When I put my PC into Standby mode the HDs and fans etc stop but a touch of a key brings it immediately back to life.

With the HDR if I use the standby button to put it into standby mode and later use the button to bring it out of standby it re-boots and takes about a minute before it is useable.

What is the difference between this and Off, apart from the fact I don't have to reach around the back of the box for the on/off switch. Shouldn't the standby button be called the Off button ?

I would like the box to display the time when in not in use i.e in Standby but to be ready to use as soon as I hit the standby button. I've tried various combinations of setting and can get the time displayed but not the instant on.

Have I got it setup wrongly, am I expecting too much or is this another Humax / Foxsat feature ?

The standby mode is a economical lowpower mode which will still automatically wake up to record according its schedule. I leave it on all the time for this purpose. My unit boots up quite quickly when I wish to use it

There is a trade off between fast restart fron standby and power consumtion.

The Humax is exemplary in the tiny amount of power it's using when in the 'standby' mode but, as you have noticed, it's really more akin to 'off' on a PC.

The best way to use the box is probably to leave it on during periods when you are likely to be using it at short notice and on 'standby' the rest of the time.

Humax have said that they are hoping to speed up the standby restart in the future.

It's a pity they can't use something like the Windows 'hibernate' system which should provide for an extremely fast start-up for something with so little RAM but there may be technical difficulties in doing this if Linux does not natively support it.

A number of Standby Modes :-

1. Standby with Power Saving enabled - No Time display, LNB & SCART loop-thru disabled, Red light on, EPG updates in background.

2. Standby with no Power Saving - Time display showing, LNB & SCART loop-thru operative, Red light on, EPG updates in background.

Both of these take approx 30secs to boot up, and will wake up at T-15 to record a scheduled timer. Also, box will do overnight housekeeping, and check for OTA updates, in these modes.

3. "Active" Standby - box is recording whilst in Standby, Red Light on, will "boot up" immediately.

One major difference with the "Off Switch", is that it then will not execute its Timers, nor check for OTA updates.

Humax are looking at speeding up the boot process, but there is no mode to do exactly what you are looking for.

Rgds.


Les.

Its exactly as it should be. eg Sky boxes arent in standby, they consume almost as much power as when they are switched on. Sure they turn on quick but thats because they arent ever switched off.

Due to the EU, everything will be going the Humax way, not the sky box way.

* Standby is defined as being able to respond to the wake up request of the remote and also to autonomously start up at pre-programmed intervals. This may include sleep or shut-down but using a secondary micro-controller to control the return to function.

* Off is defined as: without the consumption of any power and no ability to self-start without physical action on the part of the user. Typically the PSU should be uncharged (or hopefully with little/no quiescent current draw) and the micro-controller is (probably) unable to restart the device.

* Sleep is defined as: CPU suspended but power supplied to certain components to allow near immediate resumption of operation. Often the RAM needs to be powered as well as a small micro-controller.

* Hibernate is defined as the running state being stored to non-volatile storage for quick recovery. Only the micro-controller is still powered to trigger the resumption of operation.

The option of hibernate has been suggested internally before but it creates some complications because you cannot have a shut-down period to save the hibernate state. Thus you have to do more cunning things, thing that at present the nature of the architecture don't permit.

It is quite right to say we are obliged by the EU to have <1W power consumption in standby for all retail STB products as of the end of this year. We have aimed to support this initiative in all new products since last year and have a very high success rate.

We are aware that the time taken to resume function is not a virtue of some products and we are always attempting to optimise the start time as a part of our usability. I don't think it will change dramatically in the current products but it is always being tweaked as we progress.

Bob

That's not a general definition since you can unplug a Windows machine and it will still restart from hibernate upon being repowered and activated.


Why not?

The box already appears to take quite a few seconds to shut down as the blue light fades and the red light comes up.

And who says you cannot have a shutdown period?

In fact, you should not even need to have a shutdown period. Since the PVR's configuration state is saved in non-volatile memory anyway you could just do one hibernate shutdown and keep using the same file for a restart (a facility that it would be nice if Windows provided.)

OK. Thanks everyone that's cleared it up for me. At least I know I haven't made a mistake in the setup. I have it set to auto shut off at 1.00 am and restart at 11.00 am and to automatically go into standby (not power saving mode, so I get the clock) when not in use. I guess that as near to my ideal as I'm going to get with this version of the box.

I don't wish to get into or indeed provoke an argument about this but from my knowledge of PCs I would have thought that to achieve a PC type standby the main thing that is needed is to keep the RAM powered whilst cutting power to the HD & fan. If I am correct then couldn't that be done using <1W.

bsw, you are correct, when we measured it the requirement would have put the Humax products above the target.

Bob

Sadly not. You have to keep parts of the motherboard powered up for standby. It's a very useful reduction for a PC but nowhere near the power saving that the Humax standby or a PC's hibernate achieves.

OK Thanks Bob_Cat and Tern for that. I'll just have to wait for someone to release a Freesat approved PC tuner card and build a media centre PC. I built a Freeview one a couple of years ago but decided I prefered my Humax and quickly sold it.

I seriously thought about a PC based media centre (I already play music from the PC) but it was the power consumption issues that made me go with the Humax.

I am happy with the power save standby mode I'm old enough to remember TVs that took about a week to show a picture after you switched them on , it's ridiculous the amount of power that's wasted by some kit that is doing nothing but showing a red LED

I for one am glad it uses >1W in standby, I'd rather have that than a faster boot with UK energy prices forecast by government analysts in the papers a few weeks ago to reach an average of £5,000 per household per year due to new green energy costs over the next few years, I'll take the savings over an instant start at 50W any day.

That said, I do think it could be quicker but probably not much in the current generation.

I think to be quite blunt on it, the problem is the Humax (like a lot of consumer devices good example many blu ray players), simply users underpowered key components which slow booting speed eg. processor, memory, mainboard buses etc

A good example of this is a PS3. I have a Panasonic Blu Ray Player. It takes around a minute to read BR disc when inserted - common with most BR players and extremely annoying. However, put the same disc in a pS3 with its powerful processor and general performance based architecture and the disc is available instantly.

I know costings come in here for standalone products. But given the cheap cost of multicore processors (some older models of which at still quite high speeds can be had retail for around £12), then figure in trade price and bulk discount, and I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be possible to fit something quite powerful in a STB for only a couple more pounds than the current processor choice. As I don't know what memory the Humax uses, I can't comment there but with solid stated storage (only the progs are on a hard drive), booting should potentially be very fast on such a lightly loaded OS.

Maybe one way around the current hardware restrictions, would be for Humax technical department to offer to retrofit boxes with more powerful components for a reasonable price as an upgrade option (assuming the main board is OK, this might just involve a PSU upgrade and Processor upgrade although I'm speculating here). However, as eg a £50 option, if it made dramatic differences, it might gain interest to current owners as an alternative to a new box.

Typo alert! Think you meant <1W?

White-Knight,

I don't think it is a case of being underpowered, as much as it is efficiency, I have yet to see a device that consumes as little power when running and can do as much as an HD SoC based receiver. The biggest factor of boot speed is not the CPU but the architecture of boot. If you look at the Intel Moblin project you can see a ~10sec boot for Linux but it took them some substantial changes to the boot architecture to get to that to work. We can't change the entire architecture of the product at this stage, we can just optimise what we have.

That being said we are now working with new chips in prototype products which have dual thread processors with substantially more "Oompf"* and those are using a new generation architecture. (Please don't get excited, no UK products yet.

Bob


* Technical term.

I don't understand what all the fuss is about. My Foxsat takes 28 seconds from from button press to perfect picture. By the time I switch the tele on it's all there. My panasonic DVD player takes 35 seconds, but so what. Is life really this short?

Do we really live in such a fast paced world that we can't wait 40seconds to watch TV? Geez, Louise.

That, unfortunatley is one of the major problems in the world today. People arrogantly expect everyone else to share their concerns and not be bothered by the things that don't bother them.

Sad, but true.


Is this trolling really necessary?

I agree in that I don't find the start up time a problem but I also appreciate that other people find other things annoying.

Why can't people just learn that everyone is entitled to be bothered by what they are bothered by?

If theShadowman & davidredge would like to re-read my original post they would find that I am not in fact complaining about anything. I am reporting what happens and what I would like to happen and asking if I have got the set up right.

Whether, and in what circumstances, I find it a problem is entirely my concern.

A phrase from my native Yorkshire comes to mind: If you've nowt worth sayin, say nowt.

I don't mind the boot time - as has been pointed out, if you want it on all the time you can disable standby and I'm really happy that my Humax is not consuming full power for the 20+ hours a day it's not being used.

However, i'd be a lot happier if it didn't crash so often when waking up out of 'active' standby. Hopefully, this general sta bility issue will be adressed in the forthcoming update.

Is that a recent Panasonic? My ancient Sony is 12 seconds from off to playback, it would be a pity if technology has regressed so much.

What's this about the EPG being updated while the box is in standby? I have to wait every time I press the EPG button, even if it is only a few seconds since I last used it.

Press schedule and then red for instant access to the buffered epg. The epg button downloads a full new epg

What they could perhaps do here is get the box to automatically update as it goes into standby provided a rec timer isn't imminent. As your leaving the box you're not going to notice the slightly longer time taken to reach full standby (as opposed to a longer boot) especially if the light on the front still dims at the same speed thus giving you the confidence to leave the box (the box of course updating but not obviously).

In order to stop in being a pain if you accidentally press standy on the remote or want to turn back on very shortly, why not make it a simple 2 stage process so the box really knows when you've finished with it?

A simple suggestion would be press "standby" normally to switch of without updating but have you "mute" the box then press "standby" to switch off and update.

There are very few people who will ever mute a box before switching it off and also as the 2 buttons are close together its very easy to mute the box then press standby to signal its ok to update when you've finished with it.

The option to manually update through the existing button could still be left in place to take account of unforeseen circumstances eg the case of loss of epg through a Freesat scan or a change to the scheduling .