Freesat feedback thread - Non Testers: what would you do with an extra £360 a year? You could win a Freesat+ box NOW CLOSED

I would save it up then have a big splurge on fancy undies!!

First impressions very good,nice slim unit and easy to read display.Engineers attached cables to my existing satellite dish and installation took around half an hour.The Ethernet cable they had wasn't long enough to reach router so that was not connected.I have since purchased a longer cable and everything is up and running now.The unit is connected to my television in my bedroom.I find this unit very easy to use and have recorded programs and watched them back with no problems.My young grandsons absolutely love being able to access you tube on Nanas tv,so far so good.Very impressive,great choice of programmes and brilliant picture.

£350. Hmmm. What I need is new specs. What I'd like is a year / six months supply of Sancerre.

I liked the look of it. The engineer who came to install the ariel came in for coffee and asked what we were going to be using, I showed him the box and he opened it! I had had to move some furniture so that he could get to the outside wall, and he said that there was no point in putting it all back just for us to have to connect the box later - before I knew it he had set it all up for me. OH was delighted when he got home. It's in the sitting-room, and the cable isn't long enough so we have a switching unit on order from Amazon, a hub, because we use our router as a piggy-back to another hub because our house is so long. That should arrive tomorrow, we looked for one in PC World but they cost twice as much in there. Literally.

We love the programme guide, and I love the search facility which is excellent if you can't quite remember the name of the programme you want.

What we can't figure out is a way to just see all the programmes for the day supplied by just one channel, which would be useful.

It took a matter of minutes for each of us to work our way around freesat. The GCs haven't seen it yet but judging by the way they use my tablet and computer they will be even quicker. my son loves it, as does OH. So do I.

We shall probably experiment a bit more with how we watch it over the winter months, currently i find we are still exploring new stations and seeing what they have to offer, and we have recorded several - that is very easy to do. DBH&Son have discovered elderly StarTrek episodes. Deep Joy.

We had virtually stopped watching television, and all of us were spending our evenings apart, me on here with iplayer watching stuff that is shown at times inconvenient to me, DBH in his study watching sport and Son in his den watching films. The freesat box saw us watching twice as much TV, and together in the same room. That has been lovely.

I think I meant aerial not ariel, but in fact it was satellite dish!

Hello,
When I first saw the box I was impressed as it looks quite classy, being shiny black and nice rounded corners.

The installation didn't take very long, one little hole drilled in the wall and then attached to satellite dish which is just through the wall to where my tv is situated.

The engineer set it all up and showed me briefly how to work the remote. It then took me about an hour to go through all the functions and trying to remember where all the channels are as I was used to 1 2 3 etc now its 101 etc with some channels being in different places. Pleased I now have BBC HD.

It is being used on the tv in the back room which is the one I watch, as OH and I never agree on what to watch, so I now have the choice of all these channels to myself

The recording and pause facility has been used a lot, if someone phones then I just click either pause or record so never miss part of a programme.
The search facility is very handy and I have just looked at the Showcase function which seems to be popular shows I may have missed.
I like the way you can look through the guide etc while still being able to see and hear the programme you are watching in the top right hand side of the screen.

Things I have struggled with are setting up the broadband as the router is a long way from the tv, I now have the Net plugs and its all working now.
I was keen to have the On Demand feature and can get BBC, Channel 4, Channel 5 and You tube but the ITV player is not available for me. there is no Earlier arrow for it and it doesn't come up on the On Demand from the Home page, and Channel 903 just comes up as unavailable.
I am wondering if it is because I receive STV not ITV?

I think I understand it all now after a few days but then I have just discovered the Showcase!
My Grandson hasnt been to try it out, but I have seen him use a remote with no bother at my Sons house and think he will manage the Freesat very easily
I will record some of the childrens programmes for him to watch here, if he wants to sit down after all the playing he does. There are quite a few to choose from which is good.

I love the choice of movie and news channels plus the travel and holiday programmes, I dont think I will ever say, "there is nothing on tv".
I do like the BBC HD too.

Its only me that watches this tv or GS when he comes.

The most useful things have been the catch up, recording, pausing and there is always something to watch, as I do love having my tv on when I am indoors, plus there are lots of music channels.

Thanks .

I would have an aromatherapy massage or a facial every month - the total indulgence of 45 minutes or an hour of being pampered and cosseted would set me up for what ever sh*t life wants to throw at me!

Brilliant piece of equipment, looks stylish. Engineer arrived to put up satellite dish, connected freesat box as well, all I had to do was plug in the two plugs to enable my wifi to be connected to box and hey presto I was up and running
Have used most of the facilities on it, recording, recording series, searching for specific types of programmes.
Family think it is great, really clear and simple to use. Have used the iplayer on it as well.
3 year old grandson has learnt how to use the remote to find children programmes.
Away on holiday at moment - hope Downton has taped!

Wouldn't have any extra money because we do not have any subscription television just a freeview box. We watch so little television it would be pointless to have access to even more channels we would never watch.

Neat little box - unfortunately it is too small to put under the TV like its predecessor, so is sitting at a jaunty angle on the floor at the moment until I decide what to do with it. The engineers whistled in, connected some cables, showed me how to work the remote and left - all in about 8 minutes, so it was all a bit quick for my poor pea brain to take in! It wasn't until I sat down with the book of instructions that I realised for On Demand it needs to be connected to the router, which, of course is the other side of the house in the study (the TV being in the main sitting room) : will have to work on that but probably get DD3 to help when she next visits. At first, I could only get the TV Guide to appear in the top left hand corner, despite fiddling about all evening with the remote and the book of words; the writing was so small I couldn't read it even when pressing my nose on the screen. I rang the help line, which of course was shut. The next day, I turned the TV on and it miraculously appeared in the correct place taking up half the screen so I could read it from a distance - thank heavens. Anyway, each day I find it easier to operate and like all things, practice will make perfect eventually! I have recorded one programme so far. Just wish I had a 'man' to help me with all the technical bits - I am sooo useless with matters technical. If I get stuck I will get a friend's husband to help.

Very attractive, stylish piece of equipment. Engineer quickly installed it after some basic changes to my Sky satellite dish. I am usually useless with all things technical but I found this really quite simple to use. It is installed on main tv so is watched by whole family. I find that being able to record programmes is going to be a real treat, especially as it is so easy to do. I must admit that I find it slightly more complicated than Sky to navigate the programme search and would be more useful if programmes could be categorised more clearly as they are on Sky. My 2 year old grandson is too young yet to be allowed the remote control box but he is certainly enjoying being able to catch up on recorded programmes. I think to really get the benefits from box it needs to be installed on wi fi but I will have to try and work out what is required to do this. My initial, overall impression of box is very favourable although I feel that after only 2 days of having the box I have discovered very little of its benefits and I am hopefully going to be able to give more reliable and knowledgeable feedback after a few weeks of use.

My overall impression when the box arrived was that it looked very stylish and would fit in with the other gadgets under my TV in the lounge.

It was connected by the engineer (as I already had a dish) and he explained how to operate it.

Myself/ DH and Son find it easy to operate and scroll round the tv guide.
One comment regarding the tv guide is that it could be made a lot clearer which are the HD channels.

But so-far we find all the features (record/rewind/pause) very useful.

We are now plugged into tinternet and are still really enjoying having it. The record feature is fantastic - it is possible to record three programmes all being shown at the same time (Whitechapel, QI and Science Britannica) whilst watching yet another - amazing.

We were surprised to see Youtube coming up as a channel choice but this is good news for me, as I often use the Choirparts channel to learn tricky pieces of choral works. Plus of course I shall now be able to play Peppa Pig videos ad nauseum to mt granddaughter. I think my daughter's family are going to be very happy when they next come to stay.

The iplayer for all channels works better with the humax than it does on my computer, because it is more powerful. I no longer get buffering and jumping pictures when I watch itvplayer, 4OD etc. BBC was the only one that worked ok before, basically because their servers and programme are better to start with! The buttons are easy to use on the remote, I like the two minute jump.

I don't think we had realised how much we missed being able to record things on our video player, then being able to watch at times that suited us, and pause when MIL invariably phones in the middle of a favourite programme to say 'Oh, you don't watch THAT do you?'.

The engineer was very efficient, installed the dish in jig time and asked for a vacuum cleaner in case there was any dust. The box itself is small and fits neatly into the space below the television.

There was a cable supplied for Internet connection, however our router is too far away from the tv so we bought a wireless wifi adapter which does the trick.

Our only tv is in the sitting room.

The on demand feature doesn't appear to give us ITV Player, which is a pity as I can't get it on my tablet either. I'm not entirely sure if it should be available though.

The most immediate benefit is a vast improvement to the picture quality with no loss of signal which happened frequently with our previous box.

As yet I haven't recorded anything but it looks simple enough. I'll have more opportunity over the next week or two to find my way around it and I'll post again.

Non Tester

£360 would pay for a wonderful camping holiday with my family and some add on children's friends, I could stretch the funds to include petrol, campsite fees, food for us, some visits while we're away, some ice creams and marshmallows for the bonfire.

£360.00, a year, I'd put it towards the ever increasing gas/electric bills!!

I would hide the money away and then at the end of the year have a lovely holiday, preferably in the sun.

I'd spend on treating my grand children when they visit me.

I would save the monthly savings and at the end of the year treat my family and friends to a lovely well deserved meal. To say thank you to them for looking after me a lot just recently, through ill health. (smile).

I think I'd look for a special hotel deal and take my hubby away for a weekend. Somewhere we could drive to in a few hours would be nice.

I would share it between my two lovely, hard-working daughters, to help them cope with the ever-increasing living expenses.

I would give it all to my son and daughter to help them out as they both find it hard to make ends meet.

I would use it to pay for petrol so I could visit my children/grandchildren every month.

I would save it up and then treat my 3 grandchildren at Christmas.