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

Product Information

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. And now – the T3-R, which combines ALL these features in one very affordable device. So at this point, if you’re looking for a Freeview box, I would say the real decision is whether you want something cheap and basic – like the T1 – or a full-featured box that will upgrade your Freeview experience, like the T3-R.

An issue introduced in 1.07 affecting A/V decoding that could cause the T3•R to restart unexpectedly, in particular when using ITV Hub. After pressing the TEXT button on BBC channels when the internet was connected the system could stop responding to the directional or number buttons until the channel was changed. Please note that some older devices may not support HDMI Control, and the feature needs to be enabled on your TV, AVR or soundbar to work. HDMI-CEC is the generic name but manufacturers all call it something different: Anynet+ (Samsung), Viera Link (Panasonic), LG (Simplink), BRAVIA Link and BRAVIA Sync (Sony), Aquos Link (Sharp). We just call it HDMI Control!

A fast, future-proofed and 4K-ready Freeview Play smart recorder

If you want to find specific shows to watch, you can do so via the global search button. You enter the name of a show (or even just a part of the name), and the T3-R searches within all the catch-up apps, and lets you see all the available episodes. When you select an episode, the appropriate app will automatically start with the right episode ready to play.

As you can see in the picture, the T4-R will also be getting another long-requested feature – a recording LED indicator. So when the box is recording something from Freeview – a dedicated LED will notify you of that (in addition to the standby/on LED indicator, which is still there as well). When Are The T4 And T4-R Boxes Coming?

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The system can now be restarted in the System Settings menu and by pressing: Red - 0 - Red - Standby. When HDMI Control was turned on and the T3-R entered networked standby (sleep), e.g. during overnight housekeeping, problematic TVs that send unnecessary HDMI connect and disconnect notifications could cause the T3-R to wake the TV. The Manhattan T3-R supports 4K (UltraHD) and HDR content, but for the time being, you won’t get to use it much. In Wi-Fi networks with multiple access points, the T3-R would not always connect to the access point with the strongest signal As with every Freeview device, the number of channels it can find depends mainly on your aerial and on the Freeview signal and reception in your house. Once the scanning is finished, it’ll jump straight into Channel 001, which is, in most cases, BBC 1.

With Freeview Play, you get the normal EPG, which you can use to switch between “live” shows – but you can also use that same guide to jump directly into streaming apps like BBC iPlayer, to watch past programmes on-demand. The Manhattan T3-R comes in two versions, one with a 500GB drive, and the other 1TB. The former, as featured here, has a recording capacity of 300 SD hours. Familiar recording niceties include series-linking and live pause. Performance The T3 could fail to detect an internet connection when a router did not respond to its ping requests. 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 Therefore, the flagship T3-R was the only model still being manufactured. That has recently ended as well – but its replacement is on its way. Manhattan T4 and T4-R: First LookWhen playing an ongoing recording immediately after using an interactive service like Channelbox (channel 271), if you fast forwarded to the live point and then tried to pause or rewind live TV, the error message 'This function is unavailable with interactive services' would be shown incorrectly. Playing 4K HDR still seems to cause issues for me too. It takes a good 15-20 seconds for it to buffer everything up correctly and every time it switches streaming quality up from 1080 to 2160 it blanks out the screen as it sends out a resolution change via HDMI. One feature that’s been sorely missing on the 3 series was global EPG search, something that’s been available on other Freeview boxes. The update will happen automatically in standby mode. Alternatively, you can access the update manually through the settings menu.