Hi all,,,
Yes, before anyone says it.. It is new technology and we should expect issues.
Well I actually don't buy into that excuse. It seems business today is all to keen to use the consumer's money and time for fault finding. They seem to accept that it is OK to send goods out without good internal testing. I for one am fed up of this attitude..
Since having my Humax, the unit has frozen so many times I've lost count. We have just returned from two weeks holiday and guess what.. Yep, it froze on day one so we have not recorded anything for two weeks..
Again, before anyone says "yeah, but it's new technology".
Actually it's not.. I've had a series one TIVO for well over 8 years now and not once, EVER.. has it froze, lost programs, switched off on it's own etc. If Tivo/Thomson can achieve this 8/9 years ago.. why can't Humax?

Any way.. back on subject.
Perhaps Humax would work a little faster if we were to take this to another level? I suggest that anyone who is fed up with being a guinea pig for Humax corporation, should take action and report this to the BBC watchdog team. The more people complain the more chance we have in getting a PVR that is in my opinion, fit for purpose.. as it stands my opinion is, this product clearly is not fit for purpose and as such is against the sales of goods act

FIT FOR PURPOSE:
That’s a legitimate claim as long as you are using the item for the purpose for which it was intended. This is the principle of fitness for purpose. There is no point claiming that paint thinner has had adverse effects if it is not being used as paint thinner! Similarly, if you are commissioning the manufacture of a product and do not specify the purposes for which it will be used you will have no recourse if it fails to live up to your expectations.

Anyway, I logged my complaint,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/watchdog/gotastory/
I suggest anyone having issues with this box do the same, otherwise we may never get the box that we ll paid good money for many months ago.

I can see how missing a recording can be frustrating but 2 weeks of missed recording would be very annoying , the thing is that my HDR has never froze once since getting it in December as has I would say the majority of HDR's so I don't see how a firmware update could fix your HDR, there is obviously a problem with your HDR and it would be better to take the box back for a replacement or refund under the sale of goods act as you would with any item bought which doesn't do what it should.

Took mine back to Argos yesterday for a full refund of £293:59. If and when Humax sort the Foxsat-HDR problems out, I may well purchase the unit again, but at a much lower price. Satbuyer are now selling the unit at £259 delivered, and can be got for even less on ebay. Argos did state they are having more returned than expected-so come on Humax!

good glad you got a full refund and hopefully your now happy, but most of us are very pleased with the humax hdr ?

Mine's worked flawlessly for 6 months with no lockups, presumably it's got the same firmware as everyone else and mine has the same niggles as everyone else (can't delete while recording, fails to record if power is lost and returned while on sby). It sounds to me like a hardware fault possibly a batch of faulty components that have found there way into some hdrs. If this is the case a firmware upgrade won't help.

Well I am more then happy with mine, it is unfortunate that there are a few HDR's out there that are faulty and they are the ones we hear about on this forum, it would be interesting what the sales figures are and how many have actual faults as opposed to niggles and people wanting it to more than it can at present.

If this is the case then your unit must be faulty - why don't you take it back. I have not had any problems with mine in 6 months.

Is there any pattern to these freezes?

It seems you've become a little too focused on software updates. In general, if you buy a new piece of equipment and it fails to function correctly you take it back. If the prblem is generic you get a refund, if it is specific to your instance it can be replaced.

I think we've go so used to buying flakey software and waiting for patches that we're applying the same behaviour to purchases were it really isn't appropriate.

A lot of people (including myself) report: 'No Freezes', so it's unlikely to be a generic software problem. You should try to get it replaced.

I have had my box about 2 months now and not had the freezes and switching off you describe. I have however had about 6 failed recordings in that time compared to just 4 in the 21 months I haver had BT Vision. To be fair though it seems that the problems have been at the broadcasters end with no flags being sent etc so I can't really blame the box.

Glad you got a full refund. Why not try to get another the cheaper price now and see if that performs any better. You can always send it back again.

This is your personal experience with your Tivo and your HDR. My HDR has worked flawlessly since I got in December. My Hotpoint washing machine, on the other hand, has broken down twice in that time. However I'm not complaining to Watchdog about it... even though maybe thousands of other people have had faults with their Hotpoint machines during this same period.

I've had my washing machine fixed. If your HDR is faulty, take it back and get a replacement.

However, if you've done a serious study showing number of failures against total sales and consumers are not being offered a replacement or refund, maybe you have a point. Have you got these figures?

Yeah - My box freezes from time to time - perhaps 4 times a week. I have now adopted a strategy of not pressing remote buttons too quickly in succession. It hasn't frozen for three days but who knows what the problem is.

The remote easily executes double key presses, like it is on a hair trigger - very annoying as you often end up with the default action at the next dialogue and then have to start again.

Could these things be related?????

Up to now it has always been when I am using the remote, so I have never had non-recordings.

Non recording is an absolute pain - I had this problem frequently with BT Vision. I am on my third box (2 years) and this one has been OK up to now - except for a tendency not receive remote inputs (very variable). The previous BT Vision box was a nightmare and coming back after a week or two away was a lottery, whether you would get one days progs or all, or even none!!!!

I had a Sky+ box for 3 years and it never missed a beat, had a bombproof remote input and was very easy to use (even my wife could manage it). If Sky would offer me the free broadband (which they won't) I would resign for Sky HD.

The Humax HDR has some nice touches BUT they must get on top of the freezes before it ends up with the BT Vision reputation.

It's well worth getting a replacement zapper.

I now use a Logitech and it really has made the box much more pleasant to use.

Re the remote I use a Harmony 885 so don't experience any problems that you describe. Maybe try a universal remote and see if that improves the situation? EDIT: Just as tern has suggested

What you are saying about BT Vision kind of proves the point that because one person has a bad experience they think that the thing is bad. As I said I have had BTV for 21 months and had a small handful of failures. One persons nightmare is anothers dream machine.

Funnily enough, I had Sky+ for 3 years too and failed recordings were a frequent issue. The main reason I tried BTV actually.

Why Watchdog, Humax first surely.
Am I missing something here with yourself and others who moan about the Humax PVR. Nobody appears to have asked Humax about it. Anybody asked them.? I rang them about an operating problem and they were great.

Give them a break before going to Watchdog. Very prematurely in my opinion..

By the way, so far my Humax PVR is perfect. It is a lot newer than yours but the software is probably the same.
Glad you got a refund, but personally I would have asked for a replacement. It strikes me the majority of people on DS are happy with the unit. Plus the silent people.

Yes i have emailed and talked to them over a period of two months. The last email i got back was to say my fault was to be escalated to a higher department, that was 3 weeks ago.

I do have an added issue re returning the product that I forgot to mention. I purchased this box on Ebay for 320 pounds a few months ago. As it turns out, it is part of a batch of Humax recorders that were stolen by hijacking a lorry in Northampton I believe. The Northampton police contacted me about two months ago and told me this. They have arranged with Humax for me to keep the box as I purchased it in good faith (and yes this was very good of humax to allow me to do this) BUT I am not allowed to sell the box or return to any shop for a refund or replacement, although Humax say they will agree to honor my warranty Im having issues getting them to talk to me.

Actually.. when I have just read this thread again it does sound rather harsh of me to say contact WD etc.

I just wished Humax would talk to me about getting this box replaced...

BTW.. If anyone has purchased from Ebay their Humax PVR about two/three months ago. It may be worth a call to Northants police to make sure it is not part of the hijacking.. otherwise, there could be a knock and the Humax taken away..

I very much agree with this. It does seem that there are some boxes that are a lot more prone to freezes than others which strongly points to a hardware problem. Having said that, it is worth adding something else. It might be possible for Humax to address the problem in the software. The freezes may be caused by a hardware problem rather than a software bug but it is the software not responding well to an unexpected hardware event that results in a catastrophic freeze. Better defensive programming may allow the box to recover from an unexpected hardware event and continue operating normally. In other words, the hardware problem might cause the loss of one recording, or corruption of part of it, but the box would then function as normal and not lose a fortnight's worth of recordings. Let's hope Humax are working on this.

I would imagine most of the 'problem' is down to local conditions, with noisey mains and large spikes causing boxes to crash.

Some boxes seem to handle this better than other boxes, but the real solution of course is to cure whatever is causing the mains problems.

I asked them and they said get it replaced, so I did, and the replacement has frozen already.

So you are going to complain to Watchdog about a box you bought from ebay that turned out to be stolen? You do realise that when they stole the boxes they may well have chucked them about and loosened/damaged internal components? That could well have caused the freezing issues that you have....

I agree with you to a point. The box is very badly designed - and seems amateurish.

It's ok people saying they don't get get many freezes etc. However for those that do it is a real pain. For the first 2 months I got one freeze up. In the last week 4. Nothing has changed in my set up. perhaps it's something in the housekeeping routines whatever. The machine does seem to have plenty of glitches.

For those who have had Tivo's the differences between this box and Tivo are painfully obvious. This box is very poor in comparison.

On the positive side - it mostly works but is very inelegant in operation - but I would find it hard to justify sending it back as "unfit for purpose.." it does work, reasonably well to quite well most of the time.

I think the forthcoming upgrade will help a lot. If it doesn't then I will be disappointed as I REALLY do not want to give that other satellite broadcaster (you know who) any subscription money and I want Freesat to be a real success!

Patrick

If your local exchange is LLU then there is a free base BB offer with HD take up

http://www.sky.com/portal/site/skyco...getall3/combi3

I agree but they have advised they will honor the warranty so it should be replaced.. shouldn't it??
If internal components had been damaged then surly this issue would happen all the time... also the other people on this forum with the same issue.. are all the units stolen and have been chucked around???

Some damage or loose connections may only really cause major issues when the box is used heavily and heats up. To be honest it seems an odd decision to me by Humax to honour the warranty on these stolen boxes when they have no idea what conditions they were subjected to. They should at least have required the boxes to sent back for checking imo.