Let's play matchmaker for you and your TV
Picking the best TV box to buy and match your viewing needs can be confusing, what with all those technical terms.
Well, at Manhattan TV, we’ve made it easy. Just answer a few questions and our easy to use ‘TV Box Matchmaker’ will help you find the best TV box UK based on how you watch TV.
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With the right Manhattan Set-top Box, you will be able to find all you UK television channels in one place and watch when you want to watch, how you want. Search for something to watch by Channel or by Genre (News category, or comedies, or soaps, or documentaries), record a series, or watch via catch-up TV services like iPlayer.
We all use some or all of these options when watching telly. Finding the best TV box to buy based on how you watch UK telly is important.
We know what that all those technical terms can be confusing especially with all those technical terms like 4K UHD, HDR, TB and so on. Our questions are very simple: Do you want to use catch-up TV services like iPlayer? Would you like to be able to pause live TV? Do you want to record TV shows to watch later and would you like to save lots of recordings to watch again and again? Based on what you tell us, we’ll find the best TV box for the way you want to watch UK TV.
More on the Glossy words below. In summary, our TV boxes are either fed by an aerial (Freeview) or a satellite dish (Freesat) and then connect up to your TV to give you hundreds of free to air channels. We have models with built-in storage so you can record and keep your favourite UK TV shows and others that are internet-enabled to bring catch-up and on-demand services straight to your TV.
So whether you’re looking for a Freeview aerial-fed or a Freesat dish-fed option, we’ll have the best TV box for you.
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Our guide to some of the terminology
To help you make the most of our advice, we’ve added a glossary of key terms below, and linked to other resources across our website which might be helpful for you too:
Freeview Play enables you to watch TV live or catch up on the shows you've missed with your favourite British on demand services like iPlayer, ITV Hub and All4. You can find out more about Freeview Play and the channels it covers here in our dedicated Freeview Play page.
This service uses an existing satellite as the signal receiver and offers a way to save money for existing sky customers who already have a satellite dish connected to their home. Freesat offers access to over 170 channels with 20 in HD making it the perfect way to replace a Sky TV subscription.You can find out more on our dedicated Freesat page.
If you want to record TV shows, you’ll be looking for one of our TV boxes which features a built-in hard drive. Our best TV boxes come with either 500 Gigabytes (GB) of storage or 1 Terabyte of storage (TB). Typically, 500GB should allow you to record up to 300 hours of your favourite TV to watch later and 1TB should allow you to record a huge 600 hours of great telly!
These are terms which relate to the quality of the TV image. The key difference between an HD, HD, or 4K image from one of our TV boxes is that UltraHD 4K is the sharpest image you can get. HD or High Definition can sometimes also be referred to as “HD ready” or “720p”. It has an image resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels. Ultra HD or “UHD” has an image resolution is 3840 x 2160 (8.3 megapixels). 4K has a resolution of 4,096 × 2,160 (8.8 megapixels), so slightly more than UHD. If you’re looking to find the best TV box for your home entertainment, you’ll want something which offers UltraHD 4K quality.