I've owned this pvr for a couple of month now. There is something that keeps catching me out though. If I'm recording 2 programmes at the same time, or that overlap, whilst watching a third, I get the conflict warning when the recording starts. Fair enough... except when I'm out of the room, or when the tv is off. When this happens it fails to record part or all of one of the programmes "due to a recording conflict".

My old 9200T used to lock out the 3rd channel when 2 programmes were being recorded and the 3rd was on a different mux. This was a far better behaviour as it meant I definitely got the programmes I set to record.

With the foxsat, the channel thats currently on is taking precedence over a recording schedule. This is just plain wrong! Surely it should record what I set and switch the channel to one being recorded, or black out the channel like the 9200 did?

That does not happen on mine. The recording conflict message comes up when 1 tuner is going to record two channels back to back and the first recording programme overruns the actual start of the second recording. Default if you aren't there is to complete the first recording before starting the second (the second confusingly gets a failed recording flag even though you have only lost a bit of the beginning). ITV are the worst offenders they generally send the accurate record start at the opening credits but delay the end signal to the end of the adverts after the programme has finished. This is fine if the follow up recording is also on ITV but if it's not then the above often happens. If the two recordings preclude you watching the current channel then after a warning the hdr simply switches to a viewable 3rd channel. If I know that I am going to be watching a specific channel when two recordings are taking place and 1 is BBC 1, I often swap a bbc region to record to make the this channel viewable

Just set up a test I have scheduled BBC1 -WM and BBC2 to record at ten o clock and I am going to watch ITV1-HD at this time which is not viewable with this combination.

Had I set 950 as the BBC1 recording rather than my local BBC1-WM, then every other channel would not only be viewable but also could be live paused

UPDATE - the two recordings started on time the hdr simply switched to display bbc2 (one of the two recording channels)

Hmmm maybe I need to do some more testing lol.
I definitely seem to be getting quite a lot of incomplete with conflict messages. Perhaps its because when needing to pause, I have to press record to prevent the pause 'bug'?

This is exactly what my box does. I think that perhaps the freesat specs should tie the broadcasters down more - If a broadcast is scheduled to finish at 21:00 and that it is running late but finished and no longer showing the programme it is required to send the finished signal no later than the scheduled finished time

Well yes it would if the instant recording causes a clash with a scheduled recording which clearly could not be recognised when the recording was scheduled. However even if the bug was fixed you would have the same problem with the current firmware you can't record more than two even though it's technically possible. Given the tuner capability up to 4 could be recorded from a pair of transponders.

Could you elaborate. I thought the HDR had two tuners but three decoders. To record 4 programs and watch something else surely the HDR would need 5 decoders.

If they have the ability to record 4 channels from two different transponders (or 4 from one transponder) then I'm surprised Humax haven't implemented this and used it as a marekting ploy to get one over on the opposition.

Each tuner can record two channels at the same time if they are on the same transponder. To prove this start an instant recording on 951 and 108. Now tune to any other channel and press pause. This works because tuner 2 is free to record to the time shift buffer so in fact you are actually recording 3. Not sure what you mean by decoder, the tuner extracts a mpeg digital stream from the multiplex and simply writes this to disc. The tuners in Humax and Topfield Freeview boxes can also demux two at the same time. It's this capability that allows third channel viewing while recording two.

In fact the hdr is modelled on the Humax icord it's German cousin and guess what it can record up to 4 at the same time.

Finally found a link for the icord

http://www.wizardsatellite.co.uk/ind...roducts_id=284


Just realised that the decoder referred to is the mpeg decoder. There's only 1 and it's used to extract the 25fps video and audio from the mpeg compressed data. As there's only 1 video output only 1 is needed. It plays no part in the recording process.

My mistake. I imagined the tuner extracted the whole multiplexed transponder for a specific frequency and then passed this onto a separate decoder which extracted and re-constructed the specific individual MPEG stream which was then recorded to disk. I did not realise the whole operation was actually done by the tuner itself.

Thanks for clearing that up.