Aura Android TV 4K Freeview Play Recorder with Google Assistant and Chromecast - 2TB

My old You View box that I bought refurbished keeps resetting and I’ve lost my recordings several times. I originally replaced with a Manhattan Box. That was a mistake and I returned it. The Manhattan box felt inferior and dates and functionality is nowhere near as good as the /YouView. For example, you can’t download apps for streaming so keep having to switch back to tv and the menu was clunky. The new Humax feels like an old friend in new clothes and whilst it can’t quite match a subscription TiVo Box, it does a very good impression! I’m am happy with 2tb of recording space too. Menu layout on TV is a bit different but not too much to get used to. You can download apps via the Play store and get all the usual streaming apps, with the exception of Netflix. That’s a shame but I can deal with one tv switch. Voice control is a nice touch. It was easy to set up and so I’d recommend paying a bit more and buying the Humax. As an aside, when I bought the Manhattan, I found it was missing some essential wires (like an Ethernet and aerial cable) that I then had to buy. Whereas, the Humax came with them all. It really is the best hard drive tv recorder out there that doesn’t come with a hefty monthly subscription to pay. With this, you can choose to pay for extra if you want it but with 177 free channels plus on demand, I can only see sports fans and movie buffs maybe wanting the extra

This has been purchased to replace my older model which was so far out of date that it did not work well anymore. Delighted with this although there is a slight learning curve because of increased functionality and slightly different menu presentation. The ability to record four channels at once is fantastic and because the box is wi-fi we've been able to get rid of another cable. Really fantastic 4K reception and am well pleased with it so far. Easy to set up with more channels than my old one found with so many apps and great speech recognition as well. Having fun with it as well as watching TV and catch up.

We purchased Hugo the Humax box (as he is now named in our house) as a replacement for Sky Q. We had been considering ditching Sky as we were using it as a tool to access apps that we also paid for - Disney+, Netflix, Amazon Prime etc. All are excellent services and we found that we weren't actually watching the sky channels so why pay for them? The Humax box was reviewed as being the best alternative to allow us to pause and play live TV using freeview+. It does this well, but there can be some glitches where the android software is struggling to keep up with what is asked of it. It sometimes glitches a little between channels and can take 40 seconds or so to boot up when turned on afresh. Is it as good as a SkyQ box? Nowhere near. Sky is fluid and sharp, the remote is far better laid out and the navigation of the system is far easier. That being said - it costs a lot and that cost is repeated every month. Sky has also mastered the "you can't use the box without the subscription", so there was no way we were able to keep it. Overall Hugo has proven to be an acceptable alternative. Ultimately, 4 months into Hugo we will be watching free TV (the cost of the box divided by our old sky subscription), so that is a win that in times of economic challenge is well worth it. Would I recomend? Yes with caution.

Bought as a replacement for a Virgin Tivo box. As long as you already have a good freeview ariel this is brilliant. You will master the remote fairly quickly (also has codes to control basic TV functions). Does everything a Virgin Tivo box does:- Record up to 4 channels (SD) and play one. Record 2 HD channels (HD) and play one. Upscales to 4K via HDMI ARC port - supports Dolby and DTS. Has Optical Audio out as well. Record Series just like Virgin Tivo. Watch from start on BBC channels via BBC iPlayer. Connects to storage (NAS and USB). App (android) lets you programme and watch recorded programmes on other devices. You can set remote to operate volume on Aura box or TV. (I set to TV so whatever I watch I can control volume universally). Lots of other stuff thats great as well - has all of the apps BBC/ITV/Ch4/All5/UKTV/Amazon Prime etc. Really pleased. Only drawback is that it does not have a dedicated Netflix app. However most smart TV's have that built in anyway as mine does. Also there are forums that say it maybe added in a later update.

Update 2024 Nothing has improved, and now you cannot cast to this box from any app, just get a trust error saying outdated firmware is preventing casting. Tried to cast from various different apps, none of them work any more. The remote constantly throws a hissy and stops passing input to the box for close to a minute, then when it does start passing input again it repeatedly sends a signal for whatever the last button you pressed, usually one of the scroll options, so it ends up scrolling all the way to the end of the list. Box freezes and crashes more now than when I bought it. 100% I should not have made this purchase and wholly regret it Original review Performance The device is sluggish to navigate. I own the original CCWGTV and that tiny thing outperforms this quite noticibly. Lag when navigating the menu, momentary freezes when changing apps ect. Bugs Device has quite a few bugs. It will often (20-40% of the time) crash and reboot when you go to turn it on from standby leaving you waiting for its lengthy boot up process to complete. This of course interrupts any recordings happening at the time. The live TV timeshifting feature is almost unusable as most of the time something will happen with part of the recording and when you get to that bit it jumps forward to current time. You can rewind to get back to where you were but need to be careful to rewind to just past the part where it jumped or it will just jump forward to current time again. Obviously this means later parts of whatever you're watching will be spoiled when this bug occurs. The video player in general seems to have a freezing bug. On YouTube, if you pause a video then when you resume it often the video will stay frozen but audio will continue. Skipping back or forward will sort it. And in Disney Plus, if you're watching a series and you get to the end of an episode and either let the "next episode" box timeout and autoplay the next ep or manually click to play the next ep, the video will freeze on the first frame of the next ep but audio again continues. You need to back out of the video back to the menu and then replay it to fix that one. I don't experience this on any other devices I use so doesn't seem to be app problems. Recordings While the recording feature seems to work pretty flawlessly (when the box doesn't crash on startup), the sorting options are pretty limiting; "recently first", "oldest first" and "smart ordering". If you're watching something that's broadcast in order then no problem, you can use the first two sort options, but if it's reruns that aren't always broadcast in order then none of these options sort by series/episode. Smart Ordering almost seems like it does but won't start at season 1 or whatevers earliest, but just picks a season at random to start on then sprinkles in random episodes from other seasons in here and there. Netflix This box cannot watch Netflix in any standard way. Apparently you can "sideload" the app, I haven't tried this, but there is no app available for it in the Playstore and if you try to cast Netflix to it it will not show up as an available device, but will show up as an available device in any other app that has a cast option. I could cast to it when I first got the box but after a few weeks it stopped showing up. So maybe sideloading will work but otherwise no Netflix here. Those issues aside, the rest of the box is fine at least as far as I have used it. The remote's quite nice and feels good to use, nice additional of IR functions so can have just one remote for this box and TV. Regular TV watching is fine, picture quality decent. No Picture In Picture feature but can switch between two channels using the back button which is nice. As I mentioned, recording works just fine and generally apps work alright aside from the previously mentioned video and performance issues. Casting to it works fine as well, with exception of Netflix as mentioned, but yeah even NowTV which doesn't have an app will cast just fine so no problems there. If they could sort these issues it'd be 5/5 for sure.