As the main purpose of a PVR is to record programs how can you be "very satisfied" if you suffer from missed/faulty recordings. It quite clearly isn't meeting its main requirement.

Just out of interest, since upgrading the hard disk have the occurrences of the lock-ups, no records or faulty records reduced, increased or disappeared completely.

But it's not leading edge technology. Sky digital has been out for years and even the FoxSat has been out for over 12 months. Sheesh, all their effort is going into the next box and they haven't even got this one right yet.

Last night: Box froze while watching the snooker. Scrambled round the back to power down and reboot. 30 minutes later, was unable to watch one channel while I was recording on another. Another scramble round the back and "destroyed" what I was recording.

Got up this morning to a blaze of blue light. Despite having it set to go to standby at 23:59, it failed to do so - twice in as many days.

It's so reminiscent of the original NTL cable boxes, it's unreal.

Digital TV reception has been around for years and years - it's no longer "leading edge" - it's old hat and it's garbage!

John.

This is true. It would be absurd to return the box because of some of the smaller bugs. If everyone did it there would be stagnation as companies would barely dare to innovate.


But the glitches are not in anything that could be vaguely considered leading edge. All the UI nonsense is down to nothing more than incompetent design or cack-handed implementation.

The HD decoding and display works faultlessly. (At least, it does for me).

You either have signal problems or a duff box (or both), do not think that other people are having the same experience as you, they aren't. I've had two HDRs, the first occasionally failed to boot in the morning and needed power reset, so I returned it, its replacement has been with us for 4 months and has been completely reliable.

Obviously signal problems should not cause a lockup, there is a chance that there is a bug which is signal related though - hence why I mention signal.

Check signal and get your HDR replaced.

Okay.
But the manual does not tell the users about the limitations on delete and their only solution for the last ten months was to bodge the software by limiting when you can delete.

Your call, and maybe others may not have been needed if they had done their job properly or put an update in the user manual.

The user manual also forgets to mention user that the recording thumbnails images are only generated at 03:00 if the box is not recording anything at that time and is in standby - else no thumbnail images.

Again if Humax had tried a little harder and the unit was in standby when it makes a recording, it could then have generated the thumbnail images when recording ends.

Automan.

A number of posters have decried Humax's intention to produce a "New HDR Mark 2", before they sort out the present box.

There is another viewpoint.
Any new box is likely to rest on the featuresof the current HDR but with extra functionality. So the existing chunks of software that do work will be used again whilst parts that are in need of improvement, in the present box, will be improved ready for the new box.
Such improvements should eventually benefit the owners of the current HDR.

Dare I suggest that we remain patient?

David

I think the worry is that Humax will make a half hearted attempt to sort out the problems with the current box and then just forget it.

Whether that concern is well founded we won't really know until we see what happens.


As opposed to what?

A lot of us are waiting very patiently but that does not stop us mentioning our concerns about the shoddy way Humax have treated their customers for this box.

Not improving the current box sufficiently would reduce confidence in the new box, & deter buyers.

Not an award-winning sales strategy !!

& as I said, improvements in the HDR software, to use in the new box are likely to benifit existing HDRs.

David

I'm one of the original Betamax men so I was always at the front of the queue with leading edge stuff. Now Betamax may have got pushed out through marketing strategies but, technically, it wasn't released onto the market until it was ready.

Once I no longer had money to waste, I learned to wait - I learned to remain patient, as you put it. So I waited over 12 months after the FoxSat was released. With all of their previous experience with Freeview to build on, 12 months should surely be long enough - Humax are so confident they're already working on Mark II.

Mark I will remain full of bugs so can I be assured that, if I wait for 12 months after the release of Mark II, then Mark II will be bug free? yeah, and pigs might!



John.

You could have a new son or daughter in the time we have all been waiting - or twins

Automan.

And the HDR will probably continue to require the same amount of babysitting...

Yea, they probably could, but those details would come out in a future update

As Sagem have released (or are close to releasing) a Freesat PVR with iPlayer facilities if I was the Humax marketing department I would want to get the latest HDR firmware (with the iPlayer update) into the HDR stock that is being sent to the shops.

I can see some sales assistants demoing the two boxes and saying the Sagem box is the same as the Humax but the Sagem is bettter as it has iPlayer facilities as well.

If Humax don't fix the bug/niggle list very soon it will be a gift to competing manufacturers.

I can just hear the sales assistants: "Well, the Humax is OK so long as you never go on holiday".

Not had a power failure in over 12 months so this would not affect everyone.
Have been away on 3 occasions this year for more than 2 weeks at a time and everything has recorded.

I had one for about 30 min last week. The foxsat happened to be on at the time so it did not matter.

Of course it won't affect everyone - but you won't know until it happens.

I haven't had a power cut in years but I'm afraid that's little comfort to the people who have had them and have lost recordings.

Or you could look at their track record for other upgradeable kit they have sold. It doesn't encourage optimism

Should we then list the manufacturers of Freeview (and freesat equipment that have offered updates?
If I recall Humax were one of the very few manufactrers that offered an update for Freeview+ / playback; whereas other manufacturers released new boxes.
I am confident that an update for the HDR will come up and improve an already great piece of kit.

Provided they fix the vast majority of the bugs and have not just concentrated on the iplayer I think most people will be happy.

Seconded . Most of them are pretty minor to me but I guess thats's mostly down to how I use the box.

I would have been happy if the minor bugs were fixed, I am not in the least bit bothered about iplayer.

If manuafacturer's do release products with minor bugs/niggles, the least they can do is fix them in a reasonable timescale, 11 months is NOT a reasonable.

It would have been great if it missed no recordings, but I suspect that at least some of them were down to broadcaster goofs (Film4 was consistently bad for a while whereas most others were sporadic).

Perhaps I sympathise too much with Humax, having developed software & software-based systems myself professionally, and I understand the real problems in getting a multitasking system with significant real-time constraints to work reliably under all conditions. It's true that some more timely bug-fix updates would have helped both us and Humax's image. However, given what was available, I am satisfied. I was never going to go for Sky+ anyway.


It's no better and no worse than it was before, as far as I can see, though the evidence since I upgraded is sparser.

Same here. Although the two most serious problems - deletion of ITV HD scheduled recordings and failure to recover from power outages - are not a function of it being a multitasking system.

What's more, both could very easily be given at least acceptable workarounds with very minor changes - forcing a power up when supplied with electricity, and optionally defaulting to NOT scan on EPG changes.

The problem is, that there is a lack of evidence that any of the bugs that most people (affected by those bugs) care about are going to be fixed.

It actually manages most of the real time stuff impressively well. The only exception is the 'delete' problem and that's almost certainly a feature of the Linux file system in use and if the corruption is rare it's very easy to forgive Humax for not finding out about it until it was too late to come up with a good, reliable work around..

It's the various bits of UI cack-handedness that, as an analyst or programmer, you know:

a) Should not have been signed off in the first place.
b) Would only take a few minutes to correct.

that are so annoying.