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I tested this freeview receiver at three different locations. At first two, despite being connected to an aerial, it did'nt detect signal AT ALL. At the third location four channels ( BBC ONE, BBC TWO, BBC NEWS and sth. else ) were detected but instead of television I was watching some sort of slideshow. Although the quality of sound and the sharpness of picture were fine, it was no good at all. I observed the signal strenght indicator very carefully - the strenght of signal had never reached half of the maximum. So, my conclusion is simple: BEFRE YOU BUY THIS, ENSURE THAT YOU HAVE REALLY GOOD SIGNAL RECEPTION IN YOUR AREA. Otherwise it just doesn't work.

Nightmare!

Like others I've read here (unfortunatley after purchase) Mine is not receiving any signal atall.. I live in white city, minutes away from the BBC. No L.E.D on the USB, my Sony Vaio running vista recognizes the USB but nothing.. I've re-installed, the drivers are apparently working, the stick is getting hot but no cigar.. I'm really pi**ed off to have wasted my time and money on this utter tosh...

No problems so far

I bought this box from Amazon and installed it a couple of days ago. The channel search was effortless, the reception seems great and hasn't failed at all since I bought it.

The whole experience seems great.

A machine that did not work

I bought the machine online- a great mistake. At first it crashed (became unresponsive, requiring turning off at the power supply) a few times a week. Within a couple of months it was crashing every few minutes. Humax customer support were poor and did not offer to replace the machine- they just gave instructions to reboot the machine in ever more complicated ways. It even crashes during rebooting! If you really must buy this machine, make sure that it is from a shop where it can be returned easily.

No problems

This works and installs perfectly on Vista. It works much better than my previous USB Freeview dongle and is cheap. Like with all USB freeview receivers, you'll probably need an aerial on the roof to get good reception.

Its just fantastic

I had a DVD recorder that was forever having problems with discs so thought I'd give this ago. I love it! You can record two programmes at once whilst watching a third, whole series record at the touch of a button, you can pause TV your watching while you get a drink and then catch up at the advert break...I can't imagine life without it...I would highly recommend it!

Worth the Effort!!

Initially, after a frustrating time trying to install this card I gave it a poor review. The instructions and disks could be more clearly labelled which caused some frustration.
Once installed, though, I was fairly impressed and so have rewritten what was, with hind sight, an unfair review(written during the frustration at the lack of answers for a bad install).
Unfortunately, although I can completely rewrite my review I am unable to change my star rating, which I would probably change to a 3 or 4.
Hauppage need to sort out their (virtually non existent) support.

Great Freeview Box

Just recieved this set-top box , it was well packed in the box, plugged it in and connected to the tv and ariel in about 5 minutes , easy to set up (just choose type of tv and then let it search for the channels and thats it) and it works great.

tt-micro

i got this last week, all was good, i had it hooked up and working in less than 5 minuites, then when i went to watch some of the bbc channels the sound kept breaking up, i bought this freeview box to replace another which had no problem picking up the signals.

Software issues

As others suggested, the bundled software is really slow on changing channels, even on my quad core 4GB ram system. It is to do with the software itself. Windows Vista users can use the build in Media centre software instead.
BUT it will only choose between Analogue or Digital tuning, NOT BOTH.
To change between the two, you need a rescan/setup.

This makes having a hybrid A/D tuner a bit pointless.

Bottom line, picture quality is as good as any TV card but I suggest the digital only versions instead.

Best for the money but u might get a bad one

7 ot of 10. The first one I got did not work properly so I took it back and got a new one. This one was much better.
It is quiet, looks good and generally does the job. You have to remember that freeview boxes are generally rubbish. I've had a few problems but nothing major. I had a soft upgrade recently and now the EPG is much better - looks similar to Sky TV Guide. I think for the money it is the best but return it if it is a bad one.

Bad in weak reception areas

This product consistently couldnt get all the normal channels (eg channel 4) in my area. When I used an older Goodmans model it worked fine and received all channels straight away.

Noisy

This box has a 160GB hard Drive, that you can hear whirring away when you start up and switch off.

It is quite thick (about 3 1/2in) and only comes in black at the mo.

I have had a few problems with my box, when ever I switch a channel over, it records it!

There are currently only a few channels on SKY that are broadcast in HD, and the majority of time, they are repeats.

As it runs through an HDMI port, it means that your TV will not detect it, so you have to switch to AV mode. You can watch it in Scart, but the picture quality isn't the same.

I currently pay £53 a month for a BASIC package, and BBC1, ITV, etc do not broadcast in HD.

The"backup" button is small, and above the pause button, there has been a few times when I have pressed pause, and the box has crashed.

To be honest, I would wait until a few more channels are broadcast in HD before you get this.....

Cheap and (thus far) reliable

This is the third digibox I purchased; the previous two (from Digilogic and one other no-name) failed within weeks of the purchase). This one lasted for a month with no problems - fingers crossed!

Not bad at all

I got this recently and am quite impressed. I couldn't afford that much and this seemed the best I could find in my price range. It was certainly very easy to set up and both the quick start guide and user manual were very easy to follow. The remote to unit pick up is fast and I am happy with this box this early into my ownership of it. It comes with one RF lead and one scart lead which is not always the case with cheaper boxes and the guide is seven day, not just now and next like my last box was. Not bad at all.

Very Nice quality

Worked instantly on my Pentium M 1.6ghz IBM laptop when given a strong signal from my indoor 'Aerial King - Polaris' Antennae. Uses less than 40% of the CPU while displaying a smooth crisp image but have not tested the recording feature yet.

Good Piece of Gadget - Watch Freeview on your laptop

It's incredulous that this little USB dongle - scarcely bigger than a USB flash-drive - more than fulfils the function of a full-blown Terrestrial Freeview set-top 'digibox' decoder, and in excellent resolution too.

Firstly, unless you live next-door to a TV transmitter, you might as well ditch the tiny aerial supplied - for it's a waste of space - and connect to a 'proper' TV aerial (preferably of wide-band log-periodic design, ideally with integral RF amplifier). Then the results are stunning. In my case, used on a 1.7GHz P-Mobile (Centrino) laptop (with unusually high resolution screen) both picture and sound quality is awesome. I use high quality headphones to realise the stunning sound, as laptop speakers are never very 'Hi-Fi'. You might want to tone-down the dazzlingly bright blue activity led too, for it's a tad overpowering! I used a stationery hole-punch to cut a small disk from the fogged end of a strip of 35mm colour negatives and glued it over the led. It is now suitably muted but perfectly visible. I mount the DVB-T USB Adapter on the top edge of the laptop lid (just above the screen) with Velcro, so that it faces the viewer, thereby ensuring that the supplied remote-control works reliably, for its pick-up sensor now points towards the remote.

It's surprising to discover that the dongle runs quite hot - but within its design parameters, I would think; showing that its processor is working quite hard. It also works the host computer's processor fairly hard too, but everything keeps up OK. Powered from a USB port - which on a laptop would provide no more than about 2.5W of 5V power - the system copes perfectly. I would think the decoder is probably drawing close on 2.5W - enough to make it feel mighty warm to the touch. It cools very quickly on power-down though, showing that its passive cooling is dissipating the heat well. But all processors tend to run hot - hence the need for active cooling on system CPUs and GPUs.

The bundled software - Blaze DTV - is both comprehensive and intuitive. It delivers superb picture and sound quality, interpreting 16:9 (wide-screen) versus 4:3 aspect ratios intelligently. It just gets it right every time. It also allows the computer to become a PVR (personal video recorder) complete with time-shift facility (i.e. instant pause and resumed/delayed viewing of the program) and has an alternative interface for playing DVDs (from an existing DVD drive) together with user-controls for colour, audio EQ, screen aspect, etc. And it provides the user-interface for the VB-T USB Adapter to scan for receivable channels.

Regrettably, selected channels cannot be added to the EPG (Electronic Program Guide) - the on-screen list of available channels - because a re-scan overwrites the channel list. However, as revealed in the User Guide - thoughtfully provided on the mini-CD in both html and PDF (i.e. Adobe Acrobat) formats - by deleting one of its system files, a re-scan can be forced. Therefore, if that system file, containing a list of channels, viewable with a text editor, is saved under an arbitrary name (e.g. the name of the target transmitter used when its scan was performed) it can be reinstated, restoring all the channels found during that particular scan.

You may be wondering why I deem all this multi-transmitter stuff significant - well, it's because I am using the system in a Motor home, which by its very nature finds itself in various locations, with the need to scan for channels from different TV transmitters.

All in all, the laptop computer and VB-T USB Adapter together with its Blaze DTV software provide a cost-effective, high quality solution to delivering stunning TV and digital radio reception, plus DVD playback on a computer. And at Gizmo-Deals' almost giveaway price, you really can't go wrong.

I have now bought another as a spare, for if this one ever packs up (and it conceivably could, given the temperature at which it operates) I would be heartbroken.