Product Reviews

The recently launched Freesat service provides free-to-air digital television to 98 per cent of homes in the UK. If you already have problem-free Freeview reception then you may well wonder what all the fuss is about, but in addition to having the vast majority of Freeview channels Freesat has sufficient bandwidth for HD broadcasts, too.

To receive Freesat, you'll need a satellite dish. Having one fitted will cost you around £90 including VAT. It's possible to use an existing Sky satellite dish, as long as it's positioned to receive Sky's current service. Dishes that are intended for the old analogue service, discontinued in 2001, will need realigning or replacing.

You'll need a HD Freesat receiver, too, and the Foxsat-HD is the first we've seen. It's a small box, with no hard disk inside for recording programmes. The remote control is reasonably good, but not as well designed as those that Humax supplies with its excellent PVRs. A second set of controls is hidden under a panel on the front.

Once we connected the low-noise block (LNB) input to our satellite dish, setting the box up was quick and easy. It immediately downloaded the latest

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firmware and restarted. It then asked for our postcode (to prioritise the correct local channels) before searching for channels automatically. It found 74, though only one of these was in HD (BBC HD). However, ITV HD will start broadcasting soon.

There are component and HDMI outputs for connecting to a HD TV, and there's support for 720p or 1080i. Be warned, though: we found that copy protection on BBC HD meant we could only use HDMI. Owners of older HD TVs with no HDCP-compliant HDMI or DVI inputs will be seriously disappointed.

BBC HD looks stunning on 720p and 1080p TVs, and we soon found ourselves watching any programme to marvel at the super-sharp picture. Most of BBC HD is broadcast at a resolution of 1,440x1,080 rather than 1,920x1,080. Despite this, the interlaced picture is full of detail, as well as being free from any compression artefacts. After watching in HD programmes, standard definition versions are disappointing. The Foxsat-HD doesn't do a poor job, but it can't eliminate the obvious compression artefacts.

Audio can be output over HDMI. Alternatively, there's phono stereo or an optical S/PDIF. Some BBC HD broadcasts have Dolby Digital 5.1 audio - something that's missing from Freeview broadcasts. Using the optical S/PDIF, you can connect the Foxsat-HD box to an AV receiver and get high-quality surround sound.

With only two HD channels currently available, it's hard to justify buying Humax's Foxsat-HD if you already have Freeview, even if you have a suitable satellite dish. Humax is due to launch a hard-disk equipped Freesat PVR later in the year, which will allow recording and pausing live TV. At the same time, there should be extra HD channels, so it's well worth waiting until then to choose a Freesat box.