New Freesat Receiver - Bush

[Channel Hopper]

Installed one today for a customer that bought it from John Lewis.

Non HD (which was a surprise) but good menus, and quite a solid looking box, vents on the sides, front panel with a blue power button and a slightly larger than normal remote control making it quite easy to use.

Bush BFSAT01SD

Price ? under 50 quid with a two year guarantee and option on five.

 

[guest]

Unfortunately this particular Box doesn't have a good reputation for quality or reliability, judging by what I read in "other places", which is a shame as (Yorkshireman that I am), I generally find these low-end brands perfectly acceptable and definitely excellent value for money.

 

[guest]

Can you tell me what Firmware the Box showed after attempting an Update?

The biggest bugbear (sic.) with the Bush/Alba/Goodmans branded Boxes is not so much that they have faults and bugs (doesn't everything), but that support by way of Firmware upgrade is noticeable chiefly by its absence.

Version 1.2.16 is now rather venerable and, despite an accumulated bugs list that is acknowledged to require action, there are conflicting rumours about plans for a further release: At one extreme it has been claimed that support for these Boxes is being run down already (a new hardware version is in the offing) and at the other extreme an update is imminent.

Pick the bones out of that!

The long running saga of dissatisfaction with this range of Boxes (and the HD versions, where they exist) has caused many users to ditch them in favour of Humax - and that means upgrading (??) to HD so maybe a good thing ??

 

[rolfw]

I've installed two or three of the Goodmans boxes, the one major problem I found, was that the blue power light on the front only shows when the box is in standby and goes off when the box is switched on.

Has led to several confused phonecalls from pensioner customers, who thought that their box or TV had broken, because the Freesat receiver was on (as indicated by the bright blue light), but they weren't getting a pictrure.

 

[guest]

I've got a bedroom Telly that does that - and the blue light is so bright that I turn the blessed thing off at the wall instead. Cunning bit of ecological design?

The average punter may not notice some of the issues with the Bush boxes, as they really do want simple operation - but one of the long running issues is corruption/disappearance of the Freesat EPG after having ventured into non-Freesat mode and back.

I do suspect that quite a lot of people on Forums, being perhaps at least curious and often rather more knowledgeable than yer average punter, try to "break" new toys .................... so they'll almost certainly find issues that don't affect most users!

 

[Channel Hopper]

Unfortunately I did not have time to check out the menus (and the firmware number) while I was on site.

The thought of having to switch 'up' to a Humax in an attempt to fix bugs is rather funny.

 

[guest]

Unfortunately I did not have time to check out the menus (and the firmware number) while I was on site.

The thought of having to switch 'up' to a Humax in an attempt to fix bugs is rather funny.

I suppose it is, really!