Having had to do a rescan yesterday for changes to channels in which I had no interest I suddenly wondered:

Why does the box have to rescan at all?

Surely the required information should be in the EPG so it should all happen automatically a la Sky?

The only very minor problem would be if that is someone could not receive a transponder for some reason the unavailable channels would still appear in the EPG. I can't imagine that would affect many people, though.

The current scheme, as with so much about this otherwise excellent box, seems unnecessarily clunky on the UI front.

As I can't see your post due to it not appearing forgive me if my response is misdirected.

I would imagine that if you selected a channel that had it's transponder setting changed, the UI would allow the selection of said channel but the box would then try to configure the LNB to tune to the wrong parameters.

Edit:: Ok can see your post now... I don't think the details are kept within the epg, you'll notice that after a scan is performed the box asks if you want to to save the data, this I would imagine is then stored within the stb memory.

I have no problem with a rescan from time to time. What I find annoying is that it says e.g. 1 Added, 1 Removed, 1 Changed, but doesn't actually tell you what those changes are.

For "Changed" I don't suppose it matters most of the time but I'd like to see what channels I've lost or gained.

Indeed. I'm at a bit of a loss as to why this process couldn't happen as part of the overnight 'housekeeping'. It requires about 3 inputs from the user but at no point does the user get enough information to make an informed decision (why does is ask me if i want to save? In what situation would I answer 'no'?)

I agree that the information does not appear to be in the EPG but the point is: Why on earth not?

The EPG is an index to the programming available and yet it does not seem to have the page number.


Actually, it doesn't require any input from the user. If you are out of the room as the box boots it's perfectly capable of doing the rescan (and wiping the ITV HD schedules ) without any input from the user and without leaving any trace unless you can remember what was in the EPG before.

The system seems to have been designed in a wholly unnecessarily unwieldy way.

Agreed, utterly stupid to put this in an interactive GUI.

Out of curiosity does it display an onscreen message when a recording is started?

The 9200 DTT PVR does and I've never understood why they felt it was necessary.

Yes, there's a display in the top left (IIRC) when a recording starts. It's also visible when you change channel.

That's fine by me but the reason for rescan thing escapes me! Rescan's a background process if ever I saw one...

Anyone from Humax care to elaborate as to why it's not a background process, hidden from the user?

Because that's the way the freesat spec is designed and all freeview boxes have to work this way, the loss of ITV HD recording schedules is a bug that is fixed in the next firmware release

Yes, but why did they design it in such a cock-eyed manner?

I wondered if anyone can think of a good reason for what would otherwise be a pretty loopy design decision.

Heh well that's an improvement. The 9200 (and its sisters) sticks a banner right across the middle of the screen saying something like "Scheduled recording start 21:01 - 22:03"

Freesat decided that all boxes should auto update epg changes to avoid the sort of problems that freeview users have.

OK so the question shifts to the spec rather than the manufacturer. It still a rubbish concept and the process should take place at 3AM in the background.

And they could do so silently at 3AM, surely?

That rather sidesteps the real question.

Why do they need to do a batch update in the first place?

The EPG carries a vast amount of data so having a list of channels and their parameters embedded in it should not be a problem.

Then, as soon as someone at Freesat updates the details in the EPG all boxes have the data the next time they look at the EPG.

One thing you can say for Sky is that the don't bother viewers with this housekeeping unnecessarily.

They don't bother viewers when they take their pound of flesh, from their bank, each month either.

Its a SWIZZ?

David

Albeit 40 pounds

Hdr owners would love this, their ITV HD reservations would disappear without any sign of why. Fancy going on holiday for a couple of weeks to find a channel update scan has stopped all ITV HD recording.

Yes but if they embedded the required information in the EPG the whole problem would just vanish.

I assume no one has any idea why the chose to go this ridiculous route rather than just doing the sensible thing as Sky do.

Imagine every time Digital Spy (or any other forum site) added, removed or changed a forum you had to sit and wait for a few minutes whilst it rescanned and then wiped out some of your data.

Well duh - that's the whole point of Direct Debit. If I agree to pay a company for a service the last thing I want is them constantly bothering me over payments.

Oh and £40? Where'd that figure come from? I don't pay that much a month for Sky HD.

But meh. Sky are a typical company and are just after my money and don't care about anything else. Still - as long as they are clear about what they offer and I'm prepared to pay I see no problem. You don't have to trust or love a company to use their services

Wouldn't it be nice if, one day, someone could start a thread in one of the Freesat forums and not have it devolve into yet another stupid Sky argument?

That bug would certainly have been addressed earlier

We should lobby Freesat to change the spec on this, if the problem indeed lies with them.

Can you expand on that? I would expect the Freesat spec to require an auto update to avoid the freeview problems - that's sensible. But that doesn't explain why:
- it doesn't happen as a housekeeping task
- the user interaction process is so poor (I can't believe this part is Freesat rather than Humax -
-- The box takes c30 seconds to wake up, then gives a much shorter time to select rescan/later before defaulting to performing the rescan.
-- the user is then offered the option to save or not save (but i think it's already cleared the memory so selecting 'no' gives an empty epg.)

On a number of occasions i've seen the message come up, scrabbled to get the remote and select 'no' only for the scan to have started so that my remote button presses cancel the scan leaving me with an empty epg until I navigate the menus and do it manually.

You would have to ask Freeesat that question they initiate the channel updates so freesat boxes react to the prescence of an update when manually booted.

But do Freesat stipulate that the update process must be handled as a foreground activity? That's the crucial question.

Crucial it may be but it's off the topic of this thread.

The question is: Why use such a goofy system in the first place rather than simply embed the data in the EPG which would have meant there was never any problem in the first place?

No one has even made a stab at answering that.