The epg is updated in the background whenever you are watching live TV. There's no need to ever press the guide button. Just press the schedule button followed by red to display the cached and continually updated epg. Why you want to record 24/7 to the HDD consuming 30-40W when the box is capable of working from a sby power consumption of around 0.75W defeats me. You must be very rich and don't care about global warming nor how long the sector area of the hdd used for the time shift buffer file will survive continous writes 24/7 365 days/annum.

I learnt a long time ago that there is not a PVR out there that does not benefit from being put into standby regularly.

That's good to know. I'm now puzzled as earlier you said "If you carry on [leaving the box on] your epg will get increasingly out of date". If the EPG is continuously updated then how could it get out of date?


Well, it's a bit hard to watch it when it's turned off . I've just measured it: 21W/5W/1W so it's not excessive. The 21W is about the same as the Sky+ it's replacing so I've no concerns there.

I guess everyone has different experiences. I record the Coronation Street ITV2 repeat in the early hours of the morning on my 9300 and it was working fine. Then I decided to put the box in standby to save energy and soon found that recordings were being missed. I stopped putting it in standby and it's not missed a recording since.

Because you won't pick up new channels added, existing ones removed, transponder changes to existing channels (including changes from DVB-S to DVB-S2). Had you bought your box before the Olympics you would never have picked up the 24 extra HD channels. If you had manually tuned them you would not have been able to record them because you would never have had the required firmware upgrade.

Your recordings will never get the graphic thumbnail chapter images (ala DVD).

It's very simple when you finish viewing for the night press the sby button on your remote (It won't affect any ongoing recordings). Next time you want to start viewing (probably 16 hrs or more later) repeat the procedure. If you tend to start viewing about the same time every day set a auto on timer. Leaving it on 24/7 makes zero sense

If the box is within 15 mins of making a recording or actually recording the clock will be on. In this case the boot will be instantaneous anyway. You are running your hdd continously recording to the same sectors of the hdd say 16 x 365= 5840 additional hrs/annum. My 1TB was installed Nov 2008. You will be lucky if yours doesnt fail just outside the 2yr warranty.

Most TV's also have this feature.[/quote]

I come back to the TV do you forget to turn that off?

Thats simply because new exploit exposurse are discovered, exploited and fixed all the time - if you are happy to do without the fixes then fine.

I did not say that - I said it always did update the EPG in standby as the FOXSAT could be in standy for say 10 days - if it did not do this most holiday recordings would be missed.
The EPG is trickle updated but if any data is in error you would get the problem you have.

Sorry if you do not ike the advice - I assure you that, for the Foxsat, it is good.

I have been watching this thread with some incredulity!

The OP asks for advice, which comes with great explanations too, yet he wants to argue with you. He has his advice, let him use his box incorrectly if he wants to now.

All I have to say about the Humax Foxsat is that it is an excellent piece of equipment, and I do as all the advisers in the post suggest. Now with the custom firmware it is even better.

Dear OP, the best guys on this forum (and elsewhere) have given you great advice, choose to ignore it if you wish. I believe you will be wrong too though!

And indeed it did. I remembered to put the box in standby before going to bed, even though I'd scheduled a recording of A Touch of Frost to start at midnight.

Everything seems to have worked fine: A Touch of Frost recorded; the thumbnails have been produced; and all scheduled recordings are still flagged in the EPG. I'll see what happens as the week progresses.

Thanks to everyone for the help - it's much appreciated.

I regret that some posts did come across like that, and for that I apologise. As I've said in other posts, I'm grateful for the advice and my criticism has of course been directed at Humax rather than anyone on here.

I don't agree that the Foxsat is an excellent piece of equipment. In particular I believe that the undocumented requirement to leave it in standby, and therefore leave it open to the automated loading of faulty software, is poor design symptomatic of a designer taking the cheap and easy route rather than one which suits the customer. From Humax's point of view, they would have lost a customer but for this thread because I was on the verge of taking the box back for a refund. I may yet do so.

Once again, many thanks to all those who helped.

[quote=Alan White;60688902I don't agree that the Foxsat is an excellent piece of equipment. In particular I believe that the undocumented requirement to leave it in standby, and therefore leave it open to the automated loading of faulty software, is poor design symptomatic of a designer taking the cheap and easy route rather than one which suits the customer. From Humax's point of view, they would have lost a customer but for this thread because I was on the verge of taking the box back for a refund. I may yet do so.
.[/QUOTE]

All Freesat+ boxes work like that. It's part of the Freesat+ spec. If it did not it would never have passed the Freesat certification. You really should do a little more research before you post such rubbish

Freesat+ requires that firmware and channel line up changes shall be automatic and seamless to the user.

Sby power of less than 1W and auto shutoff to sby are mandated by EEC regulations. For years Sky have flouted the regulations.

I apologise for being merely a customer and therefore not interested in specifications and certification. I simply want a product I purchase to work, as documented, out of the box. I also want the product to continue to work if I choose to set some of the supplied options to my own preference. On the assumption that my problems are caused by failing to leave the box in standby then the Foxsat fails on both of these fundamental requirements.

To those that have offered the OP advice, you can do no more. Graham if the OP wants to use his box incorrectly you will not tell him otherwise.

I would suggest that maybe the thread should now be closed!

Alan, please forgive my last comment - the Foxsat is a very reliable piece of kit, they do change things (after much testing by them and freesat) . The Fosxsat HDR is not perfect - is any piece of complex kit? - forget your worries re OTA updates -Humax know and test the platform well, which is not so for PC updates where what is installed is a bit of an unknown.

Please sit back and enjoy. Please give it a try as advised. Now where did I leave that glass of wine?

Hopefully not on top of your HDR?

ROFL

No problem - I'm grateful for your assistance. I'm told that sometimes I don't make a clear distinction between my frustration at the manufacturer and my gratitude for those who are helping. I don't intend to shoot the messenger and I regret and apologise for any post which can be interpreted in that way.

It isn't that I don't want software updates on PVRs, PCs etc - it's just that I want to do them in a controlled way, at a time which suits me, and with a regression plan. I've spent a long time fixing problems caused by automatic updates and disable them whenever I can.

In the context of PVRs I still remember the five months of problems I endured in 2009 when Sky installed faulty software which caused the box to crash randomly and frequently. As the 9300 has the facility to disable automatic updates then I was expecting the Foxsat to also have that feature. Mind you, I'm surprised at how different the 9300 and Foxsat are: if you took the label off the front no-one would guess they were from the same manufacturer.

I have now set the box to turn itself off for a few hours overnight and it seems to be working OK though it will take a week or so to confirm that series links are being correctly scheduled.

Thanks again to everyone who offered advice.

With the HDR that is easy, If the new update is causing problems (very unlikely, in fact never so far in my experience of this box) then you can simply re-install the previous or alternative version using a USB memory stick. Of course I make sure that I can fall back on using the catch-up players in case of any resulting missed recordings or make a backup recording on one of my other PVRs for live sport or other programmes which are unlikely to be made available on line in short order if at all.

Won't that previous version simply be overwritten with the problem version the following night, as I can't disable it?

And doesn't the same apply to the custom firmware I've read about? That must also be overwritten by Humax nightly.

Surely there's also a legal issue here. I don't have a contract with Humax: I simply own a box they made. I'm not a lawyer but I doubt that Humax has any legal right to change my box without my consent.

No - The custom firmware (higly recommended) contains the Humax firmware and has the same version ID. The Humax settop application is unchanged within it.

New versions of the custom firmwre are generally available before Humax start the OTA as it is their practice to put it up on their beta siute 7 days before OTA.

Unlike Sky's firmware updates it is well tested.

Not so sure about that. You agreed to accepting OTA updates when you bought it and would be the same for any Freesat certified box. If this is distressing to you then exchange it for a generic satellite box.

If necessary, flashing back to a previous firmware via USB then setting a daily repeating recording for 3am (or 4am possibly in summer, I think Humax moved to UTC at some point) would prevent housekeeping kicking in and re-upgrading the firmware. You'd be left with recordings that needed manually deleting though. Possibly a "watch" timer at that time would have the same effect. But I've never had a need to downgrade the firmware on this box, the updates have been very reliable.

I don't expect that we will get much in the way of updates now the Foxsat is very mature. Only perhaps fixes for new problems.

I don't believe I did. There was nothing I had to agree to on Amazon when purchasing it, and there's nothing in the box or manual other than the GPL which, although I've not read it in detail, doesn't seem to be relevant to automatic updates.


I regret that I don't understand. I simply wanted to save the Sky+ subscription and my, possibly inadequate, research pointed to the Foxsat as a suitable replacement. Perhaps I've not made the right choice.

That's an interesting idea, but wouldn't the lack of housekeeping result in the same problems that started this thread?

Sometimes the world won't change for you so you just have to change for it.