Manhattan Plaza HD-S2 Digital Satellite Receiver

Product Information

The Manhattan Plaza HD-S2 even helps save you money thanks to its extremely low power consumption (less than 0.5W in standby), and comes recommended by the Energy Saving Trust. The Plaza HD-S2 must be connected via Ethernet to a minimum actual broadband speed of 2Mbps for On Demand TV services. The Manhattan H-DS2 Freesat Set-Top Box gives you an eight-day electronic programme guide (EPG) so you can see when favourite programmes or items of interest are on, planning your viewing to suit your lifestyle.

How to set up a Smart DNS service on a router – access UK On Demand Services when outside the UK November 4, 2023 On Demand TV* including BBC iPlayer & ITV Player means that even if you do miss a programme, you can catch-up with the best of the week's TV, at a time that suits you. With some unique features and solid pictures, Manhattan’s super-cheap Freesat receiver is a terrific choice for anyone who craves free TV without the frills. If over 150 freesat channels are not enough, you can automatically add hundreds more non-freesat channels, and combine them with freesat channels on the same favourites lists

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The HD•S2 produces sharp, solid high-definition pictures. With ITV HD’s Long Lost Family for example, shots of various outdoor locales are engagingly crisp and bright. Objects have hard edges and there’s no break up as the camera pans. We encountered no problems when using the online apps. VuTV offers a decent range of channels (particularly if you have kids) and works smoothly. The menu presentation is clear and crisp, with onscreen banners displaying the relevant channel logo alongside ‘now and next’ programme info. You have to hit the yellow key for the programme synopsis and green for the VuTV EPG. Setting up the Plaza HD S2 is as easy as it should be. You attach an LNB cable to the LNB input, switch it on, set the display resolution to your requirements and wait while it scans for channels. The only impediment was entering our post code to set our television region, as you have to input letters using an onscreen number pad, and you have to cycle through letters as you would with an old mobile phone when texting. The process could be a little slow at times and we sometimes entered the wrong character because we overcompensated for delays.

The Manhattan Plaza HD-S2 allows you to easily create up to eight lists of your favourite channels, then use them to filter the Programme Guide, so you only see the ones you want to. When you consider that you also get the option of catching up on missed shows thanks to the inclusion of BBC iPlayer and ITV Player, it’s hard to think that there even is a catch. As well as bringing you Freesat’s range of over 150 TV and radio channels (six of which are in hi-def), you can also scan for non-Freesat channels automatically, expanding your selection even further. Connect the box to the internet via Ethernet you can also access BBC iPlayer and ITV Player and catch-up on the last seven days’ worth of programmes. The Manhattan Plaza HD S2 gives you the full complement of Freesat’s 150-plus channels including all the HD channels, non-Freesat channels (things like Sky News and Press TV which you have to manually add) and over 30 digital radio stations. The successor to the award-winning Plaza HD-S, the HD-S2 is the most compact freesat HD receiver available, and comes bursting with unique features.

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Here you can add non-Freesat channels either by scanning all transponders automatically or manually entering the tuning details, but they don’t appear in the Freesat EPG. BBC iPlayer on the Manhattan Plaza HD S2 looks a little different to how it does on most smart TV platforms, but the basic functions, search, favourites, and channels are all there, making finding the shows you want to catch up on a piece of cake. Manhattan Plaza HD S2 Apps: ITV Player Enjoy access to over 200 HD, SD and radio channels with this Manhattan Freesat set-top box, equipped with a single Freesat HD tuner. Watch your favourite channels whenever you like, including marvellously detailed high-definition channels. Adding Favourites to a list is a convoluted process – in the Channel List, highlight a channel, hit the star key, choose a list to add it to then hit the star key again, followed by OK. That’s more long-winded than it needed to be, but it’s a useful feature nonetheless. You can also rename each list using an onscreen keyboard.

Online functionality is the HD-T2’s key feature. There are built-in apps for BBC iPlayer, News and Sport, YouTube and VuTV. This new box features the full HD HTML versions of BBC iPlayer, Sport and News – the HD-S2 only had the old SD MHEG version of iPlayer. However, there’s no 4oD, iTV player or Demand5. Here’s a summary of our thoughts in video, with some of the on-screen menus, and you can scroll on for more details. The Manhattan Plaza HD S2 can output a variety of resolutions, from standard definition all the way up to Full HD 1080p, so you can enjoy satellite TV no matter what TV you have. But here’s the brilliant part – you can create your own EPG based on your Favourites lists. When you see the EPG’s genre selection screen, hit the swap button and select the relevant Favourites list. That brings up a stripped down EPG containing only the channels in your list, rather than making you wade through loads of channels you don’t watch. Manhattan Plaza HD•S2 – Performance Similarly, the Plaza HD S2’s electronic programme guide (EPG) could be slow to respond to our commands, and we often pressed buttons again because we thought they hadn’t registered with the unit even though they had, which sometimes led to unwanted channel or menu changes. However, this isn’t something that’ll stop you wanting to use the Plaza HD S2.Hi Lewis, did you mark where the dish was originally before you moved it? A couple of millimetres in the wrong direction and signal is lost. Is the dish looking in the the same general direction as other Sky dishes around you? This release improved the abilityof the HD-S2 to scan for the Freesat Home Transponder in case its location changes in the future. Please see the includednotes. That’s right, for five thousand British pennies you can get access to free satellite TV, no subscriptions, no contracts. At such a low price it’s enough to get even the most credulous of buyers thinking ‘what’s the catch?’ Subscription Free TV in HD Over 150 free TV & radio channels from freesat, with six TV channels in amazing HD Because there’s no second tuner or hard drive, you can’t do things like record live TV or watch another channel while recording another. You can’t also pause or rewind live programmes.