ads and reduce the file size before storing them on my network drive or you could put them to DVD.

The reason to get the HDR is that unofficial network capability, Freesat stops the manufacturers offering it officially. If you don't need any of that and cash is king then I'd go Sammy.
 
Wow!
Is all of that easy to do? What programe do u use to edit the programmes? I tried to use windows movie maker but i found the pictures to be jerky and the lip sync was awful !:)
 
Wow!
Is all of that easy to do? What programe do u use to edit the programmes? I tried to use windows movie maker but i found the pictures to be jerky and the lip sync was awful !:)

The most user friendly version (but not free) is videoredo TVsuite (The H264 version will also edit HD content recorded using non freesat mode to record without encryption). There is a free trial available of this software. To upload the files or play them back on a USB drive using the hdr requires a free piece of software (AV2HDR) to create the two support files required to replay external content (.nts and .hmt). This also creates a matching .ts (transport stream) file with the actual video content. There is a modified firmware and a network version of AV2HDR that lets you transfer the files directly to a PC over a home network. The same firmware also lets you stream recorded content seperately from what the main viewer is watching to a remote DLNA TV or media server.
 
The most user friendly version (but not free) is videoredo TVsuite (The H264 version will also edit HD content recorded using non freesat mode to record without encryption). There is a free trial available of this software. To upload the files or play them back on a USB drive using the hdr requires a free piece of software (AV2HDR) to create the two support files required to replay external content (.nts and .hmt). This also creates a matching .ts (transport stream) file with the actual video content. There is a modified firmware and a network version of AV2HDR that lets you transfer the files directly to a PC over a home network. The same firmware also lets you stream recorded content seperately from what the main viewer is watching to a remote DLNA TV or media server.

Of course ".ts" files can plan straight away on many devices including PCs, so I'm messing with the recordings just to chop the ads and reduce file size to less than half. So don't feel you need to do all this ...

I use Video Redo to chop the adds and turn a .ts file into a proper .mpg file, there are free alternatives I believe, I tried one a long time ago and was ok for conversion but not so good at the ad removal. Removing the ads is a manual task you mark the pieces of the recording to remove using a slider.

Once you have an mpg file the free program "Handbrake" will boil them down into an MPEG4 which gets a typical movie to 1 to 1.5 Gb. Haven't counted but well over a 150 films on my disk now, most from TV and my DVD collection too.
 
Last edited:
footey said:
Have managed to get John lewis to do a pricematch and i can pick up the samsung and get a further £30 pounds off for £139, but can anybody say the Humax is really worth the extra as i have always had my eye on it.Only my money situation is forcing the samsung but if it there really is a massive difference i would bite the bullet and force myself to pay the extra.Can anyone give me advice.thanks!

Who did you get them to price match from?
 
Who did you get them to price match from?

Got them to pricematch Richersounds m8, just had £89.05 credited back into my account and i also have the £30 cashback to claim.
 
Which John Lewis Store did the price match as I want that deal.. I thought the £169 at richer sounds was after the £30 cash back..?
 

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