BT Youview Box

[bad company]

Before moving home we had Freesat which we liked very much, it worked very well. We didn’t want a dish at our new home so went for Freeview which wasn’t nearly as good so we switched to Sky Stream. That works ok but expensive at £36 per month. I was also p****d off when I set a movie which was free to air on a channel into the memory only to be asked to pay more to watch it. I’d sooner record what I want and watch when I feel like it.

Has anyone used BT Youview? This looks ideal for us:-

https://www.amazon.co.uk/BT-Youview-Freeview-Catch...

[superpp]

I have the 4K version of this box (Humax DTR-T4000).
Owned it for getting on 6yrs, still works great and the interface is good.
Do find we use it less nowadays though as iplayer and ITVX have upped their game with streaming quality.
Look on ebay, they are cheaper.

[bad company]

superpp said:

I have the 4K version of this box (Humax DTR-T4000).
Owned it for getting on 6yrs, still works great and the interface is good.
Do find we use it less nowadays though as iplayer and ITVX have upped their game with streaming quality.
Look on ebay, they are cheaper.

Thanks. Do you know if we’d be able to connect to BBC London for news though we live in a different region? When we had Freesat we just used a London postcode to fool it.

[AdeTuono]

I've had a couple of YouView boxes, and they're fine when they work, though they used to lock up fairly regularly. Bought a Humax, but the UI was incredibly slow, and start-up times were ridiculous. Have now had a Manhattan for 3 months, and it's better than both the others, though it lacks the Netflix and Prime apps, but I have those on my TV, so it's not an issue..

https://manhattan-tv.com/freeview/manhattan-t4r-tv...

[bad company]

AdeTuono said:

I've had a couple of YouView boxes, and they're fine when they work, though they used to lock up fairly regularly. Bought a Humax, but the UI was incredibly slow, and start-up times were ridiculous. Have now had a Manhattan for 3 months, and it's better than both the others, though it lacks the Netflix and Prime apps, but I have those on my TV, so it's not an issue..

https://manhattan-tv.com/freeview/manhattan-t4r-tv...

I just had a look at the Manhattan. Looks a good product but only Freesat or Freeview rather than through internet. I have an aerial but would only get local tv channels rather than London.

[droopsnoot]

I've got two of those Youview boxes in the first post at the moment, one on each TV. Plenty of used ones out there - I think the main one I paid £5, and the other was free. They have two stand-by modes - normal for when you might want to use it, and "deep sleep" for overnight to cut power usage. It takes a while to wake up from deep sleep, so mine are set to be that way from 1am to 3pm, but a scheduled recording will overrule it. I have found that if I don't switch them on regularly, just leave them to switch between deep sleep and normal stand-by, they can just lock up and a power cycle is required.

When in deep sleep mode, there is no pass-through of the antenna signal, so if that's important you'd need to get some sort of Y-adapter.

The other thing that's happened recently to one of them, which appears to be a common fault, is that the HDMI output has failed. I can get around it for now by using it via the SCART output into another device and then from that via HDMI to the TV, but it's a pain. I have read, though, that the drive content is encrypted or encoded uniquely for each box, so it's not as simple as getting another one (I got a spare at a recent car boot for £2) and swapping the drive. As mine never has more than 20% free space, that's a lot of stuff to lose.

ETA - I've never used the internet connection or a BT account, though - I'm only using it as a Freeview recorder, and it's probably the best that I've had of those. When the HDMI died I did connect it up via a long cable and it did an automatic software update, but because of the location I can't leave it plugged in so have no idea what other things it might do. Wi-fi isn't an option - again, I read that while it has a USB socket and there was an intention to provide support for a Wi-Fi dongle, the software was never released.

Edited by droopsnoot on Friday 30th August 11:36

[superpp]

bad company said:

Thanks. Do you know if we’d be able to connect to BBC London for news though we live in a different region? When we had Freesat we just used a London postcode to fool it.

Only via BBC iplayer, the live TV is coming through your aerial as freeview, unless you subscribe to BT (believe EE have taken this over)

[DE1975]

they're decent boxes. I wouldn't pay the £160 on Amazon. There's loads on ebay / facebook market place you can pick up for about £40. I had one just like that sat in a cupboard doing nothing and someone local bought it off me. People have them from having BT TV service, then deciding they no longer want to pay for the BT TV channels, but get to keep the box.

[snuffy]

AdeTuono said:

I've had a couple of YouView boxes, and they're fine when they work, though they used to lock up fairly regularly. Bought a Humax, but the UI was incredibly slow, and start-up times were ridiculous. Have now had a Manhattan for 3 months, and it's better than both the others, though it lacks the Netflix and Prime apps, but I have those on my TV, so it's not an issue..

https://manhattan-tv.com/freeview/manhattan-t4r-tv...

I had a Humax, it was just as you describe; slow to navigate and the startup time needed a calendar, not a clock to measure it !

I've now a Manhattan one - miles better.

[bad company]

superpp said:

bad company said:

Thanks. Do you know if we’d be able to connect to BBC London for news though we live in a different region? When we had Freesat we just used a London postcode to fool it.

Only via BBC iplayer, the live TV is coming through your aerial as freeview, unless you subscribe to BT (believe EE have taken this over)

Thanks, I hadn’t realised that I could get London tv on IPlayer but just changing my location on the app.

Think I’ll go for the Manhattan T4-R.

[bad company]

UPDATE. I’m still using the Sky Stream Puck at the moment as had to give notice to close the account. I made a point of watching the England football match yesterday evening part through Freeview and part through internet. The picture quality was noticeably better on the internet, through ITV X app.

Makes me think about the BT box again.

[tele_lover]

superpp said:

I have the 4K version of this box (Humax DTR-T4000).
Owned it for getting on 6yrs, still works great and the interface is good.
Do find we use it less nowadays though as iplayer and ITVX have upped their game with streaming quality.
Look on ebay, they are cheaper.

Not sure if I have exact same box but BT is st compared with Sky.

You press the button and it takes 2 seconds to respond. Interface is awful.

I even had a replacement sent. Same slowness.

[tele_lover]

snuffy said:

AdeTuono said:

I've had a couple of YouView boxes, and they're fine when they work, though they used to lock up fairly regularly. Bought a Humax, but the UI was incredibly slow, and start-up times were ridiculous. Have now had a Manhattan for 3 months, and it's better than both the others, though it lacks the Netflix and Prime apps, but I have those on my TV, so it's not an issue..

https://manhattan-tv.com/freeview/manhattan-t4r-tv...

I had a Humax, it was just as you describe; slow to navigate and the startup time needed a calendar, not a clock to measure it !

I've now a Manhattan one - miles better.

Was your remote button response in the order of seconds?

Mine is unusable. Getting rid and putting TNT Sport on my Sky.

[snuffy]

tele_lover said:

Was your remote button response in the order of seconds?

Mine is unusable. Getting rid and putting TNT Sport on my Sky.

I can't remember exactly but one problem was when you pressed the EPG button, only then would it bother to populate the information, so you had to wait up to a couple of minutes before all the listing were available. Then, if you exited and pressed EPG again, it would repopulate all over again - it did not store what it had just done.

But I certainly emailing them and asking them what was wrong with it. Their staggering answer was that it was working correctly, ie repopulating each time was by design.

[droopsnoot]

^ I'm not seeing that on mine, I wonder if it's different because it's not connected to the internet and doesn't have to go off downloading channel logos and so on. Certainly the button delay is nowhere near as bad as it is on my Toshiba TV.

[xeny]

droopsnoot said:

^ I'm not seeing that on mine, I wonder if it's different because it's not connected to the internet and doesn't have to go off downloading channel logos and so on. Certainly the button delay is nowhere near as bad as it is on my Toshiba TV.

Think there have been several generations of hardware. The later ones are likely to be faster, just like a desktop computer.