Review The HD-Fox T2 is the first zapper out of the Freeview HD blocks. Humax is aiming to carve a large slice of the early adopter market, especially amongst the legions of football fans that are expected to upgrade to HD in time for the World Cup in June. Priced at an eye-watering £180, it needs to deliver a seriously impressive performance if it’s to avoid being left on the bench.

Are you receiving? Humax's HD-Fox T2 Freeview HD

Currently, the HD-Fox T2 is the only option for upgrading a TV to Freeview HD. TVs with built-in HD tuners are starting to go on sale from the likes of Sony and Panasonic, but there are many recent converts to digital TV who are, quite rightly, unwilling to buy a whole new telly yet are keen to grab a slice of the HD action for a relatively affordable sum.

The T2 part of the HD-Fox’s name refers to its ability to receive and decode DVB-T2 HD signals – as well as DVB-T standard definition ones, of course – but it’s not as simple as that. A decent aerial is even more critical than with standard definition DVB-T.

Typically, while a signal strength of around 30 per cent might be enough to pick up standard def channels you need at least 50% for HD. Cue hoards of unhappy punters wondering why they can’t see the deepening furrows of Cappello’s brow as Peter Crouch does a Waddle against Germany after extra time. While the World Cup will be a major driver of Freeview HD, only half of the UK will be able to access it by the summer, the rest will have to wait until digital switchover is completed in their region, which will be no later than 2012.

Currently, hi-def programming is only being broadcast from the Winter Hill and Crystal Palace transmitters, covering Manchester and London respectively, although Glasgow, Newcastle, Leeds, Bradford, Birmingham and the West (Mendip) are imminent. You can check availability in your area here.

HD transmissions in the UK still have quite limited regional coverage

Another major factor against the HD-Fox T2 or indeed any Freeview HD tuner-only box is that it can’t record and hence, can't deliver any timeshifting tricks. Sure, you can hook it up to a DVR or DVD recorder but copy protection disallows the recording of HD shows on external devices. The box sports a USB socket and at some stage – Humax is promising a firmware upgrade – this will allow exporting of recordings to an external drive, but only in SD.

As DTV boxes go, the compact HD-Fox T2 is more attractive than most, finished in high-quality plastic and sporting a clean-looking reflective fascia. Teasingly, there’s a drop-down panel, behind which you’d expect to find a CI slot for Top-Up TV. Frustratingly, it’s a blind alley with no extra functionality to be found.

The usual suspects

A selection of basic control buttons and a rocker are provided on the front in case the remote control goes AWOL. Visual information includes a green LED to indicate standby, TV and radio modes. When switched on the channel number is displayed. As we’ll see later the most important are 50 and 51.

There are no major surprises when it comes to the connections around the back with a 1080p-compatible HDMI leading the show. Those ugly sisters, the dual Scarts, are on analogue duty, backed up by a composite video and stereo phonos, whilst a digital optical output means you can enjoy Dolby Digital audio using a compatible amp. Very few HD broadcasts are made in 5.1 audio, but it’s good to be surround sound-ready. An RF loop-through ensures your TV’s tuner will still function whilst the box is connected to your aerial.

Alas, there’s no Wi-Fi, but an Ethernet port is provided for hooking up to a home network to access media files. It might also be used in the future for IPTV services such as the BBC iPlayer or even Project Canvas. Finally, there’s a USB socket, which for now can only be used for playing back music, photo and video media files. A more thoughtful design would have located this on the front where occasional access would be easier.

The remote control is an impressive beast too. Full-sized, as all remotes should be, it’s an off-the-peg affair, with several redundant buttons that relate only to other Humax products but it nonetheless sits nicely in the hand and is well designed and built. It doesn’t take long to familiarise yourself with the most oft-used buttons and there are no howling omissions.

Plenty of buttons, and some of them work

Installation is a doddle. Connected by HDMI it took me just a few minutes to breeze through the four steps to HD heaven. First, choose your language from English, Scottish Gaelic, Irish and Welsh. Next, set the display (screen ratio and type). Do a channel scan and finally connect to your network if you want to. The excellent fonts, graphics, icons and menus combine beautifully to make set-up and use a cinch.

You can delve in to the menu system to alter settings such as the transparency level of the menu screens, parental controls and the video output, which is scalable to 1080p, 1080i, 720p, 576p or 576i. Several menu functions also have dedicated buttons on the remote. For example, the Opt+ button lets you select five channels as Favourites. To change channel you either open the EPG via the Guide button or press List and scroll to select Favourites, TV, HDTV or Radio. All quick and easy to do.

Menu options abound

In some ways the eight-day EPG is one of the best around, attractive to use and extremely responsive. Pressing the green button allows you to search by genre or keyword but a major disappointment is there’s no way to skip 24-hours ahead or back, which is a real drag even if you can scroll between channels and programmes like Usain Bolt on ProPlus.

Press the yellow button to schedule shows and the box will tune automatically at the right time. Press blue and you can choose to show the EPG for TV, radio, HD-only or recent channels. Go to HD and you see a rather bare cupboard, pending C4’s imminent arrival the only options are BBC HD and ITV HD.

The decision to add HD to Freeview was taken at such a late stage in the UK’s digital TV saga that, not only are there masses of highly peeved viewers facing expensive equipment upgrades it also means the number of HD channels available is limited to just four, with the BBC, ITV and C4 taking three of the current slots. Auntie is expected to take up the fourth channel following a decision by Ofcom to give (channel) Five the red card.

As for image quality, the 1080i BBC HD channel is every bit as sparkling and detailed as it is on Sky and Freesat. Anyone with a Full HD TV can enjoy an upscaled 1080p image, but even on a 40in screen the difference is negligible between 720p, 1080i and 1080p. The BBC’s HD channel, number 50 on the EPG, is a bespoke selection of content that usually only comes to life late in the afternoons and evenings whilst the days are filled with previews plus occasional live sporting and cultural events.

Rare sighting: Freeview HD content is still fairly limited on the whole

Over on channel 51 meanwhile ITV’s HD channel is a simulcast with the standard definition ITV 1, as opposed to being accessed from the red button only on Freesat. But most of the broadcasts are upscaled SD, and frankly no better than their original.

ITV’s genuine HD output is limited to about one broadcast per day and includes The Bill, Champions League football and movies, usually at weekends. No great shakes in itself, but footy fans will certainly appreciate the huge gulf in quality between the scandalously low bit-rate ITV SD transmissions and the HD ones. At least standard def Freeview looks as good as you can get.

Man of the match?

The HD-Fox T2’s media player is easy to navigate and it does a satisfactory job with MP3s and JPEGs, although slideshows are spoiled by tediously slow file transitions. Video playback is marred by limited file compatibility that includes DivX and XviD, is fussy about AVI codecs and excludes just about everything else. Hopefully, Humax will do an over-the-air upgrade soon.

Verdict

Judging Humax’s HD-Fox T2 purely on performance it’s hard to find much at fault. Its closest subscription-free rival is Freesat, which it kicks in to the long grass with a much prettier EPG; by listing ITV HD as a dedicated channel and by the imminent arrival of C4 HD. It is expensive though, and unless you’re in a desperate hurry to get Freeview HD, it might be worth waiting until other zappers, or DVRs even, from the likes of Bush, Sharp, Toshiba, Topfield and others start to appear and prices begin to fall. ®

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