@brucec

Bruce,

I slept on this, and I can't help but have a feeling that the scottish variations of the same channels are having an effect.

Again, I preface this with no post-DSO experience, but 4 9300Ts in succession would be enormously bad luck to be a box fault.

TVs would be far less affected by "double reception", but PVRs are different animals, and are affected by EPG & Accurate Record signals. I can't test your situation down here, and I doubt whether Humax have had experience of/tested the particular post-DSO multi-region situation you are in.

If it was me, I would go back to that UKfree page, and just note down the channels at the end of the Mux/Channels lists for the 6 (now incorrectly named) PSB & COM muxes. Try deleteing EVERYTHING and only manually tuning those 6 in. Leave it a while and see how the boxes perform in terms of lockups & AR performance. If they behave, then it must be a factor of the extra muxes with the same (regional) channel signals affecting it. This does not solve your problem, if you want your Scottish variants, but you could report the anomaly to Humax to see if anything can be done.

Just a suggestion.

Rgds.


Les.

Hi Les - Thanks for the advice on retuning - it worked perfectly.

I read through the Mux guide and found that it's actually the Brierley Hill transmitter I needed to rescan from, not Sutton Coldfield (I tried Sutton Coldfield first and Mux 1 didn't return anything) That kind of makes sense, given it's about a mile from where I live! I also read through the other thread (thanks for the link) and the people complaining about TopUpTV brought back some pretty painful memories Do you know whether you can do the same thing with a Thompson box - force it to scan from one transmitter, rather then use the `default', or are they pre-programmed in some was to use Sutton Coldfield?

I rescanned at 8am this morning and from what I can see, there's only one channel that I've lost as a result of this rescan - Babestation. Think I can live without that though

Thanks again - I look forward to recording the last 58 minutes of Top Gear on Sunday once more

Excuse me jumping in here on your Thomson box query.

Assuming you are referring to the Top Up TV Thompson, you can't do manual scan on those PVR. Just a simple "Scan for Channels" facility.

I have used a Thompson TUTV PVR whilst away from home in a situation where the unit picked up MUXs from two transmitters which were located in different Regions. Only the BBC MUX was duplicated. This resulted in the channels of the "distant" transmitter being allocated to the 800 range of LCNs on the PVR. I was able to record simultaneous programmes from both the local and distant transmitters without any apparent problems. Although as you are know doubt aware the TUTV boxes have so many problems I could not be certain that none of them were due to the duplicate channels.

Colin

Thanks Colin - this is what I thought, but just wondered if there was a `back door' way to do this, there's an option to change the UHF channel to check the signal strength, but no way of fixing this setting for the search to take place (or no apparent way at least).

I guess what this means is that I can't retune the box until April 2010, unless I try to find someone living in Sutton Coldfield who might want to do it for me....

I've got the 9200 and it only freezes on the odd occasion when I'm looking at the digital text. I don't know if it makes any difference but I have it on channel 5 for it's shutdown at night as there's no MHEG on that and I'm sure someone said that can cause freeze ups.

Our 9200 locked up at 12:14 today. It was tuned to BBC 1 (although nobody was actually watching) and recording 60 Minute Makeover (for my partner). The 60 Minute Makeover recording had terminated early but had several minutes on the end where the picture was frozen but the time bar was moving rapidly forward (as though there was no signal). Might have been a transmitter fault (Chesterfield relay of Sheffield).

Glad it worked for you

I see Colin has answered your TUTV query, good job, as I have no knowledge of TUTV

Rgds.


Les.

Les, thanks for the response.

Yes sorry I didn't use the right terms re: auto-padding etc. I have set both my parents and sisters box up to autopad because I found the accurate recording wasn't that accurate. They are all aware of the lack of series link and other similar features, so I don't think there's any problems of expectation there. Also there were no conflicts of more than 2 programmes at a time overlapping etc.

I didn't realise that even with autopadding the box still referred to the EPG to initiate recording. I always thought (stupidly) that unless you were accurate recording or series-linking it just used the EPG to set a fixed timer from which it scheduled the recording, which is why the recordings don't work (or didn't used to work) if you scheduled something just before the clocks went back or forward, in March/October.

The tips about checking for multiple transmitters, channels in the 800s is really useful. I'll check that out at the next opportunity. It would explain why some users have no problems, whilst both my parents and sister are thinking that I've sold them a dud as both boxes are misbehaving.

Would still like to think that Humax could programme error handling around these issues, but maybe that's unrealistic.

I'll report back, and am very grateful for the suggestions.

cheers.

No Problem.

If you do find 800 range channels don't just delete them, you have to delete EVERYTING and go through the Manual Search procedure I posted earlier in this thread (but not the reset to defaults, that was for a specific reason for that poster).

Just as Autopadded timers use the EPG times, Accurate Recording (AR) Timers use a continually updated separate stream in the transmission, EITp/f, which contains a running status change of the programmes and effectively tells the box to Start/Stop recording. These, too, get confused and erratic if receiving from two TXs, so you could find AR performance better.

Rgds.


Les.

Les are you certain Autopadding works in the way that you describe? Personally I have no idea how it works but I would think it would be simpler to implement the method described by swi. If the recording was setup with padding at the start then (assuming the programme is running to schedule) at the time the recording was required to start the current EPG data would be that for the previous programme. A recording with end padding as well would have to deal with data from three consecutive programmes. Dealing with this seems complicated to me.

Compiling the recording start and end times at the time of scheduling the recording would be much simpler as once set up the event is equivalent to a clock controlled manual recording.

I can however see how doing it the way you describe would be able to cater for schedule changes.

Colin

Hi Colin,

Only as certain as I can be from reading posts on it here, I don't use Autopadding and have never tested it for myself; I have always used AR on both of my boxes.

I remember reading an old thread on here where a poster said he had been speaking to Humax, and that the boxes checked the EITsch (EPG) every 30 secs to look for Schedule Changes, and adjust timers accordingly. This seems to make sense as, if it set the Start Time in stone at the time of creating the Timer, it would never take into account Schedule changes, which we know it does, from other posters who do use AP.

I'm not sure I understand why you think it needs to look at data from 3 progs. I would surmise it is just looking at the prog in the EPG matching the Timer's CRID data, and whether the Scheduled times in the EPG for it have moved, or not.

I'm no EITsch expert, so someone could counter this, but that is how I understand it works.

And, I'm not going to change my config, to set up extensive tests

Rgds.

Les.

Thanks for that Les. I'm convinced.

I agree with your rejection of Autopadding. I never used it even before AR was available so I'm not going to start now as AR has much improved what we had before, IMO.

Colin

Les

Thanks for your thoughts on the problem, your theory sound feasible, however one of the PVR’s was in use for over two months prior to the first stage of DSO and even then it would freeze regularly.

Last evening my son and I decided to return both Humax’s to the retailer and exchange them for two Topfield’s which I will collect tomorrow – we will then see if the same problem re- occurs

Thanks again

Bruce

Another vote of thanks to Les and his manual tuning steps.

I have a 9200 which has behaved well for nearly three years, but has recently started hanging, and it got to the point that it would hang immediatley after power on, so was unwatchable.

I use the Moel-y-Parc transmitter, which switches over this October, so I don't know if any preparations for that caused my problems? Anyway, default settings and a manual tune has restored by beloved hummy! Thanks Les!

Got nothing to add to this thread's excellent diagnostic chatter, but wanted to add my name to the list 9300T owners whose box locks up (I'd say every two weeks). The net result is an inability to turn on, with remote or front of box, and failed recording(s).

Only pulling the plug out at the wall and rebooting fixes the problem. Till next time!

My box is often locking up and missing recordings. Terrible box, I really regret buying it now.

Sorry it's taken me a while to update. I went to my parents house and checked their tuning, there were no channels in the 800s, but even so I still did a full delete and manual tune as suggested.

I noted that as I went through the details of the different transmitters Crystal Palace was showing about 85% signal strength and the next nearest transmitter was showing about 37% signal. It therefore seemed to me that it probably wasn't a transmitter interference issue.

Anyway, fast forward another week or so and the box has continued to lock up a number of times. My parents also report that sometimes when paging up and down through the channels the box will suddenly crash, my Dad said something like "we try not to go up and down the channels because the box doesn't like it". I've asked them to try again and let me know if it's certain channels that cause the problem - I remember there used to be a problem with the 9200 where if you moved between two specific channels it always caused a black screen.

Bottom line - thanks for everyone's help, but in the case of my parents and sister the transmitter doesn't seem to be an issue. Is there anything else I can try or is it now time to phone Humax customer support? And if so is there any advice on that, I know they'll tell me to to do a factory reset.

When I bought my 9200 the general feeling was that Humax were very responsive and I recall a number of bugs I had originally that were swiftly fixed OTA. Is the feeling now that Humax are less responsive to this type of problem?

Thanks for any help and further thoughts...


swi.

I'm starting to get really fed up with our Humax 9300. The lock ups are happening quite frequently and once it even lost all my scheduled recordings which was a real pain. That and the problem if the guide never populating properly.

I'm quite close to taking it back and looking for another make. What's stopping me is that I wouldn't know what else to try. I've been few a variety of boxes now and they all seem to have their own problems. I thought I would be ok finally going for the humax but no, it is not much better than the other cheaper models I have had.

I have a 9200T which used to have the occasional lock up which would be easily cured by switching off and on again. However, yesterday it locked up and has resisted all attempts to try to unfreeze it.

You get sound and picture for a few seconds, then the picture freezes, and a couple seconds later the sound goes.

Any ideas? Oh, and I'm a complete dimwit when it comes to technicalities, so be gentle with me!

Follow Savvy's advice detailed in Post No43 of this thread.
That should sort you out.

Thank you both.

It simply doesn't matter what you do to fix all the regular Humax problems listed on this forum. I'm not knocking any of the posters here who supply the solutions for the Humax problems because the advice is almost always correct and the problem is fixed.

However the problem always returns at a later date normally not much later and you have to do the same fix again and again. The fact remains that the Humax forum has been going for almost 4 years with complaint after complaint. The only conclusion that it is possible to arrive at is that Humax don't give a damn and their products are not fit for purpose.

Well my 9200 keeps plodding on relentlessly, maybe Humax made a specially reliable one for me.

Simple solution get rid of it and buy a PVR you consider fit for purpose... also write a long letter to Humax giving them the benefit of you analysis.

Happy with my 9200T... but I'm easily pleased ...

Of course many users will not have a problem. The fact remains that there have been continuous complaints on this forum for almost 4 years. I've never come across this for any other manufacturer of any item. I don't need to give Humax the benefit of my analysis as it would be a waste of time due to the fact they completely ignore the problems posted on this forum by some very knowledgable posters and no I don't consider myself in that category.