I recently bought this freeview player as my old one packed up and I am so glad I did!

The Humax 9200TB is a basically a freeview player that has a built in hard drive. For anyone that has ever heard or used Sky + then this is exactly the same thing.

Firstly if you were to look at the box itself then it is certainly something you will easily forget. It is a big black square box essentially! It is not overly attractive at all. On the front you will see numerous buttons which let you change channel as well as pause live TV. There is a display on the left side of the box which shows the time and what channel you are watching. To the right of the machine is a flap which houses the card reader (for Top Up TV). On the back are the usual sockets with the noticeable absenteeism of a HDMI socket.

The remote control is also very ugly. It is quite big and is one of these remotes where the bottom half slides down to reveal more buttons. The majority of the buttons you will use are on the main bit of the remote but there are some nifty little ones on the panel area. Button are all positioned fairly simply and in no time you will get the hang of it.

So the main feature of the box is the fact that you can pause and record live TV. This is done very easily! To pause TV all you need to do is, shock horror, press the pause button! The way the box works is that it is constantly recording so you can just pause TV and press play again when you are ready. Recording programmes is very simple as well. All you need to do is go to the guide, select the programme you want to record then hit the OK button. Depending on the programme, you may then be asked if you want to record the whole series or just this one programme. This is very handy for ongoing series which you may miss here and there.

In order to watch programmes you have recorded it is a bit of a mission. You need to go to the menu, choose the recorded menu, go to recorded programmes and then finally choose what you want to watch. It would be better if they had a dedicated button but its not too much of a big deal to be honest.

One of my favourite things on here is the ability to watch one channel and record another which means that its even more difficult to miss the prime time shows! I believe it is actually possible to record 2 programmes and watch a third but I havent tried yet.

One of the things I wanted in my freeview player was one which had a good guide. I wanted one where it would show the TV channel and say what was now and next. I know this is generally a common thing, but I have come across a few freeview boxes which just give the channel number. Luckily for me this one is ok. When you select a channel it says what is on now and you can see what is next by pressing the right arrow. Not the easiest way but its fine for me. One thing that does annoy me is the fact that every time you turn it on it takes a good couple of minutes to fully populate the guide. Not too much of a problem for me as mine never really turns off but still annoying.

I paid about £120 for this player from an auction site and it was refurbished. I think they go for about £150 brand new. It's a lot of money, and its an ugly machine but it does its job really well!