I've had a HDR FOX T2 for a few years. A few times, it loses its recording schedule.

It's just done it again, and it coincided with a retune that it's demanding. Done the retune (manually) but the recording schedule has disappeared, and nothing's been recorded the few days I've been away.

Can just the need for an update cause the box to ignore or cancel any recordings? That would be extremely annoying when you're on holiday!

(Why are there so many updates anyway? The message also keeps cropping on my friend's TV and the kids are only interested on channel 71 not in some crappy new shopping channel. They haven't got the patience to sit through a retune even if they new which button to press.)

Yes all the Humax Freeview models that I am familiar with delete the recording schedule when retuned. I do think this is probably the number one improvement that I would like to see and it is certainly feasible for the vast majority of the recording schedule to be retained with most (but not all) retunes.

The customised firmware (hummy.tv) automatically backs up your favourites and recording schedule daily and lets them be easily restored after a retune event. It also has a procedure to suppress automatic retunes.

Freeview should have a football channel such as Sky Sports News something similar to it or bring back Sky Sports News to freeview

The HDR-FOX T2 does delete its recording schedule during a retune. It's known behaviour.


The recent twist is that the latest versions of the Humax firmware will do a retune even if you're not there to tell it to go ahead. As you have realised, this means that your recording schedule can get wiped while you're away on holiday

The thing to bear in mind here is that the box can upgrade its firmware from an over-the-air (OTA) broadcast without you even being aware of it. There are ways to stop the OTA update happening, but if you're already on the updated firmware then you'd need to revert back to a previous version - which involves downloading it from the web and installing it from a USB memory stick.

Even if you get the box on to a firmware version which doesn't do automatic retunes, you still need to stop it updating its firmware automatically otherwise you'll end up back where you started. One way to prevent the box from updating its firmware is to schedule it to switch on at the time it would normally be checking for OTA updates. There is more information about that here. If you install the customised firmware (available through the same www.hummy.tv site linked above) then that provides a setting to disable the OTA update. There's also a setting to disable automatic retunes (called "disable DSO") so that you can run the latest Humax firmware without then getting forced retunes which wipe your recording schedule.

The other thing that can muck up recording schedules is that the box doesn't update its EPG if it only wakes up in order to record something. That means that, if left to its own devices, it will stop recording series linked programmes after about a week because it runs off the end of its EPG. (This is more of a problem if you use padding at the start and end of recordings, but it can still happen even if you use Accurate Recording.) The workaround is to schedule the box to switch itself on every day for about half an hour to forty minutes, so that it has a chance to keep its EPG up to date. You need to use the reminder scheduling function to do this - as stated above, a recording won't wake the box up enough to allow the EPG to update.

A good place to start getting to grips with all the stuff that's not in the manual (or is there, but is non-obvious or extremely well hidden) is Things Every HD-FOX T2/HDR-FOX T2 Owner Should Know at hummy.tv.

I would most definitely concur with this statement. I would definitely like to see recordings being retained after a retune as while I am waiting for a USB to arrive I am retuning daily.

Thank you

Best

M

The above is Not true (unless you are using padding). When using the default Accurate Recording, the EPG is updated whilst the box is in it's half awake mode waiting to start recording.