I think that during the night it deletes any entry more than three months old. (IIRC - somewhere around that period.)

I thought the Freesat+ standard was six months?

LOL, maybe someone should look it up - I'm not sure where to find the official information.

I certainly wouldn't bet money on 3 months but I'm pretty sure that I've never seen anything much older than that in the schedule. Of course, that could be just that I only have cause to look at around that frequency.

Simply hiding them has drawbacks, yes. That's essentially what Sky boxes do because they can only ever show specific scheduled items in their planner. It causes a lot of confusion. In Sky's case it doesn't help that no-one knows how long(*) a timer stays hidden and active but plenty of people find it irritating and disconcerting. You have no idea whether or not a show returning from a mid-season break will automatically start recording. For some things like Formula One and Touring Cars it's maddening because they both take two or even three week breaks. One of the reasons I always record those using my HDR is because I like the way I can see it's looking for a future event even if it's not yet on the EPG.

If a PVR is going to hide timers for unlisted events that then it ought to provide a way to view them and an indication that they exist (something like 'Press GREEN to view hidden timers'. Unfortunately I imagine that would be a lot of work for Humax because UI changes usually are.

(*)But then again I wonder how many Freesat customers know that it's 13 weeks?

Going by what's been asked on this forum, not many. That's despite the question being answered on many occasions..

Heh - well at least there is an official figure.

About all you can say for Sky is 'series links have sometimes been known to survive a gap of several weeks'

Indeed and for reference it's identical to Freeview+.

The plus specification has a requirement that 13 weeks must elapse after the last transmission of a series before a broadaster can recycle the same code for a different series.

Years ago when I had Tivo I used to record 'Today at Wimbledon' every night. When wimbledon finished this disappeared from view, but the following June it would start recording again.

Exactly, I dont see why so many people cant understand this is exactly how it should work.

It still knows to record but the schedule isnt littered with useless entries.

Then all they have to do is have a button to press to toggle the option off and on, how hard can that be?

Did that work by looking at the text of the name?

Sometimes these things can be a little aggressive when selecting recordings.

I recently tried to set a series link on the new Midsomer Murders on ITV and it started recording all the afternoon split repeats.

Looking at the trivial UI niggles that Humax cannot be bothered to correct on the current HDR, quite hard for them, one supposes.

Remember THIS from September 2010?

7 months on...

I know, surely it cant be more than a few hours coding to fix them all.

It will have a massive benefit on the user experience, then again they didnt even bother to test the remote control reception because it stops working if you move more than 30* off centre.

Rather than have the item disappear from view altogether I prefer the logical Topfield/MyStuff approach where (Series Link) searches are listed on a separate screen from the resulting timers. You can see in an instant any which have no timers set for the next week (or two depending on EPG info source) and can drill down into each search to see exactly which showings of which episodes of which series it knows about and which are duplicates of ones already recorded or alternates to ones already set to record.

Yeah, well, that's because ITV are a bunch of stupid muppets. That's totally unnecessary and a pain in the bum.

Unless it was programmed in an 'interesting' manner by a contractor whom they now cannot get back.

In which case they may not see a point in spending a lot of money on things that don't seem to stop people buying the box.

Commercial reality.

Hahahahaha.

I'm a programmer and how many times has someone suggested that. Yes, it might only be a few hours coding in this case. Although UI work can sometimes spiral out of control I agree this probably wouldn't.

But before you can start the work there probably has to be an approvals/risk analysis process. Then you have documentation (design to say how you're going to do it(*) then functional to tell everyone else how it's supposed to work). Then it has to go through QA.

Now I don't know how much of that Humax actually implements but to be honest based on the general quality of their work I'd say most of it. I know what software looks and feels like when there's only coding involved and this isn't that. Sky is more akin to what you get when only coders are involved. Dozens of unfixed bugs. New bugs every update. Old bugs returning on updates. A significant part of the user base asking Sky to please stop updating the software.

Now that isn't to say I like the long winded process we go through where I work but I'd have to admit that our quality metrics are significantly above the industry average. Aside from a few lamentable bugs (the vanishing timers on the 9200) so is Humax kit.

(*)Well it starts off that way but in a good coding environment it is allowed to evolve until it becomes 'how we did it'. Only fools try to write the design once and then mount it on a pedestal.

Indeed, better to write software properly first time.

That's what I was taught "Get it right first time".

Automan.

Something Humax have evidently failed to do.

Although I remember what Dijkstra had to say on the subject.

"All programs have bugs"

When asked how a program that simply printed out the numbers 1 to 10 along with their squares could possibly have bugs that were not immediately apparent he replied: "OK, all non trivial programs have bugs".

Pressed for the definition of a trivial program he said: "One without any bugs".

I must be cracking up

Post related to the new Samsung Marvel

Automan.
Last edited by Automan : 07-04-2011 at 09:17

Yeah, c'mon, man, get with the programme! That should have been obvious.

How come unpaid coders can put out fantastic freeware that has to work on literally millions of combinations of PC hardware yet Humax cant do simple things that only need to be tested in a single configuration.

If youre a coder, you must know how long it would take to give us an option of hiding old schedules.

Press red to hide schedules that arent going to be recorded, press red to see them again.

Its not even complicated.

Yes thats the case but then people wont buy from them again so its really short sighted.

Get a perfect box and peoples user experience would be fantastic and theyd want another one.

Seriously, how long would it take to fix about a dozen little niggles? A week?

Surely a weeks wages would be worth thousands of people wanting to buy another box?

Look what apple do, it turns users into mindless zombies who have to have the latest iThing no matter what.

It may not be compicated, but I reckon Humax are putting most programming effort into the newer boxes and possibly the HDR2 which they deny is in the pipleline (well they would deny it wouldn't they, otherwise they wouldn't be able to sell the current model).

Here's hoping...