Humax HD-Fox T2 Freeview HD receiver

Free-the-air HD in a living room near you

As DTV boxes go, the compact HD-Fox T2 is more attractive than most, finished in high-quality plastic and sporting a clean-looking reflective fascia. Teasingly, there’s a drop-down panel, behind which you’d expect to find a CI slot for Top-Up TV. Frustratingly, it’s a blind alley with no extra functionality to be found.

The usual suspects

A selection of basic control buttons and a rocker are provided on the front in case the remote control goes AWOL. Visual information includes a green LED to indicate standby, TV and radio modes. When switched on the channel number is displayed. As we’ll see later the most important are 50 and 51.

There are no major surprises when it comes to the connections around the back with a 1080p-compatible HDMI leading the show. Those ugly sisters, the dual Scarts, are on analogue duty, backed up by a composite video and stereo phonos, whilst a digital optical output means you can enjoy Dolby Digital audio using a compatible amp. Very few HD broadcasts are made in 5.1 audio, but it’s good to be surround sound-ready. An RF loop-through ensures your TV’s tuner will still function whilst the box is connected to your aerial.

Alas, there’s no Wi-Fi, but an Ethernet port is provided for hooking up to a home network to access media files. It might also be used in the future for IPTV services such as the BBC iPlayer or even Project Canvas. Finally, there’s a USB socket, which for now can only be used for playing back music, photo and video media files. A more thoughtful design would have located this on the front where occasional access would be easier.

The remote control is an impressive beast too. Full-sized, as all remotes should be, it’s an off-the-peg affair, with several redundant buttons that relate only to other Humax products but it nonetheless sits nicely in the hand and is well designed and built. It doesn’t take long to familiarise yourself with the most oft-used buttons and there are no howling omissions.

Plenty of buttons, and some of them work

Installation is a doddle. Connected by HDMI it took me just a few minutes to breeze through the four steps to HD heaven. First, choose your language from English, Scottish Gaelic, Irish and Welsh. Next, set the display (screen ratio and type). Do a channel scan and finally connect to your network if you want to. The excellent fonts, graphics, icons and menus combine beautifully to make set-up and use a cinch.