Manhattan T3-R Freeview Play 4K Smart Recorder 1TB

Product Information

When pressing the S/AD button, the availability of Subtitles and Audio Description status is now shown based on the broadcaster’s signalling instead of the PMT. This can still be inaccurate if the broadcaster signals incorrectly, but in our testing it is more accurate than the PMT

On the 3 series, you could search for the name of a programme or film, and see results for it on the catch-up apps listings – that is, whether it’s available on BBC iPlayer, All4, etc. That means that, on supported channels (such as some of the BBC’s channels), HD channels will automatically become the prominent channels on supported devices (so BBC One HD will move to Channel 1, for example, instead of being on Channel 101). T4 and T4-R Streaming Apps The ‘Watched’ status of recordings would fail to be set when a recording was played to the very end. The T3 would freeze when playing ‘Law & Crime’ video content in interactive service 271 Channelbox. If your T3-R is connected to the internet and left in standby, it will update automatically overnight, unless you have disabled automatic updates in the System Settings menu. Please see below for more information about updating, including how to update by USB. Changes

This device comes in 500GB and 1TB versions, we’d say that the 1TB version was worth the extra cash if you have it spare, mainly because HD appears to be taking over the world and so we think the more disk space you have, the better. Following (normally temporary) EDID failure during the HDMI handshake the T3•R’s Audio Output would change to Auto. This primarily affected Audio Receivers and Soundbars. When Auto Standby was disabled and the T3-R was left on overnight on a channel with broadcasting breaks like Blaze (channel 64), recordings on that channel could fail. Good quality picture output. (Is 4k/HDR relevant to Freeview/Freesat? I know that it matters for streaming but I don't need these boxes for streaming.) Press HOME and then select: Settings > Information. If the version shown is lower than 2.02, you should update. Update your T3 over the internet

Setup is refreshingly straightforward: just hook up the PVR to a network connection and store channels. (Manhattan sent us two boxes to test the Wi-Fi performance after our original review encountered issues with it. We’ve concluded that the issues in the review were down to interference, and that the box offers solid enough connectivity.) Our suggestion would be to hard-wire the network connection if you can, to avoid any weak Wi-Fi connectivity or wireless interference. The T3 could fail to detect an internet connection when a router did not respond to its ping requests. The previous release effectively performed a retune each night (‘Automatic Service Update’) to ensure that the T3 was tuned to the strongest transmitters. However, this behaviour caused difficulties for some customers due to a phenomenon called tropospheric propagation that can cause distant signals to be temporarily boosted and travel long distances. It happens more often at night and is very prevalent in coastal areas and at times of high pressure. An affected customer would typically find that in the morning their box had retuned to a weaker transmitter and suddenly some channels have poor or no signal. Your T3•R will update automatically overnight whilst in standby, as long as you haven't disabled automatic updates in the System Settings menu. As with the 3 series, the T4 will be a Freeview Play box without recording capabilities, while the T4-R will be the recording version – meaning you will be able to record hundreds of hours of HD programming from Freeview. Freeview Over Broadband?The hard drive could fail to initialise causing recordings to fail and recording-related features not to work. Add a facility to disable automatic tuning updates during the overnight housekeeping routines. If disabled, advise the user that re-tuning is necessary, but allow the user to skip/ignore the need to re-tune whenever the PVR is woken from standby. The existing channel database should not be modified.