Becoming slower to respond to commands from remote control it seems.

Have carried out a reset and HD re-format without any improvement noticed. Do you think
it's worth trying a new HD in it, or could it be that It's becoming obsolete now with seemingly no further software updates.

I wouldn't bother with a new hard drive unless there is any other evidence of problems with the hard drive. The most effective solution is likely to be to a do a manual tune and omit one or more of the multiplexes to reduce the work the box has to do processing EPG data. The 9200 is becoming obsolete ten years after its introduction but should still be usable for a while yet.

Is it on all buttons or mainly the programme guide? There seems to be a common fault with Humax remotes and I had to ask them to replace mine. At first you might find that you have to press the button two or three times before the guide appears, but it gradually gets worse.

Followed you advice Martin and carried out a manual tune, leaving out two of the
multiplexes. This has totally cured the lagging response to the r/c, and so far now
have not experienced any lock-ups / freezing either, which was happening occasionaly
before. Thank you so much.

This was happening with all the buttons, but since following advice from the poster above
it now seems ok. The EPG fills in relatively quickly now, as before it would take hours
often with gaps after the first few days. Thanks for your reply. I will keep in mindthe
suggestion with the remote if it does seem to recurr on the guide button.

Make sure you don't tune to channels 225 to 243 (I think that's the range) as the 9200 does not understand these channels and will certainly lock up. I suggest you delete those channels if you've got any to avoid acidentally selecting one, use the Edit Channels menu to delete them.

I too have noticed that the remote "locks up" much more frequently and the gaps in the EPG start on day 3 ahead.

I reasoned it must be something which has changed in the transmitted signal - the broadcasters adding more channels to the multiplexes or changing something which means the Humax can't process all the information. I'm certain it isn't the disk - I only recently put in a new 500GB disk.

I have cut down all unnecessary channels (all the +1 channels and all the junk stuff) so I have only 24 x TV and 2 x radio.

I seem to recall someone posting that if you only have stations from two multiplexes the EPG fills properly to day 8.

It's not the remote - when the 9200T locks, none of the remote buttons work.

I don't think just deleting channels helps, I think you have to prevent a complete multiplex or two from being tuned in the first place. I've been running my 9200 for a couple of weeks now manually tuned to just 4 of the available multiplexes, I'm certainly not missing whatever is on the 5th and the local multiplex. The EPG is now full and the 9200 responds instantly to remote commands most of the time, when there is a delay it's a fraction of a second.

Thanks for that - it's very interesting. I had thought I needed to reduce to just 2 x multiplexes to restore the responsiveness.

Goodbye Pick and Dave from ArqA COM5! That gets me to 4 x multiplexes (on Mendip) and they won't be missed (apart from repeats of Have I got news for you ).

It also loses one of the BBC Red Button services (Red button 2? on Channel 201?) but it is always blank so again, no loss.

I'll post back in a few days to let you know how it works.

Yes I left out ArqA and the local multiplex, I've got another box if I get desperate for any channels on those multiplexes. I'll post back if I start to notice any problems again.

Deleting the 5th multiplex has improved the remote response enormously and it is now almost imperceptible. Previously I had got into the habit of using Pause > Play instead of just Play to stop a fast forward - the first Play didn't work, so I pressed another Play ... and when both were eventually accepted, it jumped back to the start because of successive presses of Play .

The EPG still has gaps after 3 days but fewer than before.

On reflection, I am a bit surprised that Humax didn't add an option in the final update to limit the number of days that the EPG searched for so as to maintain the response. I guess they were constrained by the Freeview+ standard which lays down rules for what a box must do to have the Freeview+ logo.

On a few occasions on a reduced number of multiplexes my 9200Ts do not fully populate days 4 to 6 until the day after the retune.


Nice idea of yours to deliberately move any gaps to the days furthest way.

Thinking a bit more about it I'm not sure how beneficial that would be.
If the PVR is not used very often then I'd expect there to be a small risk that this could cause series recordings of a weekly event to fail. And for others withe weekly events cause a potentially worrying and confusing entry in the schedule list and till the next episode came into view.
Putting aside any theoretical low risk of a series recording failure I'm not sure that reducing the epg by 2 days would be a better option. In my case most of my programmes are from just 1 multiplex. The currently tuned multiplex's epg channels eventually have no gaps even with all multiplexes tuned in. So limiting it to 5 days would not be very appealing.
Of course the change of software version with the 9000 series is optional but the difficulty would not have the knowledge to make a decision about which is best for them or even know when a choice is available.

Luis
I find that series links still work even if the next episode is missing in the EPG. The worry is what happens if I add two "same time" recordings, and the gaps fill and I now have a clash with a series linked program. I am pretty sure that I once ended up having three programs being recorded at the same time (presumably just from one or two multiplexes).

I also find that if I am tuned to a multiplex, then that multiplex often goes out the full 7/8 days. BBC repeatedly does this. So, when I am going away, I have resorted to leaving it on each multiplex for a few hours to populate that multiplex's EPG, and then set my recordings on that multiplex.

I am also surprised that, if it is a "lack of processor power" problem as we suspect, that Humax didn't recode such that it first did one multiplex to completion, then another, then a third etc. I would have thought that they could have spread the load over a longer time - it would take longer to complete, but it would complete. As it is, we seem to be running into overload problems when it just stalls. Of course, it could be that it is the quantity of EPG data in a single multiplex which is casing the problem, in which case my ideas can be consigned to "write-only memory", aka the hollow, round cylindrical object in the corner of most rooms.

Under the current way it works even with gaps it is virtually impossible for it to be missed. I was talking about a small risk if the software was changed how you suggested not the software as it is now.


Yes you may have experienced this. It can occur with a full epg. The freeview + spec specifies that clashed are checked with a new timer when it is first created. The Humax software does this and no more than that. If there are 3 existing series timers that clash in the 2nd or subsequent weeks then it will not warn you.


That is also my experience with the 9200T when all multipexes are tuned to. But if I miss out 1 multiplex when tuning then its more like 30 minutes rather than 3 hours. Other than that I can only sympathies with you.


The original 2005 software for the 9200T was quiet primitive compared to later versions. At the time of first release the hardware was adequate for the functionality and for both the content and the size of the epg.

The epg is on a 4 1/2 to 5 minute broadcast cycle on each multiplex. The 9200T used to take 2 cycles (9 minutes) to populate the epg and did so from scratch every time it was switched on. This was OK at first but well before the gaps started to appear in 2012 there was a slow down of remote control commands during those initial 9 minutes. Humax rectified the slow down (in early 2010?) by spreading out the population of the epg over far more than 9 minutes and also cashing the epg to disk to minimise the inconvenience at startup. That also meant that it was only after a reset, a full retune, or a week of zero usage did the 92000T have to populate the epg from scratch. That was fine until the 2nd half of 2012 when the gaps started to appear how ever long and however often the 9200T was switched on.

My view is that there was something that could have been done but for a product 7 years old it may have been too big a rewrite of the code to be of benefit even for a bit more PR. My understanding was that the Topfield 5800 and Humax 9200 were supposed to be very similar in some of their internal design. The native Topfields began to suffer from an inability to cope with the size of the freeview epg in the spring of 2012. Topfield had allowed an API interface for user code. There were a few user written EPGs for the Topfield and the method most of them used unintentionally got round the native memory limit.

As a matter of interest I get the impression from your post that you prefer the Humax 9200 to the other PVR (assuming it is a PVR). Is that so?

I have two alternatives HD PVRs, a Humax HDR-FOX T2 and a DigitalStream DHR8202. Both have better performance than the 9200 but much less convenient user interface hence they are relegated to a back-up for the 9200.

Sorry about the OT post.

Colin

creddish

I far prefer the 9200T to the later Humax boxes and I will stick with it as long as possible.

I bought an HDR FOX T2 and thought that the user interface was horrible beyond belief and Humax fortunately took it back! Seee http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showt...hlight=johnh77

In general I like the FOX, but it does have a few annoying features:

1. Unnecessary and annoying screen saver.

2. MP3s hop about the screen (as a screensaver I suppose).

3. Pointless thumbnails next to the programmes - a genre indicator would be more useful, plus an indication of how far through the programme viewing is (rather than the (undocumented) + indicator which just shows if you have looked at it at all).

4. No bookmarks on radio programmes.

5. Display reverts if you leave it in Media or Guide for more than about five minutes - so if you are in the middle of something in the Guide you lose the context.

Of course the FOX has lots of good points.

Sorry for the delay in replying Colin, bit of a senior moment. I do prefer to use the 9200, I prefer the user interface more than my other machine. The other machine is a Panasonic DVD/VCR recorder that I used during our Accurate Recording tests a while ago so not a PVR. My only other PVR is the Humax 8000T which has the same interface as the 9200. One particular thing I like about the 9200 EPG is the yellow 'now time' cursor that 'threads' down the EPG, something I wish the Panasonic EPG had.

I thought it was your Panasonic. We did spend a lot of time on that project. Accurate Recording on the HDR Fox is virtually perfect and no missed recordings so far, so it is a good back-up for the 9200. I get round the complex time consuming navigation for playback and deletion on the HDR Fox by playing back acceptable 9200 recordings (the majority} and clearing out the HDR backups en-block every couple of weeks when convenient..

Colin

It's a very rare event if my 9200 misses a recording or chops off a beginning or end. I think the majority of recording problems on the 9xx0 machines are caused by multi transmitter reception or owners expecting Accurate-Recording to work on channels that don't implement it. I remember recording some stuff from Quest a while ago, their implementation of AR was to start and stop at the schedule time, laughable.

I do get occasional missed recordings so I find backup valuable. I find late starts on news programmes most annoying as I tend to miss some or all the headlines as the broadcasters put these immediately at the start of the programme. I have never had any reception from additional transmitters. However, I have used your instructions this week to perform Manual Tuning of just 3 Mux's which has improved the low remote response and EPG population issues.

Colin

My 9200 has been running fine tuned to 4 mux's but I did get some delay to remote commands yesterday although it was immediately after switch-on.

Hi,

Sorry to bring this thread back, but I cannot for the life of me find (google and in the humax menus) find where/how to disable 1 or multiplex's to see if this improves my stability/freezing issues.

I have removed some channels but as someone else said removing a multiplex is the sure fire way to see if this helps the issue.

any advice really welcome.

Thanks

Youu need to do a manual tune and omit one or more multiplexes. These are a copy of the Biggles (Big-les on here) manual tuning instructions:

The reason for doing a Manual Search is to target the six (five after DSO) multiplexes coming only from your preferred transmitter. The UHF channel numbers for your six/five multiplexes (digital channels) from your preferred transmitter can be obtained from [url="http://www.digitaluk.co.uk/coveragechecker/main/index/dummy/NA/yes"]Link to DigitalUK web site[/URL, enter your post code, house number and also tick the "Detailed view" box. Your UHF channel numbers are in the grey columns in the Coverage prediction section, ignore the BBC B multiplex (HD channels). The compass bearing for the available transmitters at your address are also shown on the page so you can check to see which transmitter your aerial is actually pointing at. You should only use the transmitter that your aerial is pointing at.

First you need to delete all existing channels.
Menu > Edit Channels > Edit Channel Lists > Password (0000) and delete all channels, note there is a Select All button. If you were on a TV channel before going into the menu then TV channels will be listed first, delete them all. Go to Group, select Radio and delete all the radio channels. Press Exit on the remote control and when invited save all the changes.

You will now get a message saying No channels are available……, press OK. You should now be taken to the Installation menu, choose Manual Search. Select the first UHF channel number obtained from the digitaluk web-site for Channel (actually the order doesn’t matter) and press Search. When the search completes, Save. Select the next UHF channel number for Channel and press Search.....Save. Repeat this for all six/five UHF channel numbers and to finish press the Exit button. You will now find all your Freeview channels on their correct channel numbers, good luck.

thanks Martin