James,
I had the same dilemma last autumn. I felt our 5000T had had its day and Humax seemed to have abandoned the product from a development point of view. Whilst it worked it was so slow, the interface seemed to be very dated, and at least one streaming service always seemed to be broken.
I looked at the the T3-R and did contact Manhattan about a future triple tuner option but they advised this was not in their planned product schedule. I've never used a T3-R but what impressed me was that Manhattan were actively developing and supporting it.
No triple tuner and limited storage options was a deal breaker so I punted for the Aura on its release in November and even with the initial software it worked reasonably well, the interface speed was like night vs day compared to the 5000T. In hindsight I don't think the box software was quite fully ready, it was rough around the edges, and the promised APP was nowhere to be seen. What I liked was that Humax had taken the technical decision to use Android (now Google) TV as the base OS platform which has a long support life and makes application development and releases very flexible.
I admit I was a fierce critic of Humax in this forum for their apparent development and support abandonment of the 4000T/5000T. With the Aura things have been completely different, I am part of the beta testing programme and the way Humax have responded to and implemented improvements, suggestions and fixes has been brilliant. Even the latest public software release, and the eventual availability of the Aura App, transformed the user experience, once the cumulative work on the beta's is made publicly available it goes to the next level.
On reflection I think the 4000T/5000T hardware platform unfortunately left the developers nowhere to go as it simply lacked the horsepower required for a more modern and extensive user experience. The Aura is now Humax's flagship product which needs to succeed and they seem determined to ensure it does. From my experience so far I would have no hesitation in recommending it as a 5000T replacement, the only thing it currently lacks is official versions of Netflix and NowTV (which I don't use anyway) but by using Android at least there are workarounds.
| Sat 10 Apr 2021 23:06:42
#2 |
