Last year I finally ditched my Humax Freeview Recorder for a shiny new Manhattan T4-R – the latest iteration of their own recorder, and I’d heard good thinks about their past devices.
However, reporting issues to them has been a combination of frustration and rude responses. Everything is your fault, not theirs. And it seems I’m not the only one with this issue.
Bad Wi-Fi. Bad engineer.
Just a few months after buying the Manhattan I was experiencing an issue with the Wi-Fi connection, which I decided to phone them about.
When I would start the T4-R in the morning, out of overnight standby, it says it couldn’t connect to Wi-Fi. When I try and get it to, it can’t find any Wi-Fi signals at all. If I then restart the box, it connects to Wi-Fi just fine for the rest of the day.
The engineer I spoke to got me to remove all the Wi-Fi settings from my T4-R and set it all back on (with a sprinkling of rebooting my Manhattan and my home router). He blamed it on me having a 2-router mesh – a system I’ve had for years and have had no others issues with.
How did it go? My follow-up email with support summarises it nicely…
I rang and spoken to one your engineers yesterday about it. However, he was rude and impatient – not an enjoyable experience at all.
The engineer literally told me that it was my fault for using a mesh and that I should take it out of that set-up – and that was the only way to get it working with the T4-R. Not that it explained why, when I tried to get it re-scan for networks, it didn’t show any.
Anyway, they apologised in response and admitted that mine was a “unique issue”. They provided me with a special debug version of the firmware to try, which they could use to capture logs. I never replied and they didn’t follow it up.
I didn’t reply because I fixed it myself. When using a Mesh network, each router has the same SSID but, of course, has a different MAC and IP. It appears that when you connect the T4-R to a Wi-Fi, it’s remembering which one it is, above just the SSID. If your Mesh network then tries to connect a different router to it, the box thinks it’s different and refuses connection. My solution was to tell my Mesh to only connect one specific router to it and never another. I then cleared the Wi-Fi settings from the Manhattan and then set it up again.
If you’re wondering why something as nice as this device should work so oddly with a modern network, this is what the very retro (but not in an ironic wa) firmware update screen looks like…
It’s not exactly user friendly, or even just something that look like it’s from the 2020s.
Reporting more issues
A year later and I’ve now reported 2 further issues that I’m having with the T4-R…
- Subtitles on recorded programmes often don’t show. Putting the Manhattan into standby and then switching it back on resolves this and the subtitles start playing again. Clearly a problem with the box.
- Sometimes, often when the T4-R is recording but not exclusively, I turn on the box and no sound comes out. I use eArc to connect my TV to a soundbar, with a standard HDMI between the T4-R and the TV. The TV should direct the sound between the T4-R and the sound bar.
When this issue happens, sound does come out, as when I turn the volume up and down, I get the usual feedback beep from the speakers. If I switch to another source, for example Apple TV, sound comes out fine.
Lastly, if I tell the TV to not use the sound bar but use the TV speakers, still no sound occurs.
Fixing it requires either a full restart of the box or, often, just putting it into standby and back out. However, if it’s recording, I don’t think the T4-R fully starts up in quite the same way as this doesn’t cure the sound problem. Oddly, if I keep trying for 5-10 minutes it doesn’t change, but put it in standby for longer and it then starts working again.
I’m pretty agnostic as to where the issue is here but the fact that sound comes out of other sources does suggest the Manhattan is to blame here.
Anyway, I emailed their support about both of these, giving as much detail as I can. “David” replied after a couple of days here’s what he said about both…
- For the subtitles issue, he said it was a synchronisation issue with the EPG and suggested I re-tune. I actually only did this a couple of weeks ago when some of the channels moved. It was doing it before then and has been doing so since, so that’s not a fix.
But this also shows he didn’t read my email properly, as I did say the subtitles WERE recording, but just wouldn’t show until a restart of the T4-R. Programmes formally not showing subtitles then would. That’s not suggesting, as he thinks, that subtitles were not recorded, or were in some way delayed. - For the sound, it’s my TV’s fault. Of course.
“The TV’s eARC audio processor appears to be lagging, which is why the audio drops off. “
Which doesn’t explain why other sources, also going through the same eArc work just fine.
I replied, putting some of the points from above that I thought he’d maybe missed. After a few days he replied. For the first issue he said…
In order to investigate this properly, we will need to collect a hard drive dump from your device so that we can check that specific recording and find out if it’s the T4R not displaying the subtitle correctly or if it’s a signal /broadcast related issue for that specific event.
Oh dear. Again, I’m not sure he read what I’d told him. It is recorded and shows just fine. But only after I soft-restart the device. There’s no need for a hard drive dump. Anyway, he also asked for details of the last time this happened, so I provided that.
For the sound, they’re sure it’s not the Manhattan and, I guess, could be an issue with the HDMI connection just going to this device, so I’ve agreed to switch out the HDMI cable, as well as change the port as well. However, I still don’t agree with their original ascertain that it’s the eArc as that’s to the sound bar and as bypassing that still causes the issue, I think we can rule that out (and in their latest reply they’ve stopped mentioning that too).
And I hadn’t even raised the issue with them where recording has a slight sound-sync issue. I’m guessing that’s not going to go anywhere (and will probably be my TV and/or sound bar).
One year later…
A year has passed since the above. There were a few firmware updates early on, including when I wrote that, and one of them appears to have fixed the subtitling issue. Almost. Subtitles stop working when you’re watching a live programme that you’ve paused at some point (so it’s slightly behind).
However, the original “no sound” continues and that’s been joined by “TV not recognising the Manhattan is even turned on”. For the latter, it’s what it sounds when I power the Manhattan on, the TV says there’s no signal and refuses to see anything coming through the HDMI. As with the sound, powering the Manhattan off for a few minutes appears to resolve it. For the sound, before I said it was when recording but I’ve since realised that it also occurs when nothing is recording too – intermittently, you’ll turn it on and there will be no sound. Switch to another device and it’s just fine. Even if I change TV from the sound bar to its own speakers, nothing, so I can’t blame the sound bar for this.
What both have in common is that it’s as if the signal coming from the Manhattan is not being properly received by the TV.
I’ve changed the HDMI port and the cable, as their engineer recommended, and it’s the same. I mean, it could be the TV, but why would my TV have something against this particular device and nothing else?
What do others think?
Their Trustpilot score of 2.61 is telling. In fact, it was 3.4 a year ago, so it’s dropping quickly.
One example review mentions an issue that I’ve experienced myself (in fact, it last happened only a couple of days ago) and a response that does not surprise me…
[The Manhattan T4-R] failed, intermittently, to record and gave reason as ‘due to power loss’. There was no power loss and the machine had to be rebooted as it wasn’t responding to the remote.
I’ve spoken to the ‘technical support’ on two occasions & have been basically fobbed off. My second call ended when the ‘technical support’ guy hung up after I said he was being rude – which he most certainly was.
It sounds like they had the same engineer that I had last year 😬
What’s next?
I recently tried a Manhattan Freely device – this is the next step, where it doesn’t need an aerial, and just lives streams all the channels but otherwise presents itself like a standard Freeview set-up. You can’t record, but Humax has a dual-use device which will record from the aerial and stream for the live TV.
The one I tried wasn’t this, as I thought I could probably live without recordings, as long as there was some way to remind me of shows, which the device appeared to do. I returned it, though, when it became apparent this wasn’t the case. Unless a manufacturer comes up with something that allows you to be reminded of when your favourite programmes have had a new episode made available, I’ll stick to recording.
I also found the Manhattan Freely device very clunky in use, with different screens for different tasks and a real split personality. Streaming gives you better picture and audio than you get through an aerial but channels are slow to switch and you don’t get the full collection.
For now I’m not changing – the issues I’m getting are annoying but intermittent. However, moving away from Manhattan is probably the direction I will go, whatever happens.
- At time of writing ↩︎
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