Thanks to creddish and futaura for your advice. I now have a timeswitch controlling my whole setup (Vestel and Sagem). It switches it off for 1 minute at 7 am. The Vestel EPG is super-snappy since I'm using it after only max 15 hours uptime. I'm sure some of the Sagem's problems are related to uptime as well, so rebooting the whole lot can't hurt.

I am reluctant to use the super low power mode though, waiting >1 minute for it to boot up sounds like no fun.

cheers now

Be careful when using a timeswitch - what happens it if it switches your box off while it is in the middle of updating the timers on the HDD? Since it frequently does this, it may be hard to guarantee that this doesn't happen. It may be safe for this to happen - I really don't know, but I personally wouldn't risk it. You could always use low power mode, turn off the "Auto power down" option and leave it on after the first use of the day and only switch it off at night - that would kinda accomplish the same. Power consumption when on is pretty much the same as when in active standby.

The power round here is so flaky anyway it switches of every few days anyway. No problems so far. I assumed it would only update the timers after an event like a recording. I can't see any reason to do it while it's in standby - there is no new information to justify tweaking timers. Certainly it seems to need to fire up the HDD to tweak the timers, it never seems to do this when it's in standby & idle.

But an interesting comment, I shall keep my eye on it & report back!

I dislike the idea of the low power mode as it stops me using the box how I want:- read the paper, see something I'd like to record, sit down in front of box and hit the EPG. If I have to wait 90 seconds to do this, the whole EPG/series link thing is IMHO a waste of time. I might as well go back to my EPG-less Thomson where I would have to manually enter date, times and programme name.

But I will give it a try.....

Well, the HDD definitely does spin up frequently in standby and when idle, even when not recording anything - at least twice an hour in my experience. It is one of the complaints of the T825 boxes which the T835 inherits. The EPG / EIT is monitored continuously even in standby and whenever it picks up a change (not necessarily involving set timers) it may need to fire up the HDD as the timers are stored there. Of course, the EPG is constantly changing because it is always fully 8-day to the nearest hour at least, so it will always be picking up new programmes on the far end of the 8-day.

I did give it a try, it's a dead loss - there's no EPG when it comes out of low power mode. So my use case becomes:- see something in the paper; fire up the box (90 seconds); wait for EPG to populate (several minutes); after 5 minutes I've forgotten what it was I wanted to watch; worry about Alzheimer's . Not an option for me.

good points re EPG 8th day update & new timers being created. Ah well, I'll risk it with the timeswitch.

But day 8 is available in it's entirety at midnight (GMT). Surely it downloads the whole day at once, otherwise you wouldn't be able to set a weekly series based on the last programme of day 1.

Aargh, that's gonna do my head in now....!

At 00:01 Monday it has everything up to 00:01 the following Tuesday, ie 8 full days including both Mondays

At 12:00 Monday what does it have? I assume it has everything up to 12:00 on the following Tuesday? If so it must have downloaded an extra 12 hours' worth during Monday morning

I've never looked, I don't know how it works. Are you saying that it downloads the whole of Tuesday at 00:01 on Monday?

Confused!

Sorry for the confusion - PTD is of course right - I don't know where I got the crazy idea that the EPG always shows a full 8-days (i.e. 192 hours). It'll always only show upto midnight GMT on the 8th day. So, at 00:01 BST on Monday (i.e. 23:01 GMT) you'll basically have 7 days and one hour available in the EPG. At 01:00 BST this would have changed to the full 8 days including all of the following Tuesday.

However, it won't download a whole day at once, literally, as the EPG is constantly broadcast in a carousel format - as you may have noticed when switching on from low power standby (i.e. the channels/days gradually fill in a kind of random manner - for example, you may have 8 days of BBC1 within a minute, but nothing showing for the current day on ITV2, yet the ITV2 listings for the next day are shown). It takes a little while for all this information to be read and pieced together like a jigsaw to form the full EPG.

It is the fact that the EPG is constantly being broadcast, which the Vestel software is constantly monitoring, which causes it to access the HDD and timers (and the software slowdown IMHO) even if it doesn't involve setting a new timer, but just confirming an existing one. This is in contrast to the 4TV EPG which was downloaded in full only at 3am every night, IIRC. The Freeview EPG is better in that it can change live - particularly on BBC channels you'll find the EPG is updated immediately if a programme overruns, for example, causing the schedule to be changed.

Yes.

No, no need. Everything on Monday up to 1200 is history. The rest of Monday (day 1) still has its counterpart in next Monday (day 8). There's always exactly 8 days available, it's just that day 1 is always gradually expiring.

This is where I came in.
It has to if it's to maintain the EPG, as it's now the new day 8, and the old day 1 has completely expired. Think of it as 8 buses on a pier. Every midnight a new bus arrives, they all move forward and the one at the front drives into the sea and is lost forever.

It doesn't have to do it at midnight, that's just when the new day is available, but if the box is on and active I'd be surprised if it didn't.

Ooops! Reply deleted. I forgot to read to the end of the thread. .

Colin

Ooh, just in time! I was just about to launch a pithy comment.

Sorry to spoil your fun.

Colin

Just a quick update regarding daily reboots - I can confirm the behaviour has certainly changed in v3.4 in that it no longer always reboots daily at 3am when automatic update checks are enabled. I guess it probably only now reboots after picking up a new update. This was something I hadn't noticed before now as Vestel had asked me to test the box in low power mode to fix bugs with that (which were fixed in v3.4).

I guess this would be a positive change if it wasn't for the EPG slowdown issue - the daily reboot came in very handy to nullify this. That said, the EPG certainly doesn't slow down as much as it used to, say a year ago before v1.9 (if you want to see proper slow, see the T825 software or T816 v6.8 ). After over 7 days uptime, my EPG is fairly slow, and doesn't seem to be getting any slower either. Otherwise the box is performing without any trouble. Reluctantly, I think I will be enabling low power mode again - it sucks even more now, because I used to use the AUX button to switch between the PVR and TV/PS3, but now I have to use the TV remote first, then pickup the PVR remote (having chosen to leave the PVR powered on) - how inconvenient .

Thanks Futaura for the info

Now interestingly I have switched back to the Sagem as my "main box". Even though I curse it every time. Main reasons are the Vestel missed 3 programmes on Friday night including the oh-so-holy Gardeners' World . Secondly the stuttering is pretty annoying, the audio drops for long enough to miss the punchline on a panel show. These limitations together mean that we still need to "maintain" the Sagem anyway. Since we need to maintain the Sagem and go through the grief of its slow EPG and limited timers, we might as well enjoy its superior playback quality.

I am resigned to a two-box future......

Having two boxes is very useful IMO. I back up my Humax 9200 with my Vestel (LP250HDMI). I record all important programmes on both. The Vestel covers for the Humax when the latter gives un-acceptable Accurate Recording results which is quite often. Each unit covers for the other when random failures occur. This results in almost 100% combined reliability. As most programmes are part of series there is very little work needed to schedule recordings. The only chore is the need to delete two set of recordings. This is very quick on the Humax but less so on the Vestel.

Colin

Vestel/Hitachi went back to Argos yesterday

Stuttering was not acceptable, I was missing the punchlines on some comedy programmes. Also the disk was about 1/2 full and it had become unbearably slow - about 30 seconds to load the Library after watching a programme, and another 15-30 to delete a programme after watching it. Doing a "weekly clearout" of old programmes was agony, it could take eg 10 minutes.

Now running a Toppy, it's night and day. No glitches, dead fast, no Accurate Record to screw up. Here's hoping.

Nice try Vestel, but too many flaws.