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Notes from a new Foxsat HDR owner


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Old 04-05-2009, 17:55
antonyjohnston
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So, you may recall a month or so back I was expressing concern about the HDR and its lack of reliability I'd read so much about. I was intending to wait until the much-anticipated firmware update before buying one, but a variety of circumstances persuaded me to take the plunge regardless (I knew I was going to, it was just a case of when).

I've now had it up and working for two weeks, and here are my thoughts. Note that I'm not going to focus on Freesat itself, the usefulness of a PVR, the lack of competition, etc. There are many other threads in which to argue about those things — this is purely about the Humax unit's performance.

I'm pleased to say that so far, I haven't had any of the serious problems others have reported. No freezes, no lockups, no green/black screen. I have a Sony Bravia TV, which I gather from other discussions seem to behave better with the HDR when connected over HDMI, so that may be a factor.

The picture via HDMI is noticeably better than the old Pace freesatfromsky box, which was via scart. It was the first thing my missus noticed about the box, and it's easily seen on something like the snooker, of which I've been watching a lot I also have it set to 1080i output (the TV's native res) rather than "original" — I found the original setting to actually be worse, so for all the criticism levelled at the HDR's upscaler, it's clearly better than the one in my TV.

Speaking of snooker, that's the only thing that's sometimes failed to record. The snooker is of course transmitted several times a day, sometimes with the same series ID for multiple programs in one day. So whether it's a problem with the Freesat EPG or the HDR itself, I don't know for sure.

But no other recordings have failed (and I've recorded plenty), "manual recordings" (i.e. setting the time myself rather than relying on series link) have worked fine, and the snooker only seemed to fail over last weekend (I put it back on series link out of necessity this week, as I was away from home, and it's been fine). So I lean toward blaming the EPG data.

I'm running the 1.0.0.3 firmware, which I understand is shipped on all recent boxes. In another thread, Bob_Cat indicated this was a very minor release with no notable changes, but given all of the above, it's difficult to know if that's really the case.

The HDR's UI is most definitely in need of improvement. I don't mean the actual graphics (though they are a bit fisher-price!) but the way it behaves. Many functions are not intuitive at all. The media list and scheduled recording layouts leave much to be desired, and the file manager is all but impenetrable without instructions to guide you through it — in which the manual is sorely lacking. The inability to manually mark a program as "new"/"not new", the very short time given to respond to clash menus, the inability to delete while recording... All these niggles are already well documented here, so I won't go on.

The Humax remote is poor, and the sensor is much too small/directional. I've substituted my One For All UC7556, removed both plastic films from the box, and left the front flap permanently down. This combination improves the reception by a large margin, though it's still nowhere near as forgiving as the old Sky/Pace remote and box.

The most important thing, though, is that it does seem reliable when recording. Now we just need to persuade channels that EPG data deserves no less care and attention than their broadcast quality...

So all in all, I'm very happy with the HDR, though of course I'd be even happier if an update resolved/improved the outstanding UI issues.

I'm also happy that I waited to purchase, because I suspect — though of course it's impossible to know — that some of the more serious problems others suffer with are related to a combination of pre-1.0.0.3 firmware, and early manufacturing problems which led to hardware issues, and therefore newer boxes are less prone to those serious faults.

Overall, I'd recommend it — especially if, like me, you have no other realistic option for recording TV.
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Old 04-05-2009, 20:12
froxfieldrover
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Very good post Antony. About sums it up I think. I agree and I wonder if there was quite a bit more regarding fixing instability in that 1.0.0.3 release than bob_cat let on?
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Old 05-05-2009, 10:39
antonyjohnston
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I should add that I regard myself as a fairly average user, in terms of how much the box gets used, how much TV I record, etc. — but, owing to the additional load of the snooker, I've done just about everything you can with the Humax over the past couple of weeks, and used it quite a lot more than I normally would have. So I'm doubly impressed that I haven't encountered any show-stopping issues.

The one thing I haven't done is anything to do with the non-Freesat FTA channels, not even scanned for them, as I have no interest in them whatsoever. Again, whether or not this has had an impact on the box's stability is impossible to say for sure.
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