Samsung SMT-S7800

New firmware now available from Samsung website - http://www.samsung.com/uk/support/model/SMT-S7800/XEU-downloads

Some of the changes I've noticed;

- In the library you can see a '%' figure in the top right hand corner showing you how much space is left on the hard drive.

- When you click on 'guide' the main TV picture sort of 'zooms' to its position in the Picture In Picture frame on the top left hand side of screen and has a banner beneath it showing what channel it is.

- Navigation from one option to another now seems faster

- The 'Pop' Kids TV channels now appear in apect ratio of 4:3 (which is what they are broadcast in) - you can't change it back to 16:9 anamorphic - samsung say they are looking into this. 

-  Still no ITV player

 - YouTube account login now works

-  Info on planned recordings now available

-  Not sure if the 'lost library' issue is solved as I have only suffered that once in the 7 months I've had the box.

This box can now be bought for £170 which, I think, makes it one of the very best PVRs out there in terms of both tech and value for money.

SMT-S7800/XEU freesat HD box has been riddled with bugs since day 1. One year after I bought it, out of warranty Samsung still hasn't resolved a large number of issues, some of them quite grave. They sold it with a big sticker on the front of the box saying it has got BBC iPlayer, (in the near future) ITV Player. 1 year later, that "near future" is nowhere near to be seen.

Like the Freeview version where I made similar comments, you have to wonder why What Hi-Fi would give 5 stars with all its drawbacks.

It just devalues the 5 star rating and saps confidence in the What Hi-Fi brand which is a shame.

Again, so what if it got a ‘product of the year’ award and the previous comments just add to the perception of an inferior device?

Samsung must have a very very good PR department.

Regards

Very disappointed. Samsung has the 5 stars that whathifi gave this unit plastered all over it's advertising and it's junk. There are a range of issues with the interface (exit and back same function, can't edit list, favourite lists don't appear on side menu....), the long time it takes to start, YouTube but no Netflix or lovefilm, no diseqc, can't copy saved files off it, mp4 MTV and avi playback out of sink and sometimes choppy video.... And I was one of those fools who bought cos I saw your 5 stars on the advertising... My advise, buy a humux.

Would very much agree with the comment above – I am currently reading these reviews specifically to find a way of getting both one-off content & TV series from Freesat downloaded to my network for later viewing. The ability to export easily to my NAS drive / PC is key – I have been disappointed to see little or no mention in the reviews.

In my case the option to hook it up in a remote comms room, and control over a network would also be useful - perhaps a clue here would be nice. 

I can't see anything in the "Tec Specs" to support the conclusion "While not quite a fully fledged media streamer, the Samsung can also access JPEGs, MP3s and AVI movie files across a network"  Did I miss something?

Like many (almost all) other reviews of PVRs, absolutely no mention of whether content can be edited on the machine or if there is provision to off load content to a PC or other storage device.

Without at least one of those facilities, NO PVR is worth five stars, no matter how good it may be in other respects.