Just wondering if any of the Humax fan club can explain why my HDR just decided to reboot instead of recording Primeval? Not the first time this has occurred with an ITV 1 HD recording. Strange that certain members describe this box as having "rock-solid" firmware

With a sarcastic post such as yours doubt anyone will be rushing to respond.
However I am happy to say that Primeval is currently recording for me on my(to quote you) on my wonderful Foxsat HDR,as it does every week !!

Oddly coincidental I've had a couple of Midsomers fail to record, but as I was not there have no idea whether a reboot was the cause. I don't stand over the box to know, so, Badvok, how are you sure it was a reboot?

Just thinking that the only rock solid firmware ( very) is likely to be a stone ( or brick).

I think the firmware is almost rock solid - as far as crashes/reboots are concerned.

However, I have had somewhere around 8 reboots in the 26 months I've had the device. (Never had a lockup, though.)

There does not seem to be anything in common between these. In a couple of cases I was simply watching a recording. Nothing recording, starting to record, finishing recording, waiting to record and no buttons pressed. And the programme had been playing running for some time.

When the box rebooted it was possible to FF to just before the failure and watch so it was nothing odd about the recording.


There was a spate of Midsomers failing when on series link. I always record them individually now. I think this is a broadcaster error rather than a Humax one. In a way it's a pity that almost everyone here uses a Humax PVR as it means it's hard to nail that sort of fault for certain.

A spontaneous reboot as described is most likely to be the result of a power fluctuation, either on the mains or due to some problem with the box's internal PSU.

I've had my box from within the month they first went on sale and on sunday I witnessed a reboot as top gear was triggered to start recording last sunday. Fortunately I was there to watch the programme as it rebooteded.
One reboot in all that time is pretty solid.

Strange! My Foxsat rebooted too last Sunday as Top Gear was due to start.

I also have had the HDR reboot when it was just about to record a program.

Topgear. Primeval, Midsomer Murders......

Well I think I can spot the conection there. A bunch a absolute radge programmes. Obviously the Hummy has a built in 'taste' feature.

Only joking, honest (well about TG and Primeval anyway). Mine has never rebooted in over 2 years.

But it gives lie to the theory that it is always down to a power supply problem. Bad coding of the firmware leading to it not handling broadcast stream errors very gracefully in all circumstances is more likely. The Koreans are not very good at expecting the unexpected.

I would have said that the reboots I have experienced have been way too infrequent to make a faulty PSU a likely cause. Possible but not likely.


Yes but when it has happened to me whilst replaying a recording (no other events) I've always gone to just before it crashed and it's played perfectly.

BTW, the Humax is not a micro-programmed device so the controlling program, running under a Linux like OS, is software, not firmware.

The code is not loaded from disk but is stored in non-volatile memory so it is firmware.

Really? That is a very odd arrangement for a device like the Foxsat - although I suppose it would make some sense to build it like the non HDR which doesn't have a disk.

Even so, all that means is that it's using some non volatile memory as an SSD from which to load the OS and software.

If you define that that as firmware then the entire Windows system and everything it runs on my main system is 'firmware'.

Why is it odd, it's the standard arrangement for pvr's, without this you could not simply stick in a new blank hdd and it will continue to function. Try doing that with your primary boot drive in Windows

Good point.

What I really meant was odd was that it would be odd to have the software running in non volatile - with an overall software architecture as complex as a PVR.

As I said, in reality, the non-volatile is just an SSD from which the device boots so that it corresponds to the SSD in my system. All the things that the Foxsat stores on the HD (photo's, music and video) are, similarly, stored on a 'real' hard drive on my system.

These terms do tend to drift with time but I'd resist using 'firmware' for software that includes a Linux like OS and has to go through a 30 second boot process to start.

It's not Linux-like, it is Linux. Linux is the kernel. On the HDR, the shell is provided by busybox.

Only the set top box functions are custom software (a monolithic, multithreaded program called "settop").

I said 'Linux like' because I wasn't sure if the kernel had been modified in any way.

Given that Linux is about as 'Linux like' as you can get I thought that would keep me safe from the pedants (just because I am one doesn't mean I don't fear others. ).

Seems I failed!

As a pedant you should be chiding all these people and organisations who disagree with what you think firmware is:-

http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=5...Q&ved=0CBYQkAE

Actually, most of those don't disagree with me at all.

Not to beat about the bush it is absurd to call Linux and a large program running under it 'firmware' because if you are going to refer to a full scale OS and a multi-threaded, multi-purpose application running under it 'firmware' then the term becomes meaningless - simply a synonym for 'software'.

If you go through the definitions in the link you provided you'll notice that the common factor in virtually all of them is that the software actually runs in the(P)ROM. It is the fact that a device boots and loads it's program into RAM to execute it that is where the distinction really lies.

I agree with you - the loader is the firmware, Linux is middleware, and settop is a application.

Its not middleware - middleware implies it is only facilitating communications between several independent systems.

Personally I'd say it is firmware - according to wiki "firmware is a term often used to denote the fixed, usually rather small, programs and/or data structures that internally control various electronic devices." by modern day comparisons it is small and it is fixed. Things move on and get more complex, so does firmware.

What are you saying is firmware? Linux or the whole shooting match?

The problem with using a useful term like 'firmware' to cover an ever wider gamut of software configurations is that it loses all meaning.

I know several people who have laptops and desktops that only ever run a browser and email client.

If you can can call the software in a complex device like a PVR 'firmware' there would be no conceivable reason not to call the software in these 'firmware'. And where does it end? They add some photo-processing and video playback. Still firmware?

It's possible that that is, indeed, the way things will go and 'firmware' will become nothing more than a synonym for 'software'. But that will be a pity as it will mean that yet another useful term has lost its usefulness through general ignorance.

Far better, I would have thought, to reserve the term 'firmware' for what it has always meant: Software that runs in (P)ROM and does not need to be loaded into RAM to execute.

OK - The loader is Firmware, Linux is the Operating System, Busybox is middleware and settop is a application. Agreed ?

Middleware were I worked was used to describe the layer of software that provided application level access to OS services not normally supported.

Yes, a lot of these terms tend to be somewhat 'company cultural'.

How many people remember when a 'mainframe' referred to the processor, memory and controllers - the electronics that were in the main framework - and the opposite of 'mainframe' was 'peripheral'.

Then DEC started making mini's that were often used as multiplexors for terminals - as such they were peripherals.

Then people started using the mini's as standalone computers but retained the term 'mainframe' as a sort of opposite of mini.

And thus the word 'mainframe' segued from one meaning to a quite different one.