DVB415 Freeview HD Box Recorder - 1080P Set Top Receiver Boxes for TV with Multimedia Player PVR for Recording, EPG, Timeshift, HDMI Scart, TV Aerial Required, 32G USB Stick Included

I bought this product to replace an old Freeview recorder box which had broken down. Since I never recorded anything on that box anyway ( it was situated in my home office ) I opted to get a normal Freeview box instead of spending £100 - £200 on a recorder box. If all you want is a box that will give you Freeview channels then I would highly recommend this. It is small ( 140mm x 90mm ) but don't let that put you off. It does everything you would want and actually looks very nice and classy. It was extremely easy to set up and comes with an hdmi lead in the box. If your tv doesn't have and hdmi socket then you can connect up by scart lead as this box also has a scart socket too ( a scart lead is not provided so just use your old one ). Plug your aerial in ( I actually have an indoor one and it works fine ) and switch on and the onscreen instructions are very simple to follow and basically you press the ok button on the remote to confirm your country and area and ok to scan and it does the rest and finds all your available channels . That's it..all done ! An important thing to note is that if you want to be able to pause/rewind live tv you must insert a usb stick into the usb port at the front of the box. I bought a sandisk 8gb usb 3.0 stick off amazon for £5.49 and it works perfectly ( pause/rewind live tv will NOT work without this ) . One other thing...if you do have a usb stick inserted this box WILL record stuff onto it that you can watch at a later time either on the tv or some other medium like your pc. You have to go into the media settings in the box menu and it gives you the option of how many gb you want as capacity up to 4gb. I am not interested in recording on the box so I haven't tried it but even though I have an 8gb stick plugged in the box capacity is a max of 4gb so that may be of interest to some people. For pause/rewind Live TV all you have to do is plug the stick in and it recognizes that you have one in and you can use this function. Picture quality is very good too and the remote easy to use. Also when you put it in standby it shows you the time and when you switch it on it is more or less instant when you get your picture. All in all very highly recommended !

Given that I had a USB DVB-T/T2 tuner stick made by August and very pleased with it, I was extremely disappointed with this DVB415! My aerial signal has no trouble with any TV in the house, and you can see the main transmitter at the end of my road. The signal was around 90% with 95% quality. This unit just kept breaking up on the HD channels. It wasn't the usual type of break up like when you receive a poor signal, it was more juddery with green flashes and freezed the picture. On recordings, whilst the unit recorded, on playback it played a few seconds and then just 'paused' the playback. The EPG would randomly display a few days ahead, but list odd hours from each. It would then clear itself and provide NOW/NEXT only on SD channels but HD channels had the whole day's worth of listings. The unit did not like a USB3 256GB stick, and could not format a USB2 64GB stick, so I had to format that to NTFS in a computer first and then the box could format it. (Not cheap slow USB sticks) The unit supplied WAS new and didn't look in any way a customer return. I could have a faulty unit, but seeing as other people also experienced it on here indicates it is not. Feel let down as my other August Intl product is very good. I wasn't bothered about Freeview's Red Button services or Digital Text not being available; the later also meaning that the Radio Stations have a generic picture rather than programme details as these use MHEG digital text. Sent the box back as not good for anything. It's also not a Freeview box as such, as its not licensed by Freeview, its a generic digital TV box that can receive Freeview broadcasts. This is good in one way, because by not being licensed by Freeview means that the recordings are not encrypted and can be played back in Windows Media Player. With Freeview licensing, this would not be possible. It wasn't possible anyway, because of the issues I found on my box, massively annoying.

Arrived very quickly. Having read the reviews it was just what I expected. Wanted it especially to be able to record to USB and watch / edit on PC. Worked fine. 16gb USB stick with a 2 hour recording used 23% of the memory capacity suggesting 3 or 4 films on 16 gb. (bigger sticks are available). Plugged into my PC and played straight away in Nero showtime - my preferred video player. Also loaded into the Nero editing programme with no problem and burned the film to a DVD for keeping. Plus points: Incredible value. It does more than recorders costing £200 plus will do Negative points: The channel menu *is* quirky and takes a bit of getting used to, and the menus generally are not 'intuitive' (at least to my brain), but you can set your own 'favourites' list so that should sort the channel listing out. Adding the film name to the data recorded automatically (date time and channel) means you have to refer to a grid / table in the instruction book that uses the same system as a mobile phone to input the text using numbers on the handset is messy and fiddly. Thought there was going to be a problem when it wouldn't loop the aerial connection through when in standby when first connected, but that was fixed by changing a setting in the menus which rectified it easily. Overall: Very impressed with the picture quality (We still have Standard Definition). Am about to buy another box so we can record 2 channels at once if we need to, and watch a third on the DVD recorder. Glad we got it.

I bought this "as new" for an amazing £21 (including delivery) albeit without a memory stick! It arrived a day early, fully packaged and documented. Indeed, I suspect it had never been opened or used. OK, it is a tad cheap and cheerful but it works fine. It even comes complete with an HDMI cable. I bought this to add a PVR function to our bedroom TV - connected via its HDMI port. After plugging in the TV antenna cable, set-up was easy and the device immediately found all of our local TV and radio stations. The EPG works fine and is easy to use. Picture quality is excellent and everything works as advertised. The menu system is straightforward and easy to navigate. The remote control is basic but works as expected. I added a SanDisk 256GB USB (3.2) stick for recording programs. This also works fine and file naming is clear. As expected, being a single tuner device, you cannot simultaneously record one program while viewing another. The box wakes itself from standby at the start of a recording and returns to that state on completion. You can also record the program currently being viewed and pause live TV. IMPORTANT TIP - Format any USB drive in NTFS on a PC before using with this box. The device does not support drives formatted with FAT32 (just FAT and NTFS). I believe drives (USB-3.x) up to 1TB can be used. So, I am impressed. If you want a basic FreeView box with a simple record function, look no further. You won't get better value for money. However, if you want all the features of FreeView Play etc, you should be look elsewhere and pay more. There is also a twin tuner version of this device available for ~£45-£50. For our needs, this works a treat and at just £21, we are rather chuffed 😀 😊

I bought this for my in-laws to use as a second recorder. I was attracted by the low cost and aparent popularity of the product. I have to say that we were very disappointed. Although it can do everything that it needs to, the problem is the non user-friendliness of the interface. There are simply too many steps to complete the simplest of tasks. For example, when you schedule a recording you must actually select the option to "record" rather than "view". Why is this option even there? Would you need to shedule to view a program? The other problem is that the recorded programs do not contain the actual name of the show. It is just a long string of channel name, date and time. The remote is also pretty small, which makes it difficult for an older person to use. As I purchased this for use by older persons, I am very disapponted at the difficulty they found in using it. As I said above there are just too many steps to complete the simplest of tasks, and the user interface is basic to say the least. I wish we could return the item but unfortunately we are outside the return period and the original packaging has been disposed of. In summary I would say that although the product can do everything you would expect, it is much too difficult to achieve, particulary for an older person or someone is not technically adept.

Good little PVR / Freeview recorder / Media player. Bought this item to record and archive broadcast TV (i.e. Freeview) and it works well. I wanted to avoid the "Chinese re-brand boxes" and didn't want to stretch to a reputable brand (like Humax) over concerns of encryption (like many smart TVs). Recording can be initiated "instantly" or can be set according to a schedule (including tools for recording a series). Timeshift is also present, though I've not tried this. Recordings are saved in M2TS format (h264) and are not encrypted or locked to the device (so can be copied off the USB flash-drive and transcoded). As noted you need to provide your own USB flash-drive, but it doesn't appear to be fussy and has accepted all the USB drives I've tried (provided they are reasonably fast, I'd recommend at least 10 MB/sec write speed). It does not reformat any drive used, but just adds recordings to a folder. The files generated are around 1GB/hour. It supports both FAT32 and NTFS (!) but doesn't like exFAT. There is a "loop through" aerial connection to pass the aerial signal to an external tuner, though this function only works when the recorder is in standby. Recorded picture quality is excellent, provided you have a good aerial connection. My only real criticism of the unit is the awful GUI which looks like something from a 1990s DVD player. The graphics are crude and primitive, and functionality is limited, especially the awful channel guide. But it does do the job, and for me, it's the quality of recorded material that is important, and this is excellent. The device shows the time via a green segmented VFD display on the front when in standby, and the channel number in use when on. The supplied little remote control is excellent, and it comes with a 1m HDMI cable in the box. For around £40, it's an excellent buy if all you want is a means to record (and then archive off) broadcast televsion.

I was drawn to this by the price, but also as it appeared to be a superior model to the one I own already [August DVB400]. This review is therefore a comparison between the two models based on my initial observations. THE PROs: You have two options for recording formats, .ts or .ps [really only relevant if you plan on transferring files to other devices]. Picture quality is excellent [I haven't had the stuttering/freezing problems on HD channels that other reviewers are reporting]. The EPG is slightly more user-friendly than the DVB400. The channel number is digitally displayed on the box. As with the DVB400, this connects either by HDMI or [ugh] SCART. THE CONs: The automatic channel scan only seems to pick up channels that are broadcasting at the time of the scan - A scan performed at 3AM failed to find Dave and Really, but picked up Dave Ja Vu and BBCs 3 and 4, while a scan performed at 3PM did find Dave and Really, but failed to find BBC3 or 4. Most annoyingly, both scans jumbled all the channels up and set them at random locations [eg 4music is where BBC1 should be, and so on] which made them very difficult to navigate. There is an option to organise them manually, which I imagine will be both time-consuming and tedious if and when I'm inclined to do it. This problem may be down to a firmware issue [I haven't checked online yet] and therefore fixable, but the fact the box doesn't seem to be correctly performing this most basic function automatically is not acceptable. The DVB400 model had none of these issues. No EPG information for HD channels [as with the previous model] The record function is slightly more complex than the DVB400 due to more options, but the major problem with it is the REC display, which for some reason is positioned awkwardly and annoyingly a quarter of the way down the left-hand side of the TV screen, and can't be removed [I discovered with the DVB400 that by pressing the EXIT button the REC display disappears while continuing to record, but no such luck with this model]. Also, the PVR seems not to recognise files recorded on the older DVB400. Common to both models is the fact that the manual, while lovely and glossy, is printed in a headache-inducing font size that doesn't encourage in-depth study. So I may have missed something that addresses the above problems, but I'm not counting on it. In summary, while it's possible a firmware update might resolve these issues, all in all I'm not particularly enamoured of this model. I'll keep it, but I'll only use it with my spare TV. As for my main TV, I'm reconnecting the trusty[ish] DVB400. I'll check online for any firmware updates or solutions, and if anything changes I'll update this review accordingly.

As many others have stated - you can't beat the value for money on offer here - £20 to add pause/rewind live-tv and timer record is.. well the best deal I've had on any gadget for many a long year. The device can be setup in a few minutes and the picture and record quality in SD is as good as any. The user manual isn't fantastic and nor are the device's menus. Timed recordings use the programme's time and date as their name and not the programme name which is the worst aspect of this device - August really need to fix this with an software update and then the device will be almost perfect. A few words of advice: * I had to mess around with the picture setup on the device's setting menu as the default contrast was way too high, and be warned you can't view the picture whilst you make the adjustments, so it's a bit of back and forth. * The recorder requires a STRONG Freeview signal and a FAST USB pendrive, otherwise you will get frequent on-screen warning messages and jumpy recordings. * Even with a strong signal and fast USB drive, recording HD channels in my experience is not flawless as every thirty seconds or so you can expect a slight jump to occur where the recording has momentarily failed. * Spend a few minutes exploring ALL of the menus as it's not particularly intuitive and not all settings are where you might expect to find them. * The one problem I had was to get the device to do a timer recording! In the timer menu ensure that you CHANGE the default setting from 'Wake-up' to 'Record', otherwise all that happens is the device wakes up from standby and tunes to the selected channel at the chosen time. Use the left/right arrows to toggle between the two. I hope this helps someone make a more informed buying decision.