Manhattan T2-R 500 GB Freeview HD Recorder - Black

Product Information

When one is selected and the 'please wait, loading stream' banner appears, the box becomes less responsive – presumably because streaming places greater demand on the T2-R hardware. If a recording lasts for 1 hour, long pressing the skip button (forward or reverse) skips 10 minutes (or so) rather than 30 seconds, for a 2 hour program it skips 20 minutes (or so), 3 hours, 30 minutes and so on. To download any updates, the machine has to be connected to the internet - via an Ethernet cable, not Wi-fi. You can easily set your favourite channels instead of scrolling through loads of channles you never watch.

Others, like the religious channel SBN, are live streams with individual programmes listed in the guide.

As someone who, by this point, is used to mostly watching content-on-demand via Netflix and the like, going back to flipping channels and checking TV schedules was weird – but the T2-R makes it all feel very snappy. Previously this would take place after boot-up and could slow the system down if there was a lot to remove. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

Its Grade B quality ensures long-term reliability and performance, allowing you to experience all your favourite shows in perfect clarity. I appreciate the use of the left and right buttons to skip a set number of seconds (configurable) while playing a recording. When retune events were signalled by the broadcasters you could be prompted to retune more frequently than necessary. 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. And because it can control your TV’s volume, power and input selection†, you won’t need another remote.The guide can be quickly navigated by entering the channel of interest with the number buttons and navigated by day using the fast forward buttons. However, if you love flipping live channels, but still want to record programmes and watch them on your own time – then a box like the Manhattan T2-R can be perfect for you, with no-fuss smart recording capabilities and a big hard drive. I'm reasonably sure you can watch one recording whilst two others are taking place, but don't hold me to that. Great I thought, the machine is finally settling down - but no, the machine actually failed to record anything at all that day/night. The Humax single tuner model always worked well, as did the 9200T but from then on, eighteen months seems to be the life of them before they become erratic and start to drop recordings seemingly at random.

One limitation is that you can only program to the EPG, not by channel/date/time if you want to add a cushion. It has Wi-Fi so it’s a breeze to set it up and if you prefer a wired connection it has Ethernet too. This depends on the shows being tagged correctly by the Freeview EPG folks – which sometimes doesn’t happen. If you can connect the device directly to your router with an Ethernet cable (you can use a powerline adapter if your router is on a different floor), it’ll download the updates from the internet. It was not immediately obvious that deleting a recording must be done via "Recording options", but it's easy enough when you know.On the back of the box, you’ll find the power socket, an optical audio port (for connecting directly to speakers/soundbar), an AV minijack, an aerial socket where you plug a coaxial TV aerial cable (from your indoor or outdoor antenna), Ethernet and USB ports, and the HDMI port.

For anyone who has deleted a recording by mistake (blush), there is a deleted folder which hangs on to them for 30 days (I think) and allows recovery. For some reason, the “Get Started” manual ignores these ports, but an added leaflet explains that they’re used to update the box’ software.Free 2-year warranty We back the T2•R with a 2-year warranty and in-house technical support right here in the UK. Press the “Recordings” button on your remote, and you instantly get into your very own VOD library of all the programmes, series and movies you’ve recorded (and it even knows to categorise them like that). The SD pictures are blurry, the program guide has few channels visible and so is slow to find programmes to record. When trying to set a recording that clashed with two other recordings, one of which was the second part of a split event, the system would fail to present the Recording Clash prompt and the event could not be booked.