Manhattan SX Freesat HD Box, Black

Used abroad, easy to set up, decent range of channels, spot on for the money

Excellent freeview box, very small and compact, connects to internet via wifi for updates but doesn't have access to apps which to be honest didn't really bother me, very easy installation and picked up channels very fast on initial set up, good picture on all as well, for the money you cant go wrong

I recently moved to a property with a Freesat sattelite dish, so I wanted an inexpensive Freesat box. This box was simplicity itself to connect & set up. The device takes a little while to boot up when you first turn it on, but I have now set it up to be permanently on (no standby), so there is no delay when I turn on my TV.The scan was very quick, and it found 184 channels. The user interface is intuitive & easy to use, and the EPG works well. The remote control is a little small compared to my TV & HD recorder remotes, but it works fine, providing you point it directly at the box.The box has an F-connector input for your LNB lead, an HDMI output for your TV, and a small jack connector for the supplied A/V cable. This cable terminates in 3 phono plugs (L & R audio, and yellow composite video). These can be plugged directly into the inputs of your device, or into the supplied phono-to-SCART converter. I used the SCART converter to plug into my HD/DVD recorder. Unfortunately, while the picture quality from the HDMI output to the TV is excellent, the A/V output is very poor! The picture is blurry and produces poor quality recordings. I'm not sure why this is, but I have knocked a star off for this reason.I can recommend this little Freesat box for straightforward viewing using the HDMI output, but unfortunately the Composite video output image quality is very poor. I don't know if this is a problem with my own box, or a general problem with this product, but it was bad enough for me to knock a star off in my review.

great easy to set up works real well

Great piece of kit, simple to use with very user friendly Home Screen page and remote. The picture quality is very, good as is the sound quality. It also offers a good selection of additional apps and on demand service. A simple cost effective alternative to subscription services.

Great picture easy to set up. I changed from Sky Q so had to get engineer to change LBN

I had on old Goodmans freesat that had been working for about 20 years , but started to not show me many channels , only the main ones , so i bought a new cheap one for now , and this little device is lovely , Had a bit of a problem connecting it to wi-fi , but got there after 3 goes . So easy to set up , took me half an hour from start to finish , but most of that time was trying to get behind a very large tv unit and taking the old one out , then i plugged all this in and set it up in a few minutes , so easy to do , I then checked all the channels one by one to see if they work and bingo , i got all them all . I normally get my daughter to help me with anything technical as i am old and can't get most of it , but i did it on my own , she'll be so proud . Now i got a lot more channels to watch , so will be goodEDITED REVIEW , not sure what is going on but it seems to only be on for a few hours then gets no signal , always seems to appear to be about 3pm 3.30pm right in the middle of one of the series i watch , so is very annoying as my freeview is total rubbish and i can't watch that programme on freeview as i only have the main 4 channels , have now sent it back and will wait for a refund then try another box , as my neighbour has one of these and his works fine so i may have just had a faulty box .

I have bought two of these over the past few months. Normally I would have gone for Humax HB 1100S, but it is no longer being manufactured and on-line prices for them are now ridiculous. This Manhattan SX is half the price of what the old Humax had retailed for and provides just about all the services the Humax does. One service it does not supply, which may be important to some potential buyers, is a lack of access to internet services. Its ethernet/WiFi feature is there purely for update purposes. If you have a smart TV it's not an issue.Another feature it does not have is the facility to plug in an external hard drive on which to record programs. The mentioned Humax box has such a feature should a person wish to make use of it, but not the Manhattan SX.Otherwise the device has all that is needed to watch Freesat transmissions from the Astra satellite at 28 degrees East, including the HD channels. The EPG feature is totally adequate, allowing scrolling up to 7 days into the future and, while you do this, runs a small picture of the current selected channel in the screen's top right hand corner. It is a similar feature to what the Humax has, but not one necessarily available on all other basic Freesat boxes. It has a reminder setting feature to flag up later programs for your viewing and will highlight if you create any program clashes. As a point of interest here, when scrolling up or down the TV listings, the cursor does not move, its the listings that move - this irritates my partner who would rather see the cursor move and the display stay steady. In fact since just discussing it with her, I now realise why I find scrolling the listings odd.There is a button on the remote for switching back to the program you were previously watching, which does not feature on the Humax and which I find very handy when I select a channel that is even worse trash than the one I switched from. I have no issues with the quality of the picture, but this of course is dependent to some extent on the quality of the source material and the slickness of your TV. I get beautiful HD pictures, but my TV is no slouch.Soundwise, we may be into a different quagmire. First of all the volume buttons on the remote do not work for HD transmission - certainly not on my TV, which is one of the Samsung QLED types - so I have to use the TV remote to move the volume for HD channels. Sometimes the volume on one channel is lower than on another so sometimes the volume has to be increased substantially. However, I get the same issue with my Humax box running a Smart LG TV in another room, so the issue is probably a transmission one rather than a receiving one. Add to this a suspicion that manufacturers are trying to sell sound bars by diminishing the sound quality on their TVs and the situation becomes foggier. For programs deserving improved sound quality, I enhance them by sending sound through my HiFi system, which has a link to the TV. The Manhattan box has no facility for linking directly to such a system.A question has been asked elsewhere If the Box will work in Spain, France etc. Well my boxes are destined for a house in France and I know they will work because I have done it all before with Humax and Sky boxes - there is no technical differences in doing the set up. First of all, your foreign sat dish must point at the Astra 28 degrees East satellite and be of an appropriate size to catch the signals (I use a Sky dish of a size that works in Scotland, although the smaller one may well work in places like the North of France). The second, critical thing, is to initialise the box here in the UK. In other words, install the box to your TV here in the UK and run it - putting in your post code and everything required to receive the Freesat channels. Once you have done this the box is ready to plug in somewhere on the continent - obviously it must be within the transmission footprint of the satellite.In conclusion I would say the Manhattan SX Freesat box is a good value buy for receiving Freesat transmissions , including HD ones. If you have a need internet or recording facilities, then look elsewhere.