Humax has taken the wraps off its first Freeview HD receivers. The HD-FOX T2 has Freeview HD and SD reception and can upscale standard and high defintion pictures to 1080p50.
There's automatic retuning and multimedia playback via USB of MP3, JPEG and XviD files from USB drives. UPnP client functionality will enable media streaming from networked devices. HCC was treated to a demo of a prototype unit, which was receiving DVB-T2 test transmissions from London's Crystal Palace transmitter, and it looked good.
The brand has promised that future updates will add further home networking capabilities including streaming and single tuner PVR functionality including recording and time-shifting to USB connected devices. Expected to cost around £170 , it’s due to appear in February.
Also coming is a 500GB dual tuner Freeview HD PVR. ETA should be before the World Cup with the same feature set excluding external recording. For more click here.
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In the latest Home Cinema Choice:
What I really want is a
Bradman (not verified) - 26 December 2009 - 1:01pmWhat I really want is a return to the days of decent pictures on the SD channels. Some days, I reckon the pictures are so blurred, it looks like not much better than VHS resolution. All part of the conspiracy to give us SD-quality on the Freeview HD channels, and call it HD, because it is actually better than the SD channels. From what I've seen of the Freeview pictures lately, that's where we're going. Anyone want some evidence? Look at the quality of the recent snooker on BBC. Verging on unwatchable. And yes, I did do an A/B comparison with the equivalent on Sky, which was much better.
As a thought...
Alan Smithee - 10 February 2010 - 11:04pmI do agree with you to a certain extent that broadcast TV has become fairly rough in many cases but I have also noticed that tuners built into TV's have a more 'glossy' and 'fake' image quality whereas when using external tuners and PVR's the quality is much better. Another thing is to bear in mind the technology shift from CRT to LCD/Plasma, the tech behind the production of the images on CRT was far more forgiving of poor picture sources.
Final thought for you - compare upscaled images from sky HD to the equivelant SD channel and then compare that to images shot in HD then broadcast in HD. A lot of the upscaling is a bit suspect. In some cases the SD version is better...