Promoted Introducing the industry’s first Android TV Freeview Play Recorder: Humax AURA

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Introducing the industry’s first Android TV Freeview Play Recorder: Humax AURA
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At Humax, we’ve been leading the way in PVRs and smart TV products for many years, and with the launch of AURA, we’ve unveiled our most advanced home entertainment device yet. Available from November, it’s the first 4K Freeview Play Recorder powered by Android TV technology to be released to the market.

Designed to provide a personalised home entertainment experience, and extremely easy to set up, AURA syncs with your Google account - so all your apps, music downloads, preferences and YouTube settings will be available automatically.

Delivering much more than a traditional set-top box, this next-generation product comes with Google Assistant built in, so you can control AURA, your TV, and a wide range of smart home devices – using voice activation through AURA’s remote control. You can also ask AURA questions, in the same way as a Google Home hub. From traffic information to weather to general knowledge questions, AURA will display the answers on the TV screen. AURA also provides access to thousands of apps and games on the Google Play Store, so you’ll never run out of entertainment options – and there’s something for every member of the family to enjoy.

With Freeview Play built in


Thanks to the high-performance Android TV platform, and with Freeview Play built in, you’ll have rapid access to all your favourite content, whether live, on demand or via catch up. Freeview Play delivers 95% of the nation’s most-watched TV, all free of charge. In addition to over 70 live TV channels, all the most popular on demand players are included, such as BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub, All 4, My5, UKTV Play, CBS Catchup Channels UK, Horror Bites, STV Player and BBC Sounds, which can be found in one place for extra convenience. These offer 20,000+ hours of content and 700+ box sets. You can also top up with additional streaming services including Amazon Prime Video, BT Sport, Disney+ and Google Play Movies.

With 4K HDR10 support, Dolby Audio, a lightning-fast quad-core processor and 3GB of RAM, we’ve developed AURA to take the viewing experience to a whole new level. The device allows up to 4K 2160p playback at 60 FPS (VP8, VP9, H.264, MPEG1/2) with VP9 enabling playback of 4K YouTube content. A full product overview and list of technical specifications can be found here: Humax.

Recording has always been important to our customers, so we’ve made two models available, with hard drive capacities of 1TB and 2TB. These offer space for up to 500 and 1,000 hours of recordings respectively. As with the Humax FVP-5000T and FVP-4000T Freeview Play Recorders, AURA incorporates three digital tuners. This means you can record up to four channels at once, while watching another live channel simultaneously (depending on region).

Record up to four channels at once


Humax AURA app
Continuing the customised experience, app icons on the home screen can be moved and grouped together according to your personal preferences, and AURA will also serve up highlights and recommendations for content based on your Google history.

If you like to watch TV on a variety of screens, wherever you travel, the special Humax AURA app allows many of the box’s features to be accessed on a mobile device. You can stream recordings around the home, and download movies or programmes to watch at your leisure later on. Recordings can also be scheduled and reminders set remotely when you’re out and about.

Chromecast is built-in as standard on Android TV, allowing you to cast videos, music and photos to your TV from a mobile, tablet or laptop.

Accompanying AURA is an advanced remote control that has been designed to be as user-friendly as possible, giving fast access to features through a series of ‘hot keys’. These include a Freeview Play menu button, Google Assistant key to activate voice control, a Top Picks button for recommended content, a dedicated TV Guide button and specific keys that take you directly to the Android Home page, Amazon Prime Video and a special Kids’ Zone.

Advanced remote control


The integrated Google Assistant isn’t just there to ask about the weather! There are multiple benefits to this feature. You can search for your favourite shows, switch channels, increase or decrease volume, and much more. AURA’s smart home connectivity also enables a host of commands, such as dimming the lights, turning on the heating, playing music, and many other options. (Extra apps may be required to activate these features).

Humax Kids’ Zone


Last but not least, new on AURA is the dedicated Humax Kids’ Zone. This area has been created specifically for the youngest family members and provides a safe environment for children to watch suitable programmes, cartoons and films. Content can be searched by duration, so parents can select a programme of sufficient length before tea or bath-time, or control the amount of time the kids spend watching in the day.

Find out more about Humax AURA.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Introducing the industry’s first Android TV Freeview Play Recorder: Humax AURA
View attachment 1386929At Humax, we’ve been leading the way in PVRs and smart TV products for many years, and with the launch of AURA, we’ve unveiled our most advanced home entertainment device yet. Available from November, it’s the first 4K Freeview Play Recorder powered by Android TV technology to be released to the market.

Designed to provide a personalised home entertainment experience, and extremely easy to set up, AURA syncs with your Google account - so all your apps, music downloads, preferences and YouTube settings will be available automatically.

Delivering much more than a traditional set-top box, this next-generation product comes with Google Assistant built in, so you can control AURA, your TV, and a wide range of smart home devices – using voice activation through AURA’s remote control. You can also ask AURA questions, in the same way as a Google Home hub. From traffic information to weather to general knowledge questions, AURA will display the answers on the TV screen. AURA also provides access to thousands of apps and games on the Google Play Store, so you’ll never run out of entertainment options – and there’s something for every member of the family to enjoy.

View attachment 1386930

Thanks to the high-performance Android TV platform, and with Freeview Play built in, you’ll have rapid access to all your favourite content, whether live, on demand or via catch up. Freeview Play delivers 95% of the nation’s most-watched TV, all free of charge. In addition to over 70 live TV channels, all the most popular on demand players are included, such as BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub, All 4, My5, UKTV Play, CBS Catchup Channels UK, Horror Bites, STV Player and BBC Sounds, which can be found in one place for extra convenience. These offer 20,000+ hours of content and 700+ box sets. You can also top up with additional streaming services including Amazon Prime Video, BT Sport, Disney+ and Google Play Movies.

With 4K HDR10 support, Dolby Audio, a lightning-fast quad-core processor and 3GB of RAM, we’ve developed AURA to take the viewing experience to a whole new level. The device allows up to 4K 2160p playback at 60 FPS (VP8, VP9, H.264, MPEG1/2) with VP9 enabling playback of 4K YouTube content. A full product overview and list of technical specifications can be found here: Humax.

Recording has always been important to our customers, so we’ve made two models available, with hard drive capacities of 1TB and 2TB. These offer space for up to 500 and 1,000 hours of recordings respectively. As with the Humax FVP-5000T and FVP-4000T Freeview Play Recorders, AURA incorporates three digital tuners. This means you can record up to four channels at once, while watching another live channel simultaneously (depending on region).

View attachment 1386931

View attachment 1386932Continuing the customised experience, app icons on the home screen can be moved and grouped together according to your personal preferences, and AURA will also serve up highlights and recommendations for content based on your Google history.

If you like to watch TV on a variety of screens, wherever you travel, the special Humax AURA app allows many of the box’s features to be accessed on a mobile device. You can stream recordings around the home, and download movies or programmes to watch at your leisure later on. Recordings can also be scheduled and reminders set remotely when you’re out and about.

Chromecast is built-in as standard on Android TV, allowing you to cast videos, music and photos to your TV from a mobile, tablet or laptop.

Accompanying AURA is an advanced remote control that has been designed to be as user-friendly as possible, giving fast access to features through a series of ‘hot keys’. These include a Freeview Play menu button, Google Assistant key to activate voice control, a Top Picks button for recommended content, a dedicated TV Guide button and specific keys that take you directly to the Android Home page, Amazon Prime Video and a special Kids’ Zone.

View attachment 1386935

The integrated Google Assistant isn’t just there to ask about the weather! There are multiple benefits to this feature. You can search for your favourite shows, switch channels, increase or decrease volume, and much more. AURA’s smart home connectivity also enables a host of commands, such as dimming the lights, turning on the heating, playing music, and many other options. (Extra apps may be required to activate these features).

View attachment 1386936

Last but not least, new on AURA is the dedicated Humax Kids’ Zone. This area has been created specifically for the youngest family members and provides a safe environment for children to watch suitable programmes, cartoons and films. Content can be searched by duration, so parents can select a programme of sufficient length before tea or bath-time, or control the amount of time the kids spend watching in the day.

Find out more about Humax AURA.
At present we have a Sat dish connecting a Humax Freesat HDR which is in turn connected to TV via double co ax cables. We use this to record programmes, watch TV and look at catch-up shows. On occasions my wife may be recording two shows which means we then have to switch sources on TV and watch another programme via the regular aerial which is also connect to TV. All the above works fine.
I now see that Humax Aura is due out in November and will probably purchase one.
Can someone confirm my thoughts that if I position the Humax Aura between aerial coax cable and TV connections (Scart or HDMI) we would then have two possible recording devices.
No change would be done to the exiting Freesat box.
 
Well this looks interesting!

I have many questions, hopefully all will be revealed in the next few weeks.

1. Will it work well as a Plex client - as well as a Shield - Full HD audio and DTS:X / Atmos audio passthrough, 4K / HDR with auto switching of resolution, refresh rate, and HDR on / off. Powerful enough to playback high bitrate 4K / HDR video?

2. Can we access the TV recordings folder from within the home network, and either copy and paste recordings to the plex server, or have the plex server point to them as network storage?

3. How stable will it be, and how fluid will the GUI be?

I look forward to learning more about it.
 
Well this looks interesting!

I have many questions, hopefully all will be revealed in the next few weeks.

1. Will it work well as a Plex client - as well as a Shield - Full HD audio and DTS:X / Atmos audio passthrough, 4K / HDR with auto switching of resolution, refresh rate, and HDR on / off. Powerful enough to playback high bitrate 4K / HDR video?

2. Can we access the TV recordings folder from within the home network, and either copy and paste recordings to the plex server, or have the plex server point to them as network storage?

3. How stable will it be, and how fluid will the GUI be?

I look forward to learning more about it.

Agree with you but hadnt thought about your point 2...
How cool would that be..

Doesnt seem to list Netflix as an app, but no great loss if performance is on par with Shield for the UX and Plex performance
 
I've not used Android TV before..... will this new box work with the Kodi - Android app ?
 
I've not used Android TV before..... will this new box work with the Kodi - Android app ?
Well, yes, it should. Unless Humax do something weird to the Android TV OS, it should work the same as the Nvidia Shield. And Kodi works perfectly on that. If the hardware supports it, it will do 4K / HDR auto switching, refresh rate auto switching, passthrough of HD audio including atmos and DTS:X, and there is a Plex plug in for kodi, which works slightly better than the official Plex android TV app, but isn't as pretty.

That has made me think, that if we can get Kodi working okay on this new Aura, then we could point Kodi to the folder where the recorded TV is stored, and share that as a network library share to either plug into plex, or to just access on other devices via upnp.

Unles the recordings are encrypted.. hmm. 🤔
 
Well, yes, it should. Unless Humax do something weird to the Android TV OS, it should work the same as the Nvidia Shield. And Kodi works perfectly on that. If the hardware supports it, it will do 4K / HDR auto switching, refresh rate auto switching, passthrough of HD audio including atmos and DTS:X, and there is a Plex plug in for kodi, which works slightly better than the official Plex android TV app, but isn't as pretty.

That has made me think, that if we can get Kodi working okay on this new Aura, then we could point Kodi to the folder where the recorded TV is stored, and share that as a network library share to either plug into plex, or to just access on other devices via upnp.

Unles the recordings are encrypted.. hmm. 🤔

The only way that I would look at buying this was if the recordings were not encrypted, also a PVR addon for kodi would be nice too
 
does it match the frame rate correctly on 50hz content?
 
So I take it this is delayed? It was on Amazon with an availability date of the 6th Nov not long ago but now gone back to the 17th by the looks of it. It's this or hdhomerun for me , for WAF this is probably going to win by a country mile but I can't deny hdhomerun looks interesting
 
Available to buy on Humax Direct, discount code HIFIVE. Who's going first?!

Mods - should we merge these two threads?
 
Can someone confirm my thoughts that if I position the Humax Aura between aerial coax cable and TV connections (Scart or HDMI) we would then have two possible recording devices.
No change would be done to the exiting Freesat box.

Yes - I can confirm.
 
Well this looks interesting!

I have many questions, hopefully all will be revealed in the next few weeks.

1. Will it work well as a Plex client - as well as a Shield - Full HD audio and DTS:X / Atmos audio passthrough, 4K / HDR with auto switching of resolution, refresh rate, and HDR on / off. Powerful enough to playback high bitrate 4K / HDR video?

2. Can we access the TV recordings folder from within the home network, and either copy and paste recordings to the plex server, or have the plex server point to them as network storage?

3. How stable will it be, and how fluid will the GUI be?

I look forward to learning more about it.
1. Yes but I havent checked it connected to the main system yet to see if the other things you mention actually work. Thee is the option to pass through audio, so fingers crossed.

2. Haven't tried that yet.

3. GUI looks ok on first impressions but Im not really using it in anger yet just a quick play
 
1. Yes but I havent checked it connected to the main system yet to see if the other things you mention actually work. Thee is the option to pass through audio, so fingers crossed.

2. Haven't tried that yet.

3. GUI looks ok on first impressions but Im not really using it in anger yet just a quick play
Hi Gerry, thanks for the update - but, I bought one and returned it as it did none of the above, unfortunately.

I did get a HD Homerun and I'm using Plex for the PVR software - so far, so good, this seems to suit my needs much better.
 
Hi Gerry, thanks for the update - but, I bought one and returned it as it did none of the above, unfortunately.

I did get a HD Homerun and I'm using Plex for the PVR software - so far, so good, this seems to suit my needs much better.

Interested in your impressions of the hd homerun with Plex, there's an offer on the lifetime Plex pass at the mo so I'm looking at picking that up and using it in conjunction with hdhomerun but it's quite an outlay by the time I've paid for the hdhomerun and plexpass and a hard drive. Is it reliable and is Plex a better option do you know than e.g. channels DVR?
 
Interested in your impressions of the hd homerun with Plex, there's an offer on the lifetime Plex pass at the mo so I'm looking at picking that up and using it in conjunction with hdhomerun but it's quite an outlay by the time I've paid for the hdhomerun and plexpass and a hard drive. Is it reliable and is Plex a better option do you know than e.g. channels DVR?
I am very impressed with the HD Homerun, refreshingly plug and play (just works). I have had it for 10 days, and so far no missed recordings, and all in perfect quality.

I already had the infrastructure in place - a dedicated PC acting as a Plex server with some free hard drive space, I'm paying the £3.99 pm subscription, and a number of plex clients around the house. So, I didn't explore the other software options. The Plex software is good enough, but not supported in all clients (eg not in the plex for kodi app). You can still access the recordings in kodi, but not timeshifting or scheduling or live TV.

I did just pick up the Amazon Firestick 4K for £29.99 in the Black Friday sale, and that is actually quite impressive for the price. The Plex DVR functions work well, and the GUI is nice and responsive. But the only plex client that I have experienced that does everything, up to an including 4K / HDR with Atmos / DTS:X including auto switching with no buffering is the Nvidia Shield Pro (£198.98).
 
I am very impressed with the HD Homerun, refreshingly plug and play (just works). I have had it for 10 days, and so far no missed recordings, and all in perfect quality.

I already had the infrastructure in place - a dedicated PC acting as a Plex server with some free hard drive space, I'm paying the £3.99 pm subscription, and a number of plex clients around the house. So, I didn't explore the other software options. The Plex software is good enough, but not supported in all clients (eg not in the plex for kodi app). You can still access the recordings in kodi, but not timeshifting or scheduling or live TV.

I did just pick up the Amazon Firestick 4K for £29.99 in the Black Friday sale, and that is actually quite impressive for the price. The Plex DVR functions work well, and the GUI is nice and responsive. But the only plex client that I have experienced that does everything, up to an including 4K / HDR with Atmos / DTS:X including auto switching with no buffering is the Nvidia Shield Pro (£198.98).

Thanks for that, as far as Plex is concerned what's the difference between the Nvidia shield (2017) and the Nvidia shield pro i.e what can the pro do the other can't? Both can run plex server I believe? I've already got an Nvidia shield so was hoping to use that really to run plex server / client and attach a HDD to it for recording on.
 
Thanks for that, as far as Plex is concerned what's the difference between the Nvidia shield (2017) and the Nvidia shield pro i.e what can the pro do the other can't? Both can run plex server I believe? I've already got an Nvidia shield so was hoping to use that really to run plex server / client and attach a HDD to it for recording on.
I am not sure about the previous version of Shield's, I was using HTPC's up until this year, so I am fairly new to the Shield world.

I started off with the cheaper Nvidia Shield - tube, but found that it was struggling a bit with the very high bit rate 4K / HDR files. So, I exchanged it for the Pro version which has a bit more RAM and that seems to play everything back okay. I do sometimes have to switch to Kodi for some files that the Plex app doesn't seem to like.
 
Haven't had horror extra for 2 days. On my smart TV I retuned with out the smart box checked, just checked the digital retune and horror extra is back yaaaay
 

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