It always works for me and will have to for my parents this time as I'm not able to visit over the weekend.

If I were to set Sunday's programmes without altering the clock and left the box on Saturday night, it wouldn't work as the set programmes would have the wrong reservation times surely?

Anyway, back to the holes...

Searching for channels with the aerial out does not delete channels because if no new channels are found (as will be the case with the aerial out) you are not offered the 'Save' option at the end of the search so your existing channels remain. In the case of the instructions above it's the Default Setting that is deleting the old channels. Also with later software the Automatic Search procedure deletes old channels before the search starts, but this is not influenced by the aerial being in or out.

Not sure about the effect with Manually set timers, but timers from the EPG should be OK as they watch for the accurate recording flag which is the same if the programme is rescheduled etc.

All too complicated for me but I never have any problems. One thing that has been noticed in the past though is that some Series-Links are lost in the week after the clock change but then reappear the week after.

Presumably if "it always works" for you, you've never tried just leaving well alone?

This is just the 'belt and braces' manual search procedure for machines that are really screwed up. If your machine was working and correctly manually tuned before, then I doubt these instructions will help. Removing the aerial and doing a Default Setting is to unlock a machine that is in a continuous reboot cycle from switch on, as far as I know nothing more. Having said that a Default Setting (no need to remove the aerial), stop the search then Manual Search, is always a good housekeeping procedure from time to time and is the way I retuned my 9200 last week. I still have some holes in the EPG though.

Yes, I fell foul the first year I had it. Mind you, I don't use Series Link, I set everything manually. If I were to use SL then I'd definitely leave well alone.

It looks like you are right Big-Les. I thought that the box had managed to fill the EPG this morning and then whilst scrolling backwards and forwards I saw BBC1 and BBC2 on Sunday disappear. I had scrolled through to Wednesday midnight and the top five channels seemed to be without holes. Then I scrolled back to reserve X-Factor on Sat and noticed the Formula 1 was on this weekend. I selected the Qualifying on Saturday and then went to select thte Race on Sunday and it had gone.

I have tried to make a note of which channels have holes and their duration but as I scroll back and forth they keep changing.

Agree. Those who set manually or adjust timers after selecting from the epg do need to adjust the time to what the Humax will be dispalying when the timers time comes up. One extra trick for manual users is to set an extra timer for something like 3:30 to 3:31 for Sunday. This will cause the clock to get adjusted to GMT so that it matches the adjusted timers.

Those who use series link should head Big-les's warning. Fiddle at your peril.

I have now managed to deliberately get this issue when previously it has not affected me.

What I did to get this issue was to use default settings to reset everything including the stored tuning details. I cancelled the subsequent Auto-tune so that no Radio or TV could be watched or listened to.

I then manually tuned to 4 of the SD muxs from Crystal Palace. The 4th mux tuned was C3+4 i.e. the mux with 5 and channel 4. The 9200T was then left on overnight to fill up the epg. In the morning the epg was whole but also had the previous day’s programmes from 24 hours before onwards. The 9200T was then put into standby and switched back on. The epg was complete and the previous day’s programmes had been cleared.

Later that day the epg still appeared complete and the 5th mux was then manually tuned into. The 5th mux was ArqB which has 30 channels with 29 of them having epg details. Result was that far off entries in the epg for 5 and channel 4 started to disappear.

I have retuned using my normal method and everything is back as it should be. My normal method is a default setting to remove all stored channels followed by a manual tune but without storing any channels that will never be watched or listened to.

My EPG is nowhere near as bad as that, a few holes yes but mainly intact, at least when I've checked.

I don't normally delete unwanted channels because I've not seen it make any difference to anything in the past. However as the number of crap channels has increased beyond a joke I think I might take a leaf out of your book and try it again. Deleting the channels in the search window before saving I find a bit tedious, do you think it makes any difference if you simply delete the unwanted channels using the Edit Channels menu afterwards?

This of course is doing the same job as my suggestion earlier of leaving the Hummy ON through the night, you could also set the Auto ON/OFF timers to do the same job.

This weekend the clocks go back one hour so using Luis's example the Hummy will switch ON at what it thinks is 03:30 and then realise that the time is 02:30, it will probably then record for one hour and one minute. In the spring things are more complicated. The Hummy would switch ON at what it thinks is 03:30 and then realise it was 04:30, when will it switch OFF because 03:31 didn't exist to the Hummy. It may try to record until 03:31 on the same date next year resulting in user complaints that the Hummy was still recording in the morning. A timer or Auto ON/OFF period of greater than an hour may be needed in this case.

All this of course assumes that the broadcasters get the time change correct. I remember a good few years ago that they changed the time at 2:00 in the afternoon rather than 2:00 in the morning.

With my Humax 9150 I have just done the whole proper manual tuning (as set out by humax email to someone earlier in the thread). Then done the manual tuning and deleting the channels I don't use before saving them. Left the box tuned to BBC1 and PIP with ITV1, went out and came back an hour and a half later and still lots of massive holes in the EPG.
For example BBC1 to Channel 5 were fully filled in after coming back but just before posting I exited the guide and just went back into it now and BBC1 & BBC2 are fully filled for the next seven days but now ITV, Ch4 & Ch5 are sparsely populated up until Sunday morning and completely empty beyond that. This all happened within the space of a minute.
Regardless, many of the channels (Pick TV and ITV3 two examples) were completely empty after the next 3 days.

The issue is really beginning to annoy me now. I completely understand the box is years old now and don't expect any fancy update to enhance functionality but I think it is fair enough to expect an update or resolution to fix something that was working absolutely fine until a month ago.

EDIT: Just checked again and again it's changed e.g. ITV3 which was previously completely empty beyond the next 3 days now is fully populated until Sat 3.55pm before going blank, filling up again from Sun 7am until Midnight Mon/Tue before going blank again all day Tue & Wed. It seems to be random.
The only consistent channels fully filled for me are those on BBC Mux A. I don't know if that's a coincidence or not...

Please could you conirm whether or not you were not tuned to any channels before the second set of manual tuning.
And if you were tuned to no Radio or TV channels at that stage how you achieved that?

If I understand what you mean correctly then no. I followed exactly the instructions earlier in the thread that someone had got from Humax (first set of manual tuning done after default settings with aerial out etc). From what I can remember for the second set of manual tuning I stopped the auto search that came up on reboot, it said something like 'no channels search now' I pressed ok then selected manual search. Went through each of the muxes for my area, and for each one deleted the channels that I wouldn't be using then saved. Is this what you mean?

I'm happy to try something else if you think there may be something in there I could change

Yep, that is what I mean. I am mystified that mine is OK but after following exactly the same process as me yours is not.

Would the number of channels saved make any difference? I took out all the radio channels and saved only 37 TV channels in total. If you have less then that might be a factor?

I will give it another go later when nothing is being recorded just to make sure. Anything to try and get this fixed!

When I did the method mentioned by Humax above a few times, the EPG was fine for the day, but about 24 hours or so the holes began to creep in again. Can you check after, say, 36 hours after fixing it whether you have a full EPG or not?


I've deleted all the radio stations and a lot of the clutter on the TV side, yet the EPG gets holes. Still, it might be worth deleting the stations when you're manually tuning the muxes and not afterwards. I save the muxes then after all that delete the channels using the Edit Channels option. Maybe it'd be worth seeing if deleting the channels initially after you've just manually added the mux makes a difference.

Yes that's what I already did unfortunately, deleted when tuning each mux.

I always remove unwanted channels before saving each mux (though I actually keep everything with receivable AV on, only deleting encrypted, internet and text channels). At that level, it is still not immune to EPG holes.

This week I have also tried tuning that way. Doing this resulted in an epg wth changing holes.
I also switched it into stand-by and back on again to see if that would help having deleted channels since the last switch-on, but it made no difference.

Only a default setting followed by a manual tune deleting unwanted channels before saving appears to work for me.
I end up with less than 70 Radio and TV channels which are OK.

I'm now having another go with a slightly different set of channels to see if that makes a difference.

Due to Humax not fixing their F2-Fox epg I am not holding my breath on this one.

One small observation is that even channels on the same mux, for instance Pick TV and Dave, seem to have different results on the EPG at the same time. For instance on my box's EPG, next Wednesday Pick TV has entries, yet Dave is blank. The BBC ones seem all fine throughout the week, but I've noticed that previously.

Well just did another manual tune just in case I had done something wrong first time, but still the same results.

Looks like I'm back to the good old days... anyone got a copy of the Radio Times?!

http://www.radiotimes.com/tv/tv-listings