Manhattan T2-R 500 GB Freeview HD Recorder - Black

Product Information

In areas with bad reception, some channels might not look good, or worse – they might not even get found.

The peculiarities of the long recordings could be a pest, but I can live with that and with Ch4 not being able to show live F1 next year (apart from the British G. We say: Some may rue the lack of streaming apps/media playback, but this twin-tuner PVR succeeds when it comes to ease of use. Once you have the master PIN, go to the PIN section of the Settings menu and choose the 'Change PIN' option. The user interface is clear and attractive, offering many channels, and recording is easy, with an option to record a whole series. The product will be fully working, without a box and will not contain any of the original accessories.When the T2-R is left unplugged from power and there are many scheduled recordings (particularly recurring series episodes) that do not take place, the T2-R could appear to be unresponsive to the remote control for some time after boot the next time it was plugged in.

Another important aspect are the subtitles – if you watch a show with subtitles (which can be turned on and off easily with a dedicated button), recording that show will keep the subtitles available – and you can again turn them on and off with the press of a button. Internet channels Connect by Ethernet to your home network and enjoy a great range of channels featuring free and premium online content. It has the capability to record two channels whilst watching a previous recording, it buffers up to two hours of live TV with this buffer being able to be saved to the hard drive as a recording. I tend to watch race one of the BTTC, then watch F1 live (if it is being shown on Ch4HD live) and then flip back to the BTTC to watch races two and three.

It's a bit of a pain having to manually select the correct HDMI input if you have been using another device (such as a blu-ray) previously. Whilst a recording was in-progress, it was not possible to resume playback, only play it from the start again. Things are very different, however, on the T2-R – the programme guide comes up instantly when you press the remote, jumping between days and channels is also very quick, and the whole thing just feels as snappy as it should in this day and age.

Finding what to watch and record on over 80 channels is effortless with the beautiful 8-day TV Guide. Enjoy all your favourite Freeview channels, seamlessly integrated with the convenience of on demand TV. You can either skip it altogether, or get a cheap model without recording capabilities (see more Freeview box recommendations here).Hearst UK is the trading name of the National Magazine Company Ltd, 30 Panton Street, Leicester Square, London, SW1Y 4AJ.