SHORT VERSION OF THE STORY: Just bought a Humax Foxsat HDR last week and cancelled sky. Now it's stuck on 1 channel even when i unplug and turn back on again. Anyone had this before? is there a way of forcing a reset even though i can't get into the menu's (since the remote won't do anything and the buttons on the box won't do anything)

LONGER MORE DETAILED VERSION OF THE STORY:

Just bought a Humax Foxsat HDR last week and cancelled sky.

Within the first 5 days the machine has frozen a few times i.e. the channel and sound are still coming through but the remote does nothing and the buttons on the machine itself do nothing.

Every time it happens, a power off and power on again has resolved the issue....except this time.

Today when it happened again...the channel is still stck on 1 channel (the picture is coming through etc) , and the remote does nothing and the buttons on the machine itself do nothing, and this time there is no sound !

Every time i do a power cycle the box seems as if it's booting up fine, but it takes me back to the same channel. sometimes with sound and sometimes without.

Additional info 1 - I bought the box from ebay as it was £200 instead of £220 from humax. seems like mistake number one at the moment.

additional info 2 - i installed a web portal on my pc (forget what its called) and installed some extra pckages.

additional info 3 - for some reason i put in a yorkshire postcode when setting up the machine even though i live in scotland. i think i read online that the yorkshire broadcast had a better quality picture on ITV1. (actually its ITV1 that the machine got stuck on)

just thought i'd give 3 bits of additional info in case they are pertinent.

Anyone had this issue? How can I do a hard reset type thing? should i be sending this machine back?

Gutted that my new toy is broken because i thought for months about how too get away from sky, and managed to persuade the wife this was a good idea!

any help gratefully received...

I think the simple answer may be to return it for a refund.

When you press a key on the remote control does the white PVR button at the top of the remote flash red, If not press the white pvr button on the remote and try again. The supplied remote will control other kit. If you press the wrong white button accidentally the remote is trying to control something else.

Yes, that's correct - you have to select the PVR button before it does anything!

no it's not that. I tried that already, than ks though mate.

I take it from the responses that being stuck on one channel isn't a common problem? and that there is no way of doing any type of 'hard reset' of the box?

Not a common problem.

Without being able to get at the menus to do a reset the only thing I can thnk of is to try reflashing the firmware from a usb stick

http://www.humaxdigital.com/uk/suppo...ategory_seq=65

Have you tried rebooting the HDR with no lnb cables connected?

I spoke to the reseller on ebay and he's arranged for Humax to send a courier to come t my house and swap my box for a new box.

Thanks for your thoughts though chaps. The guy isn't coming till Friday so i'll try both of these suggestions before Friday just out of interest.

Much appreciated.

Don't try it , if it works they might charge you for wasting there time.

My box does this and sadly it's now occurring every few days.

I have an original STB from the end of 2008 which has been fine until earlier this year when I started experiencing issues with the box waking to record a programme. I "remedied" this by setting a power on timer to wake the box in plenty of time for any programmes to be recorded during the evening but then the second problem reared it's head.

I get the problem you describe following loss of power. This can be either because I've been away for a few weeks so have unplugged the STB or more recently because the box crashes whilst entering standby and I have to power it off. The box quite often crashes whilst trying to power down after performing the housekeeping task in the middle of the night too. I'll quite often notice the box in it's crashed state in the morning with the hard drive still powered up.

Having reset it, the box will boot again (slowly) and then will be stuck on the last channel I viewed with the info bar at the bottom of the screen. The box won't respond to buttons on the remote or on the device itself.

I do have a way of getting out of this state but in your case as it's a new box I wouldn't bother and would just wait for your replacement. For anyone else with a box out of warranty that experiences the same issue this is what I'm having to do every couple of days now:

1) Turn off at the back
2) Turn off at the plug
3) Turn on at the back
4) Whilst holding the Power button on the front of the box, turn on at the plug. Keep holding the power button until the box fully boots and immediately powers down again.

This used to be enough as it would be clear on the next boot. The last few weeks though I've had to follow a few more steps:

5) Turn off at the back and wait until the red light extinguishes on the front. Wait a further 10 seconds and then power on again at the back.
6) The box will either now boot and be okay or it will boot and then automatically go into standby. If the latter, turning on from the remote will now boot the box and I can now change channels.

Yep, my box is pretty broken right now so I'll be purchasing a replacement in the next few days in time for Christmas. I'm probably going to give the Echostar a go.

Anyway, like I say, this may help someone in the future if only to power it on again to be able to retrieve any recorded programmes. It seems a laborious process but these are the only steps that are guaranteed to work (in my case) every time.

Have you guys tried a reset to factory defaults?

I didn't try any of the solutions suggested above, i ended up getting the ebay retailer to arrange fr humax to come to my house and swap my box for a new one.

Current box is working great.