Manhattan T4-R 500GB Freeview Play 4K TV Recorder

When I was searching for Freeview box months ago, it quickly became apparent, Manhattan was king of this jungle. And after using it for many months I am delighted with its overall performance.I have Wi-Fi and once the Freeview Box was switch on, it breezed through adding a firmware update and scanning for channels and was ready to go! The Screen presentation is perfect for one’s eyes, all the menus’ are crystal clear, and everything is beautifully laid out and so simple to follow.The choice of viewing brings home Freeview. With over 100 live channels seamlessly integrated with 60,000+ hours of on-demand and catch-up TV from BBC iPlayer, ITVX, Channel 4, YouTube, and more, via an intelligent remote control.You can record, pause and rewind live TV. Save up to 300 hours of your Television favourites to the 500GB Hard Drive and also record two channels while you watch a third and never miss a single moment of your favourite programmes. Also, search across live and on-demand programmes and explore even more.Manhattan’s 2-year warranty is excellent and reports suggest their after-sales is the same. This will provide you with non-stop free entertainment. My only grumble - it lacks a "Solid-State Drive" and this important point need sorting!

Give me Freeview access and replaces a TalkTalk device that failed. I'm old-school and still like recording programs! So it does all I want in a simple and reliable way.

Bought recording box to cordcut from Virgin Media (Photo shows both boxes, Virgin on the top). Box size comparible.Easy to set up and operate. Currently operating by wireless WiFi.Clear distinction between picture quality viewing via ariel and Freeview. Freeview quality is far superior.Limited recording comparing to Virgin but will get used to BBC channels on BBC app / catch up, now I only record programs with ads. Remote is responsive and easy to use. See edit belowGreat value for money compared to TiVo box. NB - no YouTube app on box but supposedly available early 2025 via update/ reboot.Would recommend. Working well in general but remote stops responding on several occasions. Change battery, follow reset instructions but the only thing that works is switch off at wall and switch back on, very frustrating & still happening around once a month.

Very good machine, easy to set up, only had it 5 or 6 weeks but am very happy with it works well and the picture is great.

I've had my eye on this for a long while (it was much delayed!) to replace an old Youview box that is no longer supported. It was very easy to setup, I simply unplugged the aerial, network cable and hdmi from my old box, and plugged them into the new one. It has wifi which I assume most people will use but I had a network cable already in place so I used it.I then connected its power and turned it on. It did a firmware update, scanned for channels and then started up. All working perfectly first time - no hassle. It found all the channels and reports a better signal (100%) vs my old box (~60%).The remote is fine - no better or worse than any other I've ever had. I've now taught a Logitech Harmony Elite to control it so I likely won't ever use the supplied remote again after today!Menu's and the guide are fast and responsive to navigate. [edit]I had previously noted here that whilst all other apps were quick, the iPlayer app took a long time to load. But they have just fixed this in a firmware patch! So no complaints in that regard anymore.[/edit]It starts up much faster than my old box from energy saving mode at 30 seconds vs several minutes on my old box. If you're looking for a more readily available box, you're going to want to change it go into sleep mode rather than energy saving.Which brings me to pretty much my only (very petty) gripe. It takes a few seconds to power on, even from sleep - which is its fastest startup mode. And I suspect this is because it has to spin up the hard drive. I feel for the money they could have used solid state storage here, just to create something that was absolutely perfect. It's a pretty minor inconvenience really though, and I've personally solved it by swapping the power on order on my Harmony to do the box first then the TV so that by the time the TV has warmed up (it's not overly quick either!) the box is just about ready.

Fast easy set-up, efficient searches, clear display - SO much better than my two previous Humax units, both of which failed after 2-3 years.

The unit works fine but regularly locks 'Off' and cannot be switched on by the remote. it can only be restarted by unplugging the power input for 10secs. Then the unit powers on ok and all facilities are available. This is most annoying and I am contacting the supplier since I am out of the Amazon returns period

This box is simple to setup, it connected to my WiFi quickly and updated on installation which took around 5 min. The picture quality is very good. I would say it compares well to our older bt youview box with the omission of the paid apps eg netflix etc but I am fine with this as this box is for free tv and most modern tvs like mine have access to these apps.The greatest parralell between this box and my older bt box is the ability to not just record but add all on demand content to a seperate watchlist so they can be kept together without forgetting about them or which apps they are on.The tv guide is basic but has a neat feature on the remote where you can change from the grid to genre and see all movies or documentaries etc on in the day over all channels.The search function works well finding shows and showing whether there available to record or just on demand, if you have missed the start of a series this is handy as you can record a full series from part way though and add the first episodes one by one to the watchlist to get the full series .The only reason I have not given this box 5 stars is because of the learning remote which does work but is temperamental and even when it works it seems quicker to just use the tv remote.