Manhattan T2-R 500 GB Freeview HD Recorder - Black

Product Information

The interface is beautiful and most importantly – fast. The “smart” recording features are useful, and navigating your recordings is easy. Picture quality is great, but – as always – depends a lot on your aerial reception. The 500GB hard drive holds up to 300 hours of recordings, smartly organised into categories and series If you connect the device to the internet, you’ll also get a few additional Freeview features and channels – the BBC’s red-button for example, or the “Box Nation” pay-tv channel. Cadbury Gifts Clarks Complete Unity Yoga Converse Crampton & Moore Outlet Crocs Currys Currys Clearance After discussion with Arqiva (who manage the UK’s broadcast infrastructure), we implemented improved behaviour on our latest T3-R model. This behaviour has now replaced the Automatic Service Update on the T2-R:

Fixed an issue that could cause intermittent video freezing/stuttering with high-bitrate HD recordings. Press the GUIDE button on your remote control. This displays the TV Guide, making it easy to tell when you find the right input. Ensure your aerial is connected to your T2•R and an HDMI or AV cable is connected from your T1 to your TV. Split recordings are now listed in their folder from oldest at the top to newest at the bottom. These are almost always movies in two parts, so the first part will be shown first followed by the second part.Connect to a rooftop aerial to enjoy Freeview content, and by Ethernet cable for on demand services. High quality HDMI connection gives a high definition picture transfer, and enjoy Dolby Digital Plus sound. It also features an optical port for high quality sound output. A 1.2m HDMI cable is included in the box. Since the T2-R doesn’t support streaming apps, you might wonder what the Ethernet and USB ports are for. For some reason, the “Get Started” manual ignores these ports, but an added leaflet explains that they’re used to update the box’ software. There used to be an over-the-air Freeview updating service called “The Engineering Channel”, but it was shut down this year – so having another way to update the T2-R software is good.

I remember getting my first PVR fifteen years ago – a Pace Twin with a 20GB hard drive, rendered useless a few years later by technical changes to the terrestrial broadcast platform. Around the same time the Pace Twin was in retailers, a company called Eurosat was supplying digital satellite receivers under the Manhattan brand to enthusiasts via a network of specialist dealers. The file system has been updated to make it resilient to corruption caused by unexpected interruptions (e.g. power loss) during asynchronous data transfer. The remote is laid out clearly with reasonably sized buttons that have a reassuring feel to them when pressed.When retune events were signalled by the broadcasters you could be prompted to retune more frequently than necessary. The Schedule could continue showing split events as ‘Searching…’ even after they had finished airing. When there are regional variants of channels stored, e.g. BBC ONE NE at channel 1 and BBC ONE WALES at channel 800, the system will always prioritise the primary channel for recordings. During initial setup the Confirm Your PIN step has been updated to make it clearer you need to re-enter your PIN. (1.09)

to those with sets they really should have replaced by now). Connected and powered up, you'll find Manhattan's onscreen tuning wizard. As with other Freeview kit, your location has to be entered so the correct channels are listed in the EPG and duplicates removed.Programmes deleted and emptied from the Trash could not be re-recorded and any repeats were indicated as already recorded. Moved ‘Edit Protected Channels’ and ‘Show/Hide Protected Channels’ into their own ‘Protected Channels’ sub-menu of the Channels menu. It supports resolutions up to 1080p Full HD, so you can enjoy richly-detailed high definition content, and also upscales SD channels for enhanced viewing. Your T2•R will update automatically overnight whilst in standby, as long as you haven't disabled automatic updates in the System Settings menu

Split recordings (normally movies in 2 parts) now show the time after the date so the first part can be easily identified. Further improvements to come. Finding what to watch and record on over 85 channels is simple with the easy-to-use 8-day TV guide. The TV Guide now indicates in the info area when a programme is running late, starting late or has started early. Once the hard drive gets full, the T2-R will start erasing older shows automatically, to make room for new recordings – but if there are shows you want to keep, you can mark them as protected. You can record two programs but you cannot watch a live third at the same time. For the money it is a very good straight forward no nonsense PVR. Very responsive remote no delay button pushes. Nice user interface. Two year warrantee.The neatness, clarity and responsiveness of the T2-R's everyday user interface is worth praising. It's driven by a decent handset that can also operate many TVs. It was not possible to set an instant recording on a channel immediately after using an MHEG red button service on that channel. It was still possible to record from the Channel Banner or TV Guide.