I would guess that the PVR would come out of full standby some 15 minutes before the Scheduled time based on the data held in the PVRs Recording Schedule tables and the EITp/f data would be available and take control. If changes to the EPG Schedule were received and processed in this time they should change the Recording Schedule.

Colin

I recently asked one of the chaps at Humax if they could confirm that they were working on an update for the 9200 to resolve the EPG issue.
His reply is quoted below

Good Afternoon Tom,

Unfortunately no new software is being developed, however the latest version of the software for the PVR-9200T is being re-broadcast on 17th December from 10am. I hope this helps.

Kind Regards,

Craig


Doesn't sound promising. Unless the update is going on under the normal radar as it were?
I hope Martin can shine some light on the issue regarding his " reliable source "

Cheers Tom

I have no knowledge of anything being done for the 9200 but you never know.

Hi Martin

I may have read something into your post that wasn't there....





Cheers Tom

Yes that is what you appear to have done.

My mistake. Sorry for any confusion.....

Cheers Tom

Martin, thebiggfella describes his services as "Virgin TV (M+), Broadband (L) & phone (M), Humax 9200T"

Within this 9200T thread you replied to one of thebiggfella’s posts


Then you later posted

What were you referring to when you stated that Humax were actively investigating?

The problem with the EPG population.

This thread has been very quiet lately considering the EPG loading problem is continuing (at least on my machines tuned to Waltham and Sutton Coldfield). The EPG for some channels is only loading in full for the next 2 or 3 days. Has anyone heard how Humax's investigations into the problem are progressing?

Deathly quiet, but last time I looked my 9200 EPG was reasonably full (but not full) from the Nottingham transmitter and so was my friend's 9300 from Waltham. My 9200 isn't on at the moment but I'll check again later.

Correction. Having just spoken to my friend, from her description her 9300 EPG is about 50% full after the first three days. My 9200 EPG is about 75% full after the first three days.

The problem is really starting to annoy me now, especially as I want to be able to look ahead to programmes in the xmas week and set them to record now.

I know being a 9150 my box is old and I have no right to updates but this isn't really an update, I'm just asking for something that was already working fine for years to be fixed. My box is about 3 or 4 years old and I only upgraded the harddrive about 8 months ago, if I'd known this was going to happen I would have put the money I spent on the hard drive towards a new box. The only reason I didn't is because I weighed everything up and the 9150 does everything I want a freeview+ box to do - not any more!
I don't know if any of the 9150/9200/9300 boxes are still on sale but if I had just bought one and it was just out of warranty I would be seriously hacked off that suddenly a key function no longer works.

Just because Humax have a couple of later HD models out should not render the 9150/9300 boxes obsolete or old. These boxes are current on their web site and we shouldn't be expected to replace our TV kit every 3 or 4 years at the whim of whoever 'controls' Freeview.

Well that's true. Just mean I would be far more annoyed if I had purchased the box within the past year and found out it isn't working compared to 4 years ago, because at least I got almost 4 years out of it. But as you say 3/4 years is not acceptable for the lifespan of a product this expensive.

The funny thing is before all this happened the Humax youview box was a strong contender to be my next box in a couple of years when I probably will consider catch-up services a must-have for me, but as it stands now there is no way I will be buying another Humax.

Agreed. Anyone wanting a new, up to date, Standard Definition PVR and who might have been told that Humax were a good manufacturer would be led to purchase from the 9150 or 9300 range - the latest SD models. They could be disappointed in finding the EPG only populates for half a week or so.
Humax's credibility and public confidence would be considerably enhanced if they admitted the existence of a problem and indicated its nature and the steps being taken to resolve it - or, if for some reason it is not solvable, explore possible workarounds.
Not everyone wants or needs a more expensive HD recorder.
As a matter of interest is the EPG loading problem present on the HD-FOX machines?

I have not seen this problem on my HDR FOX T2 which is very reliable. On my 9200T I always get a full seven day schedule for the BBC channels but others are erratic after 4 days. An old S series Bravia also has holes in its guide at times but newer Bravias seem OK. Strangely an ancient Digifusion FVRT90 has no guide problems at all although it has plenty of other oddities. Problems seemed to start when the EPG was extended to include a large number of "adult" and internet channels, deleting these doesn't seem to help though. Looking at the reviews on Amazon, despite their faults, Humax products seem to do better than many of their rivals.
As someone who once owned a Betamax I have come to the conclusion that replacing technology fairly frequently is now a fact of life. At least everything is cheaper, try entering the prices of things you bought in the past into the "Historical price Calculator" on the "This is money" website and you will see what I mean.

I bit the bullet and purchased a new HDR Fox T2 which was nicely discounted at Comets. Although this new PVR is pretty good, and with custom software works fairly well, I would still like to be able to sell my PVR9200T as a fully working secondhand product. Humax seem to have gone very quiet since I responded to their last "helpful" email 4 or 5 weeks ago.

Well that might be alright for the wizkids and the enthusiasts who want to stay on the forefront of technology, but for many people they just want to watch telly with the kit they've got and the trailing edge of technology will do just fine. I don't believe most people want all the whistles and bells on the latest kit, and probably wouldn't be able to use them anyway. Lets face it, many people are totally lost if their telly doesn't autoswitch to the correct input channel.

The freeview HD-FOX do not suffer from a similar issue with the current epg broadcasts and has at least a fair amount of head room if more internet streams are included in the broadcast epg.
I have delibratly tried to break the HD-FOX-T2 epg by getting it to hold the epg for more than one transmitter.
To try and get a holey epg an HD-FOX-T2 was tuned to all channels from a transmitter’s 6 muxs and also duplicate PSB1/BBCA, PSB2/D34 and PSB3/HD from another. I took turns in which transmitter was displaying on my TV so that all the epg was populated.

Also many people don't have the money to keep throwing about on new kit every few months/years. Hence the working aging laptop running XP, no HD, a 9150 that's getting old, an ancient VCR, oh and a TV with a crt near me at the moment! (All working within the current normal parameters).

Same here mainly because I resent the fact that I'll have to replace it with an unnecessarily wafer thin TV with such inferior audio that I'd have to supplement it with a sound bar. Why they can't build these flat panels on a reasonably sized base to house a couple of decent speakers I'll never know.

With the mounting despondency about the lack of a fix for this annoying problem, I emailed the Humax advisor who'd told me a month ago that they were working on it. I asked him for a fix timescale and he has just replied:

'Hopefully in the New Year.'

This does give us some hope to cling to. It certainly would be one of the nicest Xmas presents I could get!

How about the re-emergence of the "failure to respond to commands from remote or front panel" bug that was fixed in the last software update? It doesn't happen all the time, but at times it refuses to respond for a minute or two. This is since the EPG problems, but I don't know whether there is a connection.

I have noticed a significant increase in the frequency and severity of this issue. It tends to occur most frequently shortly after coming out of standby.

Colin

Yes I have noticed this too on my 9200 on just a couple of occasions. For me this has only occurred since the channel change event that has also affected the EPG.