I'm intrigued by it as well. It's worth noting that some TVs can respond to a 4:3 signal over HDMI. Others like my current Samsung ignore it. Maybe that's the difference that some people are seeing?

Aspect ratio handling has always been an issue and sadly HDMI does seem to have been a step back after SCART.

Here's my understanding of the situation when using HDMI:

TV handling of 4:3 material.[LIST=1][*]Some respond to the reported resolution to switch ratio.[*]Some respond to the WS flag that can be transmitted along HDMI (the equivalent of the 12v SCART signal).[*]Some respond to nothing and leave the aspect ratio at what the user last chose for HDMI.[/LIST]
Source handling of 4:3 material.[LIST=1][*]Some transmit a 16:9 picture with inserted pillar boxes.[*]Some transmit a 4:3 picture and don't signal the fact.[*]Some transmit a 4:3 picture and signal the fact.[/LIST]
My current setup is: T3 (Samsung) and then either:
S1 (Humax - yay for the HDR)
S3a (Sky HD - bah).
S3b (Sony PS3).

To further complicate things a Sky box has an option - you can force all HDMI to be either 720, 1080 or 'Auto'. In the latter mode at least some TVs change ratio - my old Toshiba did. Oh and most (but not all ) HD Sky channels insert pillar boxes on 4:3 material.

The PS3 has no such option but thankfully I found that ripping my old DVDs to disk caused pillar boxing to be inserted so that solved that problem.

I'm not sure what options the Humax offers (perhaps someone can fill me in on that). I'm just happy with it inserting pillar boxes and transmitting a 16:9 picture. I don't watch much old material anyway but the HDR handles it far better for me than Sky. For what it's worth I emailed Samsung about their handling and in their reply they claimed that HDMI was incapable of carrying a 4:3 image. I suspect they were confused. HD should(*) only ever be 16:9 but HDMI can carry anything. The video protocol has a WS switching flag.

(*)Tell that to Syfy channel and ITV who have been known to transmit HD 4:3 material in 4:3 aspect ratio

Yeah the remote is a bit of a bugbear. It's far too sensitive to direction and it does suffer from double bounce.

Or in my case, null-bounce.

Why would I want to do that ? 30 times is a skip of 60 mins at the default, 60 is 120 mins (at a guess skipping beyond the programme end). Simply tapping in the time code to jump will get there much quicker and with less finger wear . On my box pressing skip in chasing playback is ignored if the real time is less than 2 minutes away.

Would you really use 8X fast forward to go forward 1 hour

As an alternative is that is that not what the chapters are for ?

Strikes me you must try everthing that you can think of to break the box, operations that a normal user would not even consider.

The box's re-sizing engine handles aspect ratio changes correctly, depending on how you set it up, and providing your TV stays in 16:9 you won't see a problem. The problem is the output is permanently flagged as 4:3 over the HDMI irrespective of this. Many TV's don't support AR over HDMI anyway, and on ones that do you can over-ride it manually to 16:9, in which case the box also displays correctly. However, I have a Sky+HD box also (wash your mouth out!) though, which only uses HDMI to flag AR changes to my TV. When I switch to the HDR I always have to manually switch the TV to 16:9 to avoid squash-a-vision. I have several other HDMI sources as well, which all work correctly as 16:9, it's just the HDR that does this. This is a known bug that has been discussed here before.

Youve totally missed the point, Im skipping at 1 min intervals to find the start of a sporting event which I dont know the start time to so I cant know the time to enter.

Not sure what 8x has to do with it.

Still you, I'm afraid.

Advert breaks are not a fixed duration. I find most of those in prime time programmes are longer than 4 minutes - often by around 10-20 seconds.

The 8x speed is the fastest speed that you can use to scoot across the extra seconds without overshooting and needing to back up. Using the skip 15 seconds back function is not ideal as you may only be 1 second into the programme leaving you with 14 seconds to FF to get to the start.

It really is about time you gave up this rather ridiculous crusade to tell everyone that they should us a technique that happens to suit you rather than the one they would prefer to use to suit themselves.

Seems to be a bit of a trend there.

I have a feeling that it FF rebooted the box, hed be on here telling you its not a problem as you can use skipping instead.

Just wondering if they did add 8X FF that people would move on to complain about the lack of X12 FF?

For optimum efficiency I use the skip and FF in combination. Typically for prime time programmes it's skip skip FF FF ... play.

I'd just prefer an 8x speed as that is the fastest speed that I can react to without missing the beginning of the programme. (Actually, 16x is OK if the sponsor's clip is distinctive enough and I'm familiar with it as it provides a sort of pre-warning.)



But I have exactly that problem with the Humax.

Take this evening, for example:

I'll settle down to watch TV at around 9:10 to give the Apprentice time to get recorded far enough that I can skip all that recap that they put in so that they can have a one hour programme with a lot less than one hour's worth of material.

The box may well be on BBC1.

I select guide to set any future recordings I may want to make. After a few seconds of perusing said guide the sound will suddenly spring to life giving me unwanted spoilers from later in the TA. So I have to try and remember to use the mute button

Well, they might but that would be a bit stupid since:

1 2 4 8 16 32 64 is a consistent mathematical progression whereas neither 1 2 4 16 32 64 nor 1 2 4 8 12 16 32 64 are.

I think its more to do with logic.

2
4
16
32
64

It doesnt really make much sense, does it? It doesnt affect me but to me, there should be an 8x as its a big jump in speed from 4 to 16.

Surely it is SOP in that scenario to first change to some inoffensive but mildly entertaining channel?

Why not press the channel up or down button before bringing up the epg ?

Really? That's incredibly stupid of Humax. That's an extra flag they have to insert into the datastream. I can understand a manufacturer not bothering with it at all but how in seven hells did they accidently leave it in all the time?

That would certainly explain why some of you are complaining. A PVR that is constantly flagging its output as 4:3 is crap.

Ah yes, that is similar. Still - at least the Humax doesn't claim to let you turn that off so it's no solution rather than a half-arsed solution

Not only that but they added in this function in an software update

Gah! Another horrible workaround that's as bad as pressing mute.

What I've suggested in the past (which would work for both boxes) is a two stage option:

-)Enable Picture in Guide
--)Only to show current playback.

If I'm not playing anything back I don't want PiG or sound or anything - just the EPG, thank you. However if I bring the guide up while playing back a recording it would be nice to see it continue in a small window. Some shows have a boring five minutes that I don't want to skip over but which I don't really care about.

I am not seeing this problem. Are you sure that the reset after the firmware update did not change the TV aspect ratio setting back to 4:3?

See this very old thread for more info: http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1160271
I must admit I haven't actually bothered looking to see if it has changed again in the latest software.

Thanks Graham.

I think setting a manual scheduled watch event (if that's possible) should work for me. Not a scheduled recording - I'd forget to delete it and find the HDD full!

The watch event is not a general solution - some TVs wake out of standby when they get a SCART and/or HDMI signal (but I don't think mine does with the HDR), and having your TV spring to life in the middle of the night wouldn't be appreciated by many!

There's no menu option (hidden or otherwise) to disable automatic updates then?

cheers,
David.

No way of turning off updates. Setting a daily repeat watch is easy.

Press Schedule and then up to get the blank entry.

Choose a channel, leave the date at current day, set start time and end time, repeat to daily and mode to watch.

As the hdr does not have cec I doubt any TV will wake up with the possible exception of one's like the Panny that auto select hdmi on activity. (assuming of course you are using only hdmi). In the case of the Panny using a different port to hdmi 1 will fix.

Because I may not notice that the box is on a channel that I'm about to record (or in the middle of recording).

Don't forget, this isn't a complaint about the box - it's just something that happens. I was just surprised that Andrue thought it was unique to Sky+ boxes.

The ironic thing is the switch-on Humax splash-screen is 16:9, but as soon as the channel appears it's squashed to 4:3. It must just be the way the HDMI port parameters are initialised I would have thought, and simple to fix.

I am always cautious to mute the audio and display the recordings menu before I switch focus of the TV and AV amp to the recording device if I know it is something where I don't want any spoilers.

As far as this 4:3 thing goes can anyone give me a channel / programme where 4:3 is being incorrectly displayed?