Akai AD181X High Definition Set Top Box (with Freeview) reviews

I bought this, then discovered I had to get the proper ariel for it to go. Did that, set it to France ( why? ) and voila, the reception in HD is amazing! My partner sat there looking at wrinkles on peoples faces! Anyhow, over all. Apart from the arial thing ( need one of those long ones with the barbs on it ) very easy to set up, and if used with an HD TV it has amazing picture quality!

This would have to be the best value electronics I have ever purchased as it was on special on the ape for $90, so I took a punt, and this box does it all. The ability to record and timeshift to a usb is a fantastic addition. Plugging in an external 40gb NTFS formatted hard drive even works when its not meant to! very very happy :-)

Easy to set-up & programme. We have connected the received to a 1TB Harddrive via the USB port – & can now record whilst watching another channel (& all in HD). All new TV's are coming out with a built in receiver – but not with the ‘PVR’ USB port which allows you to record to a harddrive – so this unit will still be useful, even when we upgrade the TV. Cost of Receiver + Harddrive = $193 – which is a bargain. Only criticism is that remote is not intuative – but it all seems to work well. Reccommended!

A good item – a wee bit slow in starting and changing channels, and I haven't worked out how to get it to show a complete TV listing yet, but well worth the money. The USB port lets it play .avi files from computer and this is fantastic, but it seems to be a bit fiddly to get .avi files playing sometimes.

Picture quality is fantastic for all channels.

Overall – pretty good, definitely worth the money spent, but it is at the cheaper end which you pay for with slower responsiveness.

Easy to use, you press 1 button to record live TV, this freeview is high quality definition UHF Ariel which is great, it had all the channels you can get in HD. 4GB USB would record about 2 hours worth of movie which isn't bad. Great overall I recommend it to all and the price is cheap!

Easy to use, you press 1 button to record live TV, this freeview is high quality definition UHF Ariel which is great, it had all the channels you can get in HD. 4GB USB would record about 2 hours worth of movie which isn't bad. Great overall I recommend it to all and the price is cheap!

Great buy for the money, dont buy another tv this is all you need.Awesome picture a definite jump up in veiwing pleasure.Than­ks Mike.

I just plugged it in, turned it on. It was already set for New Zealand! I only had to press OK for it to do a channel search! Picture is clear and channels change fast. Also I simply plugged in my 320GB portable hard drive and I was instantly able to view movies, music, and photo's without even setting anything up! To record to the hard drive takes a second or two to initiate, but it also didn't require setting up. This is a great device at a great price! Just plug and play!

For a Terrestial decoder, with the added bonus of USB recording, this box is outstanding value. Easy install, and true HD reception. The inclusion of an HDMI cable in box is a welcome addition.

What a good unit goes better than a freeview approved one I bought about a year ago Just plugged it in and away it went I would advise anyone who is in the market for a set top box the akai is great

For the size it is, it's worth is weight in gold

This little receiver is an amazing bargain. It does more than I expected it to. It does display picture at a high quality but, what really surprised me was its ability to playback a lot of video formats on my hard drive, including some of my MKV files. The only bad thing is that the response time is quite slow but that doesn't really matter since it's a cheap price. Value for your money.

Bought this reciever have use it for a month is fantastic great reception plus the extra bonus of being able to record on to usb mass storage device

The value and performance belighs the very reasonable price. Easy to set up and use. Records too-and it is easy to use. Would I buy again? Sure would. Great service too.

Very happy with this Freeview HD box. It has really improved the picture I get on my 42" plasma TV. It is very easy to use & it is doubly handy that you can record to any USB drive. I have even used it to record to a portable hard drive which some reviews have said can't be done. For the money I think this is an excellent buy!

Good unit, worked immediately and the price can not be beaten. Great that has USB recording but set-up for recording was sometimes difficult

Have had dicky analogue signal due to trees but this has cleaned it all up. Easy to set up unit and now the TV picture looks the part. Simple to record too. Although the instructions look poor, it all comes together if one reads them fully. Is this STD good value? Sure is.

Love this box, except still can't figure it out to manually search. I can't get TV central or startos. On this box. The rest are there.