Two really annoying things that I can't find help on in the manual, but I might just be being daft!

1) If I'm watching a program and have paused a few times for pee and tea breaks, so am in time slip mode, and then decide it's bed time so I'd like to record the rest of the show for tomorrow, when I press Record I get a message saying that the program will now go to Live Broadcast, meaning I can't record the few minutes of pause I have accumulated. Sky handles this without breaking sweat. It is really irritating!

2) if I am watching a program and go into the Guide, it takes half a minute or so for the program I currently have on to re-assert its presence via transparency. The soundtrack also goes dead for that period. Pretty weak. And if I then find another program in the guide that I want to switch to, highlighting it and pressing Enter just gives me a Watch or Record dialogue box, and selecting watch merely puts a clock symbol by the new program on the schedule, rather than actually switching to it.

Starting to wish I hadn't been cheap! You get what you pay for and the Sky Plus box does seem to do things much more naturally and intuitively not to mention quickly and smoothly!

Grrrrr....
Last edited by tashley : 25-01-2011 at 20:31

As far as 1) goes the rule of thumb is that if it is worth watching then it is worth recording it in the first place.

Welcome to DS!

You don't say what box you have. Humax?

From the description it's certainly the Humax.

Because I'm new here and genally quite a nice guy I won't give that one the answer it craves!

Jepson is right; it's the Humax. Sorry for not stating that!

both the problems you stated are being worked on and will be in the new firmware release, think they had it booked for release in Nov 2010 - but extended due to a bug.

If you press schedule then press red you go to the program guide without any delay. Picture and sound are not lost either.

Dan

Very useful information guys, thank you very much!

Its only because youre used to that, if you used the HDR for years, the sky box would do things that really annoyed you.

1 is being fixed but can be solved by recording everything you watch.
2 can be solved by pressing 2 buttons, it does that because it updates the epg unlike the sky one which can be wrong and out of date.

I know there are advantages too but it sort of feels like moving to a new house and finding that it has a jacuzzi but no loo

I agree 100%, this bug is simply so annonying. IMO this, and other issues with Live Pause, should have been picked up before release. It mars what is otherwise an excellent product.



Sky used to be like this - and then they cached the guide to disk. However, the Humax also caches the EPG, if you can remember the correct keystrokes. This is an easy fix, the default operation should be to use the cache.




The Humax does grow on you, but is not as intuitive as Sky. However, the functionality is all there and with a few simple tweaks it would be even better than Sky HD. (I'm not biased, I use both. However the other Hillels have voted with the remote, they only use the Humax for British stations such as BBC3/4, not on the Irish Sky EPG. )

Here is some handy tips...

Install a 2TB Hard Drive, you then get 963hrs Recording time. (compared to 80hrs on sky)

Install a FTP onto the box with a media server, you can now watch your humax on any computer in your house (or any device that plays upnp )

Your able to chuck DVD's onto the humax.

Your able to take what you've recorded from the humax - then edit out the adverts then stick back up onto the box.

the firmware is ROCK solid - When we had sky it had to be rebooted twice a day, and shed loads of problems.

personally I think the humax Blows the SKY+ and SKY HD box out of the water and takes a dump on them.

I have used the HDR for the past two years - it is not as intuitive as Sky. (It could be, with minimal effort by Hmax.)



That is not a "solution", just a very clunky workaround.


Another workaround that shouldn't be required.
I don't know where your comment on the Sky EPG comes from, issues with same are few and far between.

From a hobbyists point of view the Humax is far ahead of Sky +HD. However, the vast majority of consumers neither know, nor care, about FTP, home-built media servers, or hardware upgrades. For those users the Sky HD is currently, barring cost, a better solution.

How do you do this? What format?

I'm a little surprised about this comment as it suggests that you only 'record' stuff that you want to watch later. I may well be wrong but my advice to anyone would be to tape EVERYTHING you want to watch. Before long you get a library of programmes that you can watch and you don't have to watch advert every again.

Why watch Emmerdale and Coronation Street live and have to put up with about 16 mins of adverts when you can record them, watch a previous recording 7.00-7.30 then put Emmedale on from 7.30 and blast through all the adverts.

I'm sure this is how the majority of people use HDR (regardless of platform). We never watch live tv anymore.

exactly, Ill record everything for the day and if I happen to be there, Ill watch it live and still have copy if I have to do something else.

Not to mention what happens to the time-shift buffer when the programme you are watching ends and two recordings start up. Or does a Sky box cope with this?

[quote=simola;47637359] I may well be wrong but my advice to anyone would be to tape EVERYTHING you want to watch[quote]

If you still have a VCR that is!

[quote=caldirun;47640964][quote=simola;47637359] I may well be wrong but my advice to anyone would be to tape EVERYTHING you want to watch
Yes, but I hoover with a Dyson!

Instead of pressing pause simply press the red record button. When you come back pick up the ongoing recording from the media list. If you need to pause/rewind again etc there is no problem.

Even when the bug is fixed there will be occasions when you will lose the end for example what would you expect to happen if both tuners are set to record when the programme you are watching finishes ?

Lol - Sky boxes are not free of bugs

I'll nail my colours to mast right off and say that I prefer Sky over Freesat but neither PVR is perfect. What I will say is that with the HDR Humax finally produced a PVR that on balance is at least as reliable and pleasant to use as the Sky boxes. If the broadcasters could be trusted to generate EPG data correctly I would probably rate it higher since the Freesat EPG has Accurate Record and Alternate Handling.

My biggest peeve with the Sky box is the mini-TV.
You can turn the mini-TV off (hurrah) but the sound continues (boo). Worse still it ties up a tuner so you get prompted about programme clashes even if you're just browsing the EPG or Planner. Oh and has anyone ever figured out how to use the Sky 'clash dialog?'. I never risk it. I put the box into standby rather than try and work out how to select what I want to cancel.

You can do that with a Sky box. Not sure what the upper limit is but I upgraded my Samsung with a 1TB and I was able to transfer existing recordings which meant I didn't have to try and empty the box first. Sadly that latter option appears to no longer exist for the moment so I guess the HDR wins there as well.

I've never understood why people want to store stuff. I like watching TV. I probably watch far too much - but I can't say I've seen anything on any channel that was:

a)Worth watching more than once.
b)Not likely to be repeated half a dozen times over the next year anyway.

As for removing the adverts - meh. That's actually more something I'd want to do with the Sky box. The HDR has 'skip by xx seconds' and that means adverts are easily dispensed with. It's the damn' Sky box that only has FF/FR both of which seem to get increasingly jerky and cranky with each firmware update.

I'll give you this one. Just. I've never had many actual problems with any Sky box (going back to my first one which was a silver Panasonic) but a lot of boxes do seem to benefit from a reboot now and again. Actually my Sky box is on a timer and powered off overnight and during the working day so it gets rebooted once a day anyway. My friend's isn't but he only reboots once a month when it starts to get a bit slow. Still - my HDR is not on a timer (because it uses a lot less power in standby) and I haven't needed to do anything to it since I got it nearly a year ago.

If it weren't for the obvious difference in actual content I think I'd almost agree with you.

What really gets my goat with the Sky boxes are that Sky specified the bloody things! In my experience they are actually very dependable. I time shift everything without exception and it almost never lets me down. But clearly some people have problems and each firmware upgrade shows different bugs on different boxes. It's also pretty clear that most HD boxes are now struggling just to render the EPG.

How the hell do you get into that situation with proprietary hardware? I can only assume that Sky's designers and developers are inept and/or underfunded.

I agree. I started saving some particularly good programmes and even though a lot of them have not been repeated there's no way I'm going to have time to watch them again as there's always more on than I can actually get around to watching.

The number of DVD's I've got backed up is alarming and I only rarely buy them.