We heard you #
For a while now, some of you have been asking us a simple question: ‘I love my T4•R but I have a satellite dish. Can you make one of those for Freesat?’
The answer, as of this week, is yes.
The Manhattan S4•R Freesat 4K TV Recorder is our first Freesat recorder in more than a decade – and our most capable recorder yet.
What is the Manhattan S4•R? #
The Manhattan S4•R is a Freesat 4K TV recorder that gives you everything you’d expect from a premium satellite box – over 100 free channels including more than 35 in HD – and then goes considerably further.
You can record up to four programmes simultaneously with a compatible wideband LNB (the kind that comes as standard with Sky Q), or two with an older setup. You can pause live TV for up to two hours, and rewind to catch anything you missed. The 500GB model stores up to 300 hours of great British telly, with 1TB and 2TB options (up to 1,200 hours) on the way. Our T4•R Deep Dive on record and pause covers how all of this works – and all of it applies to the S4•R too.
No monthly bills. No subscription. Just great TV on your terms.
Who is it for? #
The S4•R is built for anyone with a satellite dish – or thinking about getting one – who wants the best Freesat experience available. That covers a lot of people.
Sky subscribers who watch free-to-air most of the time have an obvious alternative here. Keep your dish. Lose the monthly bills. Get everything that matters – BBC One, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and over 100 more – for nothing, on a box that records four shows at once and looks and feels like a genuinely premium home entertainment product.
Got an older Freesat box – ours or anyone else’s? The S4•R is a proper step up: four-channel recording instead of two, our latest interface, 4K support, and unified search across live TV and 60,000+ hours of on-demand content in one place.
Manhattan SX owners will find the S4•R adds everything the SX doesn’t – recording, pause and rewind up to two hours, and the newest version of our interface.
If HD matters to you and you’ve got the choice between aerial and dish, satellite is the richer option. Freesat carries more than 35 HD channels; Freeview manages nine. The S4•R is the best way to watch them.
And for anyone in an area where aerial reception is poor, satellite signal is consistent across the UK in a way the terrestrial signal simply isn’t – and Freesat delivers that signal without any subscription requirement.
What sets it apart? #
The thing we’re most proud of is the interface. Manhattan’s proprietary user interface – designed by our own team here in the UK – puts everything in one place. Search once and it looks across all your live Freesat channels and more than 60,000 hours of on-demand content from BBC iPlayer, ITVX, Channel 4, My5, and more. Browse by genre, channel or traditional grid. Filter for HD, subtitles or audio description. Explore a full week ahead and catch up on anything you’ve missed.
We went deep on how all of this works when we launched the T4 range – our Deep Dive on the redesigned TV Guide and our Deep Dive on search and discovery both cover features that apply to the S4•R too.
It’s the kind of experience that tends to make people wonder why they didn’t ditch their expensive subscription sooner.
Picture quality is where all this comes to life. Freesat carries more than 35 channels in HD, and the S4•R handles all of them beautifully. For 4K content, BBC iPlayer and YouTube deliver stunning Ultra HD pictures via the S4•R on any compatible TV – more than eight million pixels of detail, from a free-to-air TV box. A quad-core processor keeps everything fast: apps open quickly, streams stay smooth, switching is seamless.
Pricing and availability #
The Manhattan S4•R is coming to Argos, Currys, Amazon, John Lewis and Hughes in early May, with the following RRPs:
- S4•R 500GB – £219.99 (early May)
- S4•R 1TB – £249.99 (early June)
- S4•R 2TB – £279.99 (early June)
Every S4•R comes with a premium HDMI cable and our TV-controlling all-in-one remote in the box, plus a two-year warranty with in-house support from our UK-based team. Register within 30 days of purchase to activate your warranty.
One range, every way to watch #
The launch of the S4•R is a big moment for us. Manhattan is now the only device manufacturer in the UK making boxes for all three of the country’s free TV platforms – Freeview with the T4 and T4•R, Freely with the Aero, and Freesat with the S4•R and SX.
We took the same generational leap on Freeview when we launched the T4 range in 2024 – our blog on what’s new with the T4 range tells that story. The S4•R brings the same thinking to Freesat.
However you want to receive your television signal – aerial, satellite dish, or broadband – there’s a Manhattan TV box for you. Great British telly, on your terms.
The Manhattan S4•R will be available from early May. Learn more on the S4•R product page.
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