What an excellent post . However, the key thing is how issues are dealt with - a smart company can turn a problem into a positive experience by handling it well. Humax however are not handling the many issues/bugs/design faults at all! The only evidence of any activity from Humax is Bob_Cat's presence on here and the Hummy forums but, and I mean no offence to Bob_Cat, he is rarely able to provide any positive news which hardly inspires confidence in Humax. I find it quite extraordinary that Humax will not provide any information at all about the next firmware update, no dates, no scope, no nothing.

Any update will happen when it happens, they don't give dates because it's not something you can predict - it will take as long as it takes, finding bugs, curing them, and extensive beta testing is a LONG process.

Does anyone else give time scales for updates?, not as I know of? - Sky made occasional suggestions for the new EPG, then everyone slated them because it wasn't released on that day.

I too have become impatient for a firmware update. I've only had two or three "freezes" in the five months that I've owned the HDR, but I've had a lot of missed recordings and the machine won't seem to do scheduled recordings from the Zone Horror channel at all.

Humax can't claim it doesn't know about this kind of problem - pages such as http://foxsat-hdr.wikispaces.com/Bug...ues+and+Wishes have been around for a long time. I e-mailed Humax more than a week ago when I had two recordings on the same night miss their start (they began when I switched the machine out of standby) but have had no reply.

Hi john welcome to the forum the issue with the zone channels is a known one, the problem is that the channel transmits data known as 'Series Crid' but they don't send 'Programme Crid' data to back it up. There are a couple programmes tonight that don't have either and you may find these do record. they being 'Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!', 'The Return of The Living Dead' and 'Day of the Dead II'

Both yourself and horacethefrog are right. What you say is spot on, that's an indication of your engineering background. Horacethefrog is right in that it is okay for an engineer to take that view and work his b***s off to get things right, but it's the way this is "spun" to the customer that is important and CAN turn such a situation into a positive thing. Again, I'm not talking about Humax, but just suppose a company was working 24 hours a day to fix issues and told nobody, what if all the customer facing guys just shrugged their shoulders if customers were to enquire. Even if they fix the issues (and customers are still unaware of the hard work within the company), their reputation is not helped.

It's the invisibility and perception that's the problem. How many of us have bent over backwards in life and a "customer" has simply been unaware? Almost to the point of being unintrested, simply responded with "Ta!". It's unfair, but it happens. Then how many of us have done a very tiny thing and people have been very impressed? It's lucky, but it happens quite a lot.

I very much suspect Humax are some of the good guys, they may just need to front themselves better. That can't be denied because of the experiences posted.

Oh, and we should only allow those people to post complaints about Humax getting a product to market too quickly if they weren't one of the many giving Bob_Cat aggro every bloody day for months prior to its release. I certainly can't throw the first stone there!

This thread contains quite a few references to the HDR freezing or locking up. As someone who has not suffered from this, can I ask whether everyone's talking about the same thing. A couple of possible scenarios:-

1. You are viewing a programme and, without any interaction, the picture and sound just freeze on the TV, the programme stops where it is and you have to power cycle to restart it. Is this an HDR freeze?

2. You are using the remote control to change channel, navigate the EPG etc and the HDR suddenly stops responding to the remote. If any programme is playing, it continues, but you can't communicate with the HDR any more and have to power cycle to get it going again. Is this an HDR freeze?

3. Some combination of these two.

4. Something completely different.

If the use of the term "freezing" resembles option 2, ie communication with the HDR is frozen, has anyone tried using the buttons under the flap when this happens, This might indicate whether it is IR interaction that is frozen as opposed to all interaction with the HDR being frozen.

2 is my problem. When that happens the buttons under the flap do not work.

Very good post and thoughtful. You have mentioned Horacethefrog's engineering background. I used to work in software as a Senior Programmer for a company that used to write cable TV software. We very often were under incredibly tight deadlines (and certainly needed someone like bob_cat) and when a product first was released there were obviously bugs due to the complexity of the product etc. However here are a couple of main differences:

1) Development and customers were in the UK. That really very much helped helped. I wonder if software development in Korea for something like this is a good thing communication wise?

2) Bugs.. ah yes.. what happened, we prioritised them and produced interim releases. With a complex product there might have been an interim release every month. For the first 3 months then less often provided things were settling down. This is my definitely my biggest gripe - it's not essentially that there are no bugs to be expected, of course there will be. Especially and more so when a product is rushed to market as I believe the Humax has been. The quality control department has not done or has not been permitted to do it's job properly.

The problem in my eyes is the unresponsiveness of the company. There are some problems too my mind that seem trivial - an obvious example and one that affected me again last night is the freezing, (I forgot to check!), when you want to switch to radio if you have two recordings happening. It may be trivial but it is easy to fix. Another example - the scanning of channels in non freesat mode causing loss of data - I mean how difficult can that be to fix? Another issue - the time messages flash on to the screen and clarification of what is happening. Easy to fix. The whole area of nonfreesat channels/switching is a mess...etc

My point is that some problems are easy and some incredibly difficult. However - in my opinion there should have been at least another couple of firmware releases up to now for the HDR. Also, Given the development in Korea I think it very probable more bugs will be introduced after a firmware update before it settles and pretty soon a new product will be coming along and Humax will loose interest, if they haven't already in this product.

As for bob_cat he is obviously doing the best he can but as you imply he is basically spinning and delaying expectations of behalf of Humax. I would think it is a more than fair bet he is at least as frustrated with the situation as many of the rest of us.


Patrick

For me it was mainly when returning to the box after leaving it on for while or overnight. Sometimes it would be while I was watching something and I wouldn't notice a problem until I realised that a background recording didn't start when it should have or when I tried to switch channels.

It would however always be totally unresponsive to all controls both IR and console and would require a power cycle. Most of the time the picture and sound from the last tuned station continued OK but on one occasion I had a green screen and no sound.

I've also once had it freeze again almost immediately after power cycling it if I try to do anything too soon after it boots. I noticed a number of people have reported this so I stopped trying to do anything immediately on start-up.
It is worth noting that the 'Timer' icon on the display doesn't come up immediately following the boot but instead takes several more seconds after 'BOOT' has gone and the box shows the channel name. I now use this as an indication of when the box is actually safe to use.

As a software consultant myself I wish I had access to the source code so I could fix it - it would probably be quicker than waiting on Humax.

But hey, it pretty much does what it says it does, and it was the first box available with this functionality. I just need to be gentle with it until a better box comes out or Humax fix it - whichever happens first.

What I wonder about is how do they receive a 28.2/28.5 E satellite signal in Korea- surely that would be needed in order to test the HDR properly?

HDR's are tested and developed over here; Korea simply mass-produce them.

But it is the Korean Software Developers who produced and maintain the HDR firmware.

Admitedly the Korean software team were shipped into the UK for the bulk of the HDR development phase, but they returned to Korea some time back (work permits expired, if memory serves me).


Graham.

<aol>Me too</aol>

The only way out is to either continue to watch the channel it's frozen on for the rest of my life, or to switch off at the mains and then back on again.

Bob_Cat indicated here that the people working on the firmware are back in Korea- I suppose that doesn't necessarily mean they don't come back here to test though.

Well it doesn't.. and that was my point when i started this tread.
Lets say you purchased a new car, but every so often the car refused to start.. the only way to get it to start is to disconnect the battery and re-apply the terminal. you would soon have the car in the dealers for a fix or even a refund if it was found to be a common issue that seems to have no fix.. Well I would... I would certainly not just wait for the manufacturer to fix the problem and in the meantime I will pay top dollar to have a car that does not function to a promised standard.
This is exactly what Humax are asking their dedicated and loyal customer base to do.

My wife and I were away overnight last night. We left the house around midday yesterday and the moment we walked out.. it seems the Humax froze and recorded Zippo of the programs we had set to record. This is a faulty product.. Humax still have not responded to my requests for help and its now been almost 2 months since I started asking..

So.. BOB_CAT.. can you help me sort my problem with Humax?

I'm sure you must be keeping an eye on this thread now as its over 3.5k people have viewed it.. that is A LOT of potential and current customers of this product..

Orbitfox, I feel your pain. I found this thread after my 1 month old HUMAX suddenly stopped responding a couple of days ago

Similar to other posters the machine did work again if I switched the power off/on, but every time the machine would 'freeze' after only about 10 seconds.

This went on for about 8 hrs and then for no apparent reason the machine started working again!

Before this I have found the unit (a PVR 9300T) a truely excellent machine and so hope this is just a one off. Looking at this thread though (and other similar threads on other boards) I suspect that my experience is not particularly unusual.

Lets hope that Humx are able to sort it out soon!

Bob,

orbitfox is talking about the Freesat Foxsat HDR.

Your Freeview 9300T lockup was due to rogue data being broadcast, there is a thread on DS, and one on Hummy.org about it. It also happened about a month ago too.

Edit : I just noticed that you are new to the forums, welcome

For support on your 9300T you need to go to this forum

Rgds.

Les.
Last edited by savvy : 10-05-2009 at 13:18

Thanks Bob Sweed for the sympathy...
Welcome to the forum...
Also..
bob_cat.. I've just read your comment on the last page asking me to contact customer services again.. Thanks for this.. It would be nice perhaps if they were to contact me as I have been waiting patiently for nearly 2 months now.. but thanks for the intervention..

Roy

I am one of the potential customers waiting for these problems to be fixed... - or the next gen machine to be made available... - but then I guess there will be more bugs to be found and fixed in that At which point do I need to dive in???

My Thompson DHD4000 is still running happily - won't do F1 in HD though... LOL

I am probably not going to get one of these boxes now due to the limited Freesat software and the errors people are experiencing.

If Humax were to make a non-software limited and stable generic PVR (like their iCord but for the UK market) then I'd probably get that but for the moment I shall just wait it out, which is a shame as the Foxsat HDR had so much potential in my eyes and it doesn't seem to be able to deliver. Ah well...

I wouldn't let this thread (or similar ones put you off).
People are much more likely to be posting about problems than posting about no problems so it looks much worse than it is, and if you get a dodgy one just take it back.

My box has locked up 3 times since December, no worse than my $ky+ box used to be (infact slightly better)

My Laptop also locks up occasionally, thats hard disk drives for you i am afraid.

What makes you think the iCord was released 'bug free', for that matter what makes you think it's 'bug free' even now?.

I don't think any PVR's get released 'bug free', it usually takes an update or two to get them to a reasonable standard.

But the iCord has been out for a good while now so any problems would have been fixed already. The only difference I can see between the iCord software and the Foxsat HDr softwareis on the iCord the EPG is blue instead of black and the Foxsat has a 'freesat' logo in the top left corner. Menu's OSD etc. all look the same, even down to the font and colours.

Only problem is the iCord isn't designed for the UK market and isn't supported by Humax UK. You can't get a wonderfully featured machine like the iCord over here unless you pay a hefty price and is a bit much for something that won't be supported if it goes wrong.

Perhaps as a suggestion, Humax could look into releasing a standard HD satellite receiver / PVR without the Freesat branding for the UK market or even a combined DTT / DSAT PVR model. I'd have bought 2 of them already if they had!

It may have been?, but you're only assuming so.


While the Freesat version is vaguely based on the iCord, as I understand it the machine is VERY different, particularly the software - which is really what it's all about.

Thanks for the information. If the broadcasters themselves haven't got to grips with the standards, then I suppose it's not surprising that people like me didn't know about this issue.

Have "Zone" said yet that they're onto it and will fix things?