Review

It’s almost a year since we reviewed the Foxsat-HDR from Humax, which was one of the first Freesat+ recorders to appear in the UK. Since then, there’s been more of a steady trickle, rather than a flood of Freesat gear coming on stream. To drum up a bit more interest in the satellite service, Freesat itself had a bit of a publicity push for its adoption of the BBC iPlayer and HD broadcasts for recent sporting events such as the Winter Olympics. Getting in on the act is Grundig’s with its Freesat+ HD DVR, the inelegantly named GUFSDTR500HD.

Grundig's GUFSDTR500HD: the Freesat competition hots up at last

Equipped with a 500GB hard disk – that can store about 300 hours of SD programmes or 125 hours of HD – a 320GB model is also available for about £20 cheaper, so not much of a saving really. Incidentally, this Grundig recorder is virtually identical to the Goodmans 500GB Freesat+ HD DTR launched at the same time for the same price. Grundig and Goodmans are both owned by the same parent company, so they’ve effectively launched own-brand versions of the same product.

The Grundig GUFSDTR500HD is compact and solidly built, about the size of a small pizza box. It’s equipped with twin tuners, allowing you to record two programmes simultaneously. We were initially surprised to see a third satellite connector sticking out the back, although closer inspection revealed a little label next to this saying that it doesn’t actually do anything. Curious.

There’s an HDMI connector plus cable, two Scarts for older TVs and both optical and coaxial digital audio outputs for hooking the unit up to a surroundsound speaker system. The Ethernet port is labelled ‘for future use’. What wonders await remains to be seen.

Alas, the 5483 iPlayer beta access code didn’t work on this Grundig box – it’s still Humax boxes only at the moment. One minor oversight is the lack of a USB port that would allow you to play music, photos or video files stored on a hard disk or memory stick. The Humax Foxsat has two USB ports for this purpose.

Ports aplenty, some with mystery uses

The front panel is very plain – there’s no LCD display, just a couple of lights that glow to indicate the power and recording activity. Unusually, though, the front panel does have a little navigation control pad alongside the standard playback buttons – handy if you’ve misplaced the remote control and need to quickly change channels to set up a recording.

Grundig gets full marks for ease of use and its documentation, as it provides a Quick Start guide that covers the initial set-up, along with a more detailed user manual and even a separate little leaflet that explains how to record ITV HD. This function is cunningly hidden away inside the ‘red button’ menu options, rather than being a separate channel like BBC HD.

Programme guide

When you plug the box in and turn it on for the first time it guides you through the set-up process one step at a time, prompting you for information such as your postcode and asking if you want to create a PIN for the parental control options. It took just a few seconds to automatically scan for available channels and we were watching BBC HD less than five minutes after taking it out of the box.

The internal fan is a little noisier than we’d have liked – it doesn’t drown out the TV, but you can certainly notice its steady hum if you leave it running after you’ve turned the TV off. That said, the fan does cut out when you put the unit on standby. Power consumption when watching or recording programmes is 20W, but drops down to just 1W in standby mode.

The recorder can play HD content at either 720p or 1080i, and the image quality on BBC HD was as sharp and detailed as you’d expect. There’s no upscaling for standard-definition content, though, which is a little disappointing. However, the upscaling we’ve seen on rivals such as the Humax Foxsat wasn’t a roaring success, so its omission here doesn’t strike us as a deal-breaker.

The electronic programme guide is nice and straightforward. You can either press the ‘Guide’ button on the remote control to view the standard Freesat programme guide, or the ‘List’ button to quickly flick through a list of channels that appears on one side of the screen. We also liked the ability to see a preview of your recorded programmes in the Library screen, and to ‘protect’ recordings against accidental deletion.

Channel List

The remote control is fairly unremarkable, but its ‘Lib’ button is useful taking you straight into your library of recorded programmes. There are also handy buttons for quickly adjusting the aspect ratio and audio settings, without having to enter the main settings menu.

As far as the EPG goes, there was one small limitation that we found annoying. Press the ‘Info’ button on the remote control reveals information the current programme and channel. Using the ‘Forward’ button you can also see details about the next programme coming up on that channel.

Only minor grumbles with this welcome arrival to the Freesat+ stage

However, you can’t keep pressing the ‘Forward’ arrow to see what further programmes come after that. If you want to see what’s coming up on a particular channel over the next few hours you’ll need to delve into the main programme guide and locate the relevant channel to find out.

Verdict

Apart from that one irritating flaw, we were rather impressed by the Grundig GUFSDTR500HD, primarily because of its sheer ease of use and the attention to detail in most areas. The one drawback that still affects all Freesat kit is that it’s more expensive than comparable Freeview recorders. Furthermore, you also have to budget for an additional £100 for installation of the satellite dish. Still, if you’ve decided to opt for Freesat rather than Freeview, then this Grundig Freesat+ HD DVR is a fine way to get started. ®

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