Australian TV stations are notorious for changing their 'codecs' (signal formats) without warning anybody. That means your TV will stop picking up stations it used to or else won't pick up the new ones at all. A classic example are all the SBS stations which vanished a few days ago. But it's easy to get round that by storing the new formats on the HDB850 set-top box. Just download the zip file from TEAC, store on pen drive, extract the file and plug into your set top box. Although you get a 'file not found' message, it really is there and you get back all your TV stations. Quite a handy feature. Certainly saves you going out and buying a new TV.

I have just purchased the HDB860 TEAC STB. At delivery it had the problems previously reported. When recording from the EPG the picture would disappear from the TV set and also every time the STB was powered off the USB would no longer be detected and would not be detected again until it was disconnected and then reconnected.
I reported this to TEAC support and they sent me a software upgrade. This took only about 5 mins from download to installation and it has fixed both problems. The only reason I did not give this product 5 stars is because I feel that TEAC should not have released this product without fully testing it.

Was rubbish from the first day I bought it. Will not even play a complete movie from the USB. Cuts out about 1.5 hrs in EVERY TIME!!! HATE IT!! The remote is flimsy and not user friendly. don't waste your money on this item as you will be bitterly disappointed.

Unit cannot be used as remote buttons are not working!!!!!!! Why these units are still for sale? Why seller did not test at least one unit before starting selling them ...???? What a waste of time and money!!! All sellers on eBay who are still selling these units should be marked as dangerous ...

All the remotes run on the same frequency so you can not use two or more at the same time as each other and if anyone who live around you has the same set top box you can change each others channel or turn the set top box on or off

Easy for me (78) to set up but I can't get the sub titles to work.
Can't connect with HDMI cable is this because I have an older tv, I also found the power cable was way too short so I used my old set top box cable, worked well

I purchased this set top box and after a bit more than one year some of the buttons on the remote stopped working. The set top box works fine but cannot be operated without the remote. I called TEAC and was told a new remote costs $44.00. A bit of a joke .... when the complete set top box costs $47.00 at JB HI FI.

Even for a relatively inexpensive STB I would expect more. The record button is not labelled on the remote and despite having the unit for 6 months I can still not find a way to push the record button and then enter a duration, eg 2 hrs. I have to remember to switch it off in the morning!
When replaying a recorded program there is no progress bar, showing the current position and the total recording duration - very inconvenient.
It's also poor a picking up the TV signal - reception is not good where I am but my Soniq tv always gets a single whereas the TEAC unit quite often doesn't.
Various other glitches as well.

Moving over from South Africa we needed something that would help our Samsung TV pick up the local welfare channels. This device has done the trick. Took a while to figure out that it is very sensitive to electronic interference so cannot sit on top of our bluray player otherwise channels jump and it is hit and miss as to what you can pick up. Otherwise it does the job. Really happy and way cheaper than buying a new TV unit!

I purchased this unit June 2017 Problem with standby recording. Will record currently viewed program but will not record on standby. I am assured that I am setting up according to instruction. The unit is satisfactory in other respects but not simple to operate. I need help to correct this problem.

Purchased unit just after the mpeg channels went to air, and although I can now hear those channels, I have to constantly do a channel search to ensure ALL channels are available. The EPG is always out of date (a day forward, at least) but when correct, it only displays what's on and what's next.

I purchased 2 of these HDB850 set top boxes because the high def standard has changed and 2 of my older LCD TV's didn't like the mpeg4 format. I like these set top boxes because one TV has component input and the other has HDMI and these boxes cater for both, plus composite.

Easy to set up. My only grumble is the amount of time it takes to change channels, about 2 to 3 seconds.

The Auto setup organised the channels as it found them, not by the channel number. Eg: CH16 was 9 GO, CH24 was SBS HD, CH30 was ABC ME, Terrible.
Then the info switches itself off within seconds, I'm pretty good at reading but couldn't read half before it was gone.
EPG is only for the channel you are viewing. Video is delayed from audio. The display looks like from the year 2001. My old set top box from 2004 was similar in price but more advanced than this piece of rubbish.
Had this for 48hrs, swapped it at the store for something twice the price but so much better, thanks Harvey Norman for allowing the swap.

We have an analogue big screen TV, and needed a suitable tuner. This STB has good quality on HD, sharp and vibrant. Problems: EPG crap, when scrolling thru channels, it shows 3-4 days from now and it's messy getting to today; recording- a booked TV show only records 16 minutes; pausing timeshift (live TV) only lasts 16 minutes and then it resumes real-time, not good if I'm watching sport and have to pause for a bit. Uploaded the updates, no change. USB- tried formats FAT32 and NTFS, swapped formats several times, no joy. Tried 4 x USB, all the same. What a piece of junk. As a tuner, it's great, except for the EPG showing 3 days ahead. For recording, it doesn't work.

Have owned 3 of these now, every single one of them has been a lemon.
I admit one of them was purchased off ebay, so i took it as it may have been just a dodgy seller, bit the other two were purchased from the good guys and they were all useless.
They all worked ok gor about two months then began playing up.
All the remotes stopped working, the display on the front of one of the units became unreadable, please don't waste your time or money... very frustrating!!

Constantly having to reprogram to find all the channels. And had to go back to using old school bunny ears because the antennae is woeful. I live 5 km from the CBD. There should be no excuse. This product was twice the price of my old unit which performed light years ahead of this brand. Not a happy customer.

The good - it records on a format that I can watch and convert on PC software to save as DVD or watch on a TV. Good menu, good display, easy to program a recording. Easy to play back recordings, can pause and switch to TV and back without restarting playback. Good price.
The bad. Like some others here, it sometimes loses all channels sometimes all 9, or 7 or ABC, or sometimes just 1 or 2 channels.and must retune.A few times it has frozen and will not power down, have to unplug it to restart.
I bought another unit from chain store and it would not recognise the USB stick, so reset factory defaults and no luck. TEAC said download updates but no luck so back to store and they swapped for a new one. Again, USB was not recognised.

Had problems from day one with recording schedule. Schedule would disappear after a few hours although it recorded well enough when it did do. I downloaded the latest firmware update from Teac website and then reset to factory default. It now works perfectly. Remote was a bit fiddly compared to others but soon got used to it.I usually record to a 16GB flashdrive but have had it recording to a 500GB drive with no problems. Recording quality is good but a pity that there is no resume facility.

It doesn't always replay what it recorded, or replays only a bit. It doesn't always replay a .mts file recorded by my earlier set-top box even though it produces .mts files too. It records well and voice and picture are in sync during replay. TEAC tech support are very helpful.