Humax HDR-1800T Freeview HD Smart Digital TV Recorder - 500 GB

Product Information

Supported video formats include XVid, MP4, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4, while supported audio formats include WAV, FLAC, MP3 and AAC.

With the Ethernet port rigged up to your router, you can also stream your own content from DLNA servers on the same network as the HDR-1800T. The unit supports an impressive range of formats including MKV, AVCHD, AVI, DivX, WMV, XviD, MP3, AAC, WMA, WAV and JPEG. The fascia is minimally adorned with a few stylised buttons controlling power, volume and channel changing. A sliver of light peeps out from below the central ridge, glowing red when recording or blue when watching live TV. There’s no LED readout – everything you need to know is displayed onscreen. Like FiestaOwner, I too have a HDR-2000T, the only differences to the 1800 being that it has a 500GB (a few can have a 1TB one, rare though) hard disk rather than the 350GB one on the 1800, and it also has a USB 2 port if you want to upload video or photos for storage (which I used, though just to see if it worked). If you want to make a recording, just highlight it in the programme grid and hit OK. A dialogue box asks if you’d like to record the whole series, the whole programme or set a reminder. Easy peasy. If a recording conflicts with others, onscreen dialogue boxes let you select which one to cancel. If you were to attach a USB flash drive or a USB external HDD then you could copy recordings to the drive using the functions on the HDR-1800T. Any standard or Radio recordings will be very slow to export to the drive as the HDR-1800T will decrypt the copy. If you use FTP directly to a PC the transfer will be a lot faster but none of the recordings will be decrypted.Concerned that recording one show will stop you from watching another? No need to worry – the built-in twin digital tuner on this Humax model allows you to watch that dancing finale with your friends, while recording that family favourite to watch later on. You can even record an entire series at just the touch of a button, where new episodes will be automatically recorded as soon as they become available. Before you copy the HD recordings to the USB Flash, or USB HDD, then you could use a 3rd party piece of software called foxy to tweak one of the recording's internal flags. If you did this then the HD programmes would also be decrypted on USB copy. Details about foxy can be found on another Humax forum called hummy.tv.

Through the Humax TV Portal you can directly access BBC iPlayer to catch up on those programmes that you might have missed. Looking for additional entertainment then watch YouTube or listen to internet radio, additional apps are also available to enhance your viewing pleasure.what are my options for transferring the files themselves rather than streaming to my PC and recording them (again)? I am quite capable of fitting a bigger hard disk – I used to build PC’s! Any Wi-Fi dongle will need to be attached to the USB port directly and cannot be used via a USB hub.