Or to put it into more perspective:If they had issued a bug fix for my 9200T I would have bought their Freesat PVR.

So we're not just talking about mud slinging:We're talking about lost sales.

This raises a dilemma for me.

I was going to buy the current model.

But if something new is around the corner...

Do we know when exactly this is coming out?

ROFLMAO!

You have to be kidding.

Humax actually give people accurate information about what's happening in advance?

Porcine aviation stands a better chance.

Quite. Until fairly recently I was one of the 'give them time - better to do the job properly than issue a bodge' brigade.
Now, however, I'm actually pretty disgusted with them.

Although there's only one major and a couple of minor bugs that affect me directly I know others aren't as lucky. As far as I'm concerned, Humax are now very firmly in the same bracket as Goodmans et al: A manufacturer without reliable customer service.

I also note that the number of people who try to rubbish or silence any criticism of Humax on these threads has dropped dramatically.

Interesting that you are the voice of "most of humax customers". iirc £300 was at the higher end of what people were expecting the pvr to cost. Therefore adding to the base manufacturing cost would add to the end price and could drive people away from buying it. A better design would be one that allows you to easily swap HDD's without the need to open the box and is possible with the hot swap style connectors on sata drives.

As for USB3 I can see how it is just to new and expensive to consider.


Me too along with the negative feedback from the users on this forum. I have to question whether it is Humax standard policy to replace a box after only 2 years being in production as it seems quite quick to me? Makes you wonder whether there are fundamental problems that can't be overcome?

Rob

It will be aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaages before a new Humax Freesat PVR. They'll concentrate on Freeview+ HD first.

I'll bet my house on a new Humax Freesat PVR not coming out in 2010!

For what stakes?

Is Bob_Cat excluded?

Your analysis makes sense, though.

Freeview is a far larger market and as we've seen in the past Humax do struggle when it comes to high-def.

Not familar with the USB3 specification but I cannot see any reason why they could not impliment esat

I was going to buy the current model (soon I hope) as well....

I think the failure to restart properly after a power failure is probably one that they cannot overcome without changing the hardware.

If the current hardware does not have a software settable option for starting on mains power up (as a lot of PC BIOS's do) then there is absolutely no way that they can fix that problem.

With the arrival of competition and competitive reviews a box that will fail to record what you've asked it to whilst you're away on a three week holiday if there's a five minute power cut just after you leave is not going to be looked upon favourably.

And once a hardware mod is designed Humax would probably want to change the model to make it 100% clear that people can be sure of buying a box without that problem.

Was interested to note Bob_Cat.s comments with regard to USB functionality as some editions back In "Micromart" they reported as Linux based systems as bing the first ahead of Microsoft to have this functionality.

Oops! Mis-typed should have been USB3.

Or Humax could just fix their firmware so that it doesn't just delete the ITV HD recordings. There are benefits to the red button functionality - ie. if you simply switch on to ITV and the programme is in HD, it alerts you, without you having to check if there is a HD broadcast. And for scheduling recordings, it makes little difference.

There are pros and cons either way, but the biggest 'con' for the current ITV HD implementation is an artificial one of a bad implementation in the Foxsat HDR.


If recording programmes wasn't that important to me, I wouldn't have spent £300 on the HDR. And I don't expect to have to spend hundreds more on additional equipment to make it perform the basic functions that it is meant to perform.

My old Sky+ never had the same problem. Nor does the Play TV on the PS3. Nor my games consoles, or PCs.

Besides, there is a very simple, if inelegant fix to this. Make the HDR always boot on the introduction of electricity. It's clever enough to do it if the electricity was cut whilst it was operational, so there is no good reason why it can't be made to fully power up any time it is supplied power. In fact, why can't it do that, and THEN decide if it was in standby or not when the power was cut, and go into standby accordingly?

Even if it can't do that, I would rather it always came on after a power cut, and wasted a bit of power, than simply missing all of my scheduled recordings.


That wasn't (always) true of later models that set their clock off of the broadcast signal. Just like the HDR reads it's time from the signal.

If a simple VHS 10 years ago could get it right, why can't a current device?

Accordong to post #4 not till late 2010.

I bought a 45quid UPS (originally for my PC) and I've never had any missed recordings

Ike1998,

It isn't a software issue, it is a hardware issue. In order to get the maximum value out of the design we need to be as highly integrated as possible and we don't really use PC components. Everything is in one piece of silicon called a System on Chip and currently our silicon vendor does not have support for USB 3.

Perhaps once it is available we will start shipping products with this feature, but at present chip availability for USB3 is very limited even in the PC domain. I wouldn't discount eSATA either, I think it could still be an effective connector and I have yet to see an advantage of USB over eSATA when it comes to attached storage.

Bob

Bob_Cat, can you at least confirm whether or not the update to be broadcast "soon" fixes the issues with the non-recording following a power cut? I would have hoped that such a major flaw would have been near the top of the priority list.

I like a few of the others aren't really interested in using the HDR for iPlayer I would rather have a PVR that works properly (which I paid for) as apposed to iPlayer facilities (which I didn't). Still can't see the point in iPlayer via the HDR if you can't pre-download and playback straight from the hard drive anyway.

Absolutely.

I suspect there will be some very acrimonious posting here if they provide the iplayer and don't make the PVR work properly.

It will be the battle of the decade between the Humax sycophants and the rest.

And a lot of lost sales.

I bought one very early on and had it replaced a few months later due to repeated freezes. When the replacement exhibited the same behaviour I returned it for a refund.

My intention was to wait to see if/how well/how soon Humax sorted out the various issues. As it's been so long now, and various fundamental problems still exist, I'm unlikely to buy Humax again. The support, despite Bob_Cat's efforts (which I appreciate), simply isn't there.

Oh, and I was looking for a PVR that did what it said on the tin: iPlayer is of absolutely no use or interest to me.

Nor me.. although - I wonder if one of the reasons the the Iplayer was merged with the firmware upgrade is because the bugs/problems with the HDR were nowhere near being fixed and it was a way of gaining more time. I have been very disappointed by the apparent support for this model.

I think that Humax had too long without competition and no urgency..

Patrick

I would expect iplayer deployment is being driven by freesat so that it is released before xmas to give them the edge and boost sales. From the end of next year onwards freesat is likely to take a back seat to freeview when they release HD and canvas so they have to get their wins where they can.
I personally think iplayer will be a good edition to the platform even without the feature to save to disk as neither my xmbc or virgin cable box do and its still worthwhile. It's just a shame that humax haven't fixed the bugs mentioned on here. Although as someone considering purchasing one of these boxes I have to question whether the "forum" effect is valid or from a minority of people. This comes from a user of a topup G1 pvr and was quite happy with it.
Rob

richard_g_uk,

I can say it is one of a number of items on the list but we have made a decision not to say what will and won't be actioned from that list until the update is ready to go into the wild. Some work has been done on features requested but if that work is not considered satisfactory by our quality engineers it won't be released.

We aren't just releasing an "iPlayer version", we are releasing a composite update. If people aren't happy with their products they should return them and we would be most grateful if Tern would please return his product because he will clearly never be happy, even if we fixed everything.

Bob

It's interesting what you say about the "forum" effect. I think it could be argued either way - is it mostly people with negative experiences who post here or is it genuinely because there are plenty of issues that the machine has that cause people to post negatively?

I have also been on forums where the reaction to a new product is overwhelmingly positive - for example in camera forums - when there has been an amazingly good camera released - not that I am a Sony person, but think of the Sony R1 and most of the H series and also some of the Panny range etc.. (that is if you are interested in cameras!)

If the the PVR had been excellent I believe that would be reflected here. From my own point of view - I find the interface clunky and there are just too many bugs (hopefully soon to be sorted out). It was rushed to market and it shows.

To my mind, Tivo are the benchmark against which PVRs are inevitably judged by me - and this one should have done so much more. Tivo was not simply better because it was a subscription model -- there were just so many excellent touches that are simply missing from the Humax.


Patrick

Reading comprehension problems, Bob?

I can't count the number of times I've said I'm reasonably happy with the product.

What I'm less than happy with is the company who produced it who I find are smug and unresponsive.

Despite this I have, on occasion, defended Humax by explaining why certain problems may not trivial to solve. In addition, until around May/June I was in the 'give them enough time to code the fixes properly' camp.

Now, however, I think the decision to force an iplayer on people who bought a PVR in preference to fixing outstanding bugs ( a few of which are serious even though the serious ones don't usually affect me personally) is disgraceful. Humax should make the PVR work properly as a priority and only start messing around with an iplayer once that job has been done.

I'm sure you'd be happier if this forum was limited to subservient souls who are grateful to get a box that almost works but that ain't gonna happen.

Oh heck, is that what it does?

I've just bought one to replace a Pace Twin, because I've moved into a non-Freeview area.

Now obviously the HDR is in a different league to the 20GB single record Pace Twin(!) - but the Twin could cope with power cuts really well, and had a live-pause function that actually let you watch until the end of the programme! Plus in the last two years that I used it, it didn't miss a single programme.

I wonder if I should return it? Problem is, I don't feel like I have much choice - though maybe subscribing to Sky for two years (that's when Freeview arrives here) would be a similar cost, and less frustrating?

Cheers,
David.