Hello

I popped into my local Currys in Warrington yesterday and picked up a lovely new Freesat - Freetime box.

On the whole I'm really impressed, but not with the on demand. My internet connection speed is around 20-30mbps and I can stream iPlayer HD on the PS3 and my Roku perfectly through wireless.

On the Humax it just stutters constantly, if I pause it and wait a few minutes then press play it is ok. It appears to just not be buffering enough of the program up before starting playing the stream. Has anyone else experienced this? Anyway to solve it? It doesn't actually appear to buffer anything.

Thanks

No problems with mine,very smooth.

How is connected to your router? It's OK on mine with a 8mbps connection (connected by cable),

It's connected directly to the router with the supplied ethernet cable.

The only other thing I have noticed is the transitions/animations around the menu e.g gong from tvguide and back to tv, scrolling up and down the channel list is a little jumpy as well. Is it like this for anyone else?

Nothing like that on my box, like the others no issues with vod.

Does <freetime> on demand have the web based ITV Player with all the ads, or a bespoke ad free version?

Had another play this morning and it does seem a lot better, stuttered for a around 10 secs on iPlayer and the started playing nicely... just wish it would buffer more before starting.

The EPG has lots of little animations, personally Id prefer to be able to disable them and have it that bit more snappy... but its something I'm sure I will get used to. The interface looks really nice.

The ItvPlayer seems to work well, you do get an Ad at the start... the picture quality is pants compared to iPlayer though but no surprises there. Im sure at some point ITV will sort it once.

Overall Im mega impressed now having had a proper play. This is replacing SKY HD package, considering once you have bought the box its completely free its pretty damn good. If they can get Netflix onto this box its going to be amazing.

I think that you might have a duff box. I'd get it swapped-out now, before you end-up with lots of recordings on it. Occasional buffering is common, even on fast links -- I sometimes see it on iPlayer and I connect via BT Infinity, but the other problems mentioned suggest to me that something isn't quite right.


Clem

Thanks Clem... yeh I am a little worried I might have, when jumping between channel pages is there a slight animation delay or is it really smooth?

It's virtually instant on my box. However it does take a minute or two to populate the epg after a boot (it doesn't appear to cache the epg like the Foxsat-hdr). Were you trying this just after a boot ?

Yeh just tried rebooting again, its so odd just all feels jumpy even just jumping between menus.

It should not be like that, I would be inclined to get it replaced.

I have uploaded a video to YouTube of my box starting up and the menus/on demand. Would someone with a box just mind looking at it and telling me if thats normal?

Yes, if you post the link.

It may sound silly as the device has just been released, but are you all running the same software version...?

Worth checking...

Andy

DOH!!! Sorry

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXr00bBJmSc

Software version: UKSFAA 1.00.06

If you go to Network info and connect it weirldy shows -

Great, your'e connected, lists BBC iPlayer and ITV Player, but then above my IP address says BeBox. Really dont understand the BeBox bit from memory thats a BeThere broadband router I dont have Be and use my own Billion Router?

Who is your ISP?

Andy

vispa.net

There is no BeBox in my house?

You're right that does sound odd. Would be interesting to see what others have displayed on that network screen...

I haven't got my box yet so cannot be much more help...

Andy

Here is the screen I get, the IP address is right... just dont understand why BeBox is showing?

http://digitalblahblah.com/temp/humax.jpg

(I have hi-lighted it in pink)

I get the same. - I do see Busybox in open the open source list - in very small print!

That must be a bug then.

How does the video compare to your experience?

It might be a pet name for Busybox. I have it set to output 1080p. I suppose it depends how good the TV's up-scaler is (and if it does). It looks great to me - very crisp great picture even with most SD channels.

Picture looks great to me as well. Its just navigating the menus it stutters quite a bit and on demand content I have to first pause and let it buffer up. Its just so odd I play HD content through PS3 and Roku using Wifi and this never happens.