See here, the official Freesat forum...
http://community.freesat.co.uk/t5/fr.../bd-p/freetime

I got the update too, must have been automatic.

Can anyone tell me, the omittance of a tv/radio button, is it easy to switch between tv to radio, like the old one?

Radio and TV are in the one epg. Just tap in the channel number you want to listen to. If you bring up the epg and tap in 700 it will jump to the radio listings.

Genuinely shocked having checked out the link at just how many faults there appears to be with this Freetime box.

I know forums don't always give the best picture of how a product is as people usually only post about problems they're having, but that link certainly doesn't make good reading for potential future customers.
Apart from the issues some are having, the thing that I picked up on straight away was that the main concern seems to be no acknowledgement from either Humax or Freesat which doesn't seem too good considering the HDR-1000S is FreeTimes flagship model.
Being a 9200T owner since the first firmware release I'm pretty used to the ups and downs of owning a Humax box, which was easier to put up with as I ended up getting features that were never advertised to have when I bought it.
I was looking at buying the 1TB this month, but at the moment I'm not sure if I should take the plunge and go along for the ride or just leave well alone for now.

Gonzo, there are 2 main issues at the moment.

1 Failure of the first recording of the day, this is easy to get round and I expect a fix in a very short period. This appeared in the change in firmware from 1.0.6 to 1.0.16 so clearly is a software issue.

2 Reports of the box taking it on itself to insist on a disc format. Clearly this is a worrying issue as it could be hardware related. So far touch wood not experienced this personally but I did swap the drive for a 2TB WD unit shortly after getting the unit.

The rest to be honest are pretty trivial, for instance if you press the forward skip button too quickly a few times playback jumps back to the beginning.

I'm fairly sure there were "missed recording" problems on the original firmware too - otherwise I imagine Humax would have reverted to the old version in fairly short order!

If I recall correctly, we were all hoping that 1.0.16 would fix this - instead it apparently made the problem somewhat worse.

Yes there were some failed recordings but not in any way you could consistantly repeat the issue.

On the original firmware you didn't consistantly lose the first recording every day after a overnight shutdown. After 1.0.16 it became impossible to record the daily breakfast show unless you either.

Left the box on 24/7, added autopadding, created a manual recording reservation or set the box to wake up for 10 mins or so about an hour before the recording was due to start.

Without the above the box wakes up as it should 15 mins before the recording was due but fails to actually start recording.

Thanks Graham,
What HiFi have given a pretty good review, even if they do sort of say YouView is better at the moment.
http://www.whathifi.com/review/hdr-1000s500gb

Hmmm not exactly in-depth stuff is it? Sounds as though the reviewer has played about with it for half an hour or so....

I'm surprised that no-one from here has registered and posted a few acidic comments under the review on the What Hifi site....

Was tempted to post something but probably best I don't.
At the moment I'm very disappointed not just with this box but with Freesat as a whole

If you feel that strongly about an issue with the box then why not post a comment as I'm sure others may be interested and considering Humax are promoting this review it might make them take some notice and address these issues or at least make a statement.

Why are you dissapointed with Freesat?

As said previously we bought one for a relative and have not had any feedback. Not unexpected though as relative would not really know if it is working right or not. What I do think having read all the reviews and forum comments is this has all the hallmarks of a an unfinished product hastily rushed to market. Do you think that Freesat had to respond to the threat
from Youview?

There appears to be rewind issues too.

another problem i have noticed is that when watching a recording, if i skip forward twice to bypass the adverts, if i go slightly too far, when i press rewind it does nothing, it wont rewind, i have to skip back and then fastforward again....

ohh dear, i was going to register and voice my dis-satisfaction regarding the recording issue, which is my main grpe, but they have switched off the registrations until 10am for maintenance, i did email Humax about it but they as yet have not replied, and this was a week or 2 ago

I don't understand this . If you use the standard skip key settings of +2 minutes and - 15 seconds. If you overshoot then skip back the most amount of adverts you have to watch is 15 seconds and is usually much less than this. All the Humax pvrs work this way. Why bother with fast forward for a few seconds of content ?

I assume you mean WhatHiFi? When that review was first published in December it was open for comments, after some comment had been submitted pointing to the many complaints on the forums the comments were closed and none of the submissions published.

Hmmm...so trivial that some users are returning their boxes as unfit for purpose.

Well you always get a few who have absolutely no sense of proportion and sadly they tend to frequent places like this.

I have around 20 series recordings on the go, since the mechanism that is causing the current recording problems was understood then I haven't lost a single recording on the box (a 10 second job to set a power on timer). A pvr that records is surely fit for purpose. I guess a fix won't take very long anyway.

Hmmm - if only those skip keys worked properly, and pressing them a fraction too quickly didn't return you to the start of the recording....

Perfect example of the lack of sense of proportion

Exactly the point I was trying to make, trivial problem simply push the button a little slower. A few milliseconds longer to skip the ads is hardly a major issue is it.

Most pvrs don't have skip keys anyway, would you return it as being unfit for purpose ?

Yes there are workarounds but that's less than ideal.

Most of my weekday recordings are early-evening, so I have my power-on/off set to about 17.30, to catch programmes that start at 18:00 or 19:00.

But then Saturdays I only record Borgen (21:00) so have to remember to move my power-on to 20.00 if I'm going to be out.

Same problem if I'm recording a late night ToTP. And of course if I set it to record something during the day - a rare occurrence for me - I have to remember to fiddle round with the power-on time again.

Sadly it's far less convenient and reliable than the Top Up TV PVR that I bought for £25 in a Cash Converters and used for many years...

Basically if you record and watch a great deal of TV (I would class 20 series as that) then you probably notice few problems as the box is on most of the time. If like me you're an occasional viewer, with 3 or 4 series recordings, who some nights doesn't switch the thing on at all, it can have a major impact.


I hope your guess is accurate - if only someone who knows in Humax Towers would tell us something.

Not at all old chap, just making the point that the workaround you suggested for a bug, requires another workaround because of another bug I thought my post had an air of wry amusement!

I have that number of series set to test the box, many are seperated deliberately by more than 4 hrs. If you only want to record 4 simply change auto on and auto off in the recordings option to say 2 minutes.

That will save you 11 minutes power every time you make a recording

I use the power option simply because the box is used most days from 12:00-23:00.

What bug is the workaround designed to get around