I bought this box for my husband's birthday as the sky+ box had been malfunctioning and irritiating us.
We loved the live pause and recording facility of sky+, but weren't interested in paying a sunscription for channels which, quite frankly, we weren't going to watch. So Freesat was the answer.
The Humax is supposed to be top of the range (It was the best we could get at our local Curry's anyway!) and although it probably works out more expensive than getting a sky+HD subscription in the short term, we wont still be paying for the box in the long term.
Reliability-wise, it's been great. It does everything we need it too including recording and live pause.
In terms of set-up, it was a breeze. neither my husband nor i are any good with technology, but we had the thing installed and running within nanoseconds.
A slight problem with the remote control turned out to be the fact that we had accidentally hit a button, but since our local Curry's is a five minute walk away and staffed by friendly local chaps, they just fixed it and laughed at us. Hopefully the issue we are having with subtitles appearing when we record or pause programmes will be a similarly silly mistake on our behalf rather than a problem with the box.
In all, I recommend this wholeheartedly for anyone with an HD television but no particular need for a contract for a million boring channels.
It's a basic, black box that doesn't offend the eye, it's easy to intall and easy to use. So far, no problems at all.