Freesat introduced its smart tv platform in 2013, which was designed to be a competitor to smart TV platforms like Youview and Tivo (Virgin Media)

The main home screen, appears when you first turn on the reciever,

Now & Next bar, you can skim through the channels by using the Up & Down buttons

Pressing the i button bring up information about the current program, you can also view information for programs on other channels and future programs

The main TV guide, shows what’s currently on. Like most other internet connected EPG’s you can scroll backwards through the guide, which will then take you to an on demand link for the program.

A list of genres for certain channels, accesssed by pressing the List button

Where have all the music channels gone? Seems you need to manually tune them in these days

Showcase

Freetime showcase is mean to highlight and advertise upcoming programmes of interest. Similar to how TV guide magazines showcase programs of interest

Settings

This model supports both Ethernet and Wifi, however a separate USB dongle is required for WiFi functionality.

An external hard drive can be connected via USB to enable recording functionality, if you have a Freesat box that does not have an internal disk drive. This allows you to record and rewind TV, but with only one tuner you are limited to just one program/channel at a time.

Non-Freesat Mode

TV portal is still accessible in this mode.

Personally if you wish to manually tune on channels without any BS restrictions I would advise just to get a standalone FTA receiver, or get a TV with one built in.

Settings – Non-Freesat

Non-Freesat mode can be used to add channels that are not part of the Freesat EPG, but are still FTA. This won’t work with encrypted Sky channels, rather channels that are testing or misc ITV regions

A list of all Astra 28.2E transponders that can be selected, save having to enter the parameters manually

On Demand

A good selection of both Free and subscription on demand services. Most of the major catchup service are present, most of them anyway. There are some omissions though like Britbox, Amazon Prime, StarzPlay, Nowtv and Channel 4

Search

Media Player

You can also play media files from an external USB hard disk or a DLNA server using the built in media player

Humax TV Portal

Humax TV Portal allows you to access interactive applications hosted by Humax, originally supported on their Freeview HD receivers.

Recordings & DLNA

On this model, an external USB Hard disk drive can be connected to the Freesat box, to allow the use of recording. The Freesat software will automatically format the box and prepare it for storage.

Alternatively you can also stream recoding from another Freesat box, or any box that allows DLNA streaming. Some Panasonic TV sets allow this.

You can select the recording, or file to play. And can fast forward and rewind at will, depending on the network conditions, ethernet is recommended.

Alternatively you can stream from a network attached storage device.

Finally there is a section to provide help and support, which takes you to instructions and articles on how to use the various Freesat services.