Manhattan T2-R 500 GB Freeview HD Recorder - Black

Product Information

The usual features you might be used to on your Sky/BT/Virgin Media box – such as pausing live TV for up to two hours, initiating series links and making one-touch recordings – work like a breeze.

Manhattan T2-R Freeview HD PVR — Digital Spy Manhattan T2-R Freeview HD PVR — Digital Spy

The first is brand. Looking at the brand of the product is often a really good indicator for judging product quality. For example you’d expect a much higher quality product from a brand known for providing excellent quality than you would from an unknown or even a budget brand. I've just bought a Manhattan T2-R PVR and I'm really impressed with it. I couldn't see any posts about it on here, so thought I'd pass on my initial thoughts. I'm reasonably sure you can watch one recording whilst two others are taking place, but don't hold me to that. It's really strange that you cannot watch a third while recording two. I think Manhattan have made a bad mistake seeing as most other PVR's have this function. If the brand you buy is important to you, our best advice is to spend some time writing up your own list of ideal brands. That way when you come to the point where you’re comparing product options you can filter to only show the products from brands in your list.The remote is laid out clearly with reasonably sized buttons that have a reassuring feel to them when pressed. The other irritation is the lip sync. This varies enormously, particularly so when recording a number of HD recordings, whilst watching another HD recording. Every now and then the picture seems to run as if in fast forward for a second or two while it catches up with itself, then the lip sync will be OK for a minute or two before drifting off again. It is much better if I watch a recording while not recording anything else, and SD recordings also seem less afflicted.

Manhattan T2•R Support | Manhattan TV Manhattan T2•R Support | Manhattan TV

Read up on the Manhattans vs the Humax model and performance of them. Sluggish UI on some Humax cf the Manhattans. What you are saying is change the input to TV and watch a program while the PVR is recording the other two that you have selected? By the way I hadn't noticed but while recording two programs you can watch a previously recorded program at the same time. That EPG may well be cached, I'm sure it has to be, but it is displayed at lightning speed on the screen when requested. My DigitalStream was significantly slower in operation as was the Goodmans that (temporarily) replaced that, any of the multitude of Humax boxes prior to the DigitalStream too. You could often see the programs being updated one by one as the data loaded, jumping to a different day caused another visible rebuild. Jumping two or three days ahead and you could be in for some thumb twiddling while you waited. With the Manhattan there is no waiting. You can jump from today to seven days hence and not see any delays, at any time. It really is fast. The Manhattan T3-R is a powerhouse. It’s obviously got processing power to spare because it zips around the Freeview Play user interface – itself a thing of beautiful simplicity – with bristling ease. It’s a joy to use, which isn’t something we thought we’d be saying about a Freeview set-top box.

As you can imagine, pricing is one of the most important factors of any purchasing decision. We can find the perfect product for our needs, that fits the brief in every single way. But if it doesn’t fit our budgets, we simply can’t (or at least shouldn’t) buy it. As it is a Freeview PVR the watch an extra channel facility is irrelevant as almost all viewers will have it connected to a Freeview TV probably with HD.