[RANT MODE ON]

Firstly, the whole paradigm for a PVR is that you should be unaware whether you are watching live TV or a recording. The Thomson sticks to this as well as it can. Say I'm watching live TV and I want to set up a recording. I pause live TV, set up some recordings, come back and press play. During the pause I can go into the menus, set up more recordings, do anything. I can even change to another channel (assuming it has spare tuners). And when I've done all that, I come back to my original channel AND IT'S WHERE I LEFT IT. I carry on from where I was. Quite often I find myself rewinding a few minutes to remind myself where I was. Cool.

With the Humax, I do the same thing, set up a recording, fiddle with the menus or check out what's on another channel. I come back and the first channel's buffer has been cleared, I'm back on live TV. I can't rewind. WTF???? Where's my TV gone? If I want to check out another channel, or touch any other button, before I do it, I have to think... "am I watching live TV, or am I watching a recording?". If it's the former, I have to set it to record the programme, then do my stuff, then come back to the first programme, and rewind to find out where the hell I was. It's garbage - poor user interface design. No reason for it. Pah.

Secondly and similarly, it's near bedtime, I've had a few beers, I'm sitting watching a film I didn't know was on. I think "this is good, but time to go to bed, let's record this". With the Thomson, I just mash the record button, it grabs and records the programme, PLUS IT GRABS WHAT IT CAN OUT OF THE BUFFER. In most cases that's the whole programme. I come down in the morning, the whole programme is sitting there on the disc, and I can pick up from where I left off, or more usually I can start again from zero. With the Humax it defaults to starting the record from when you press the button, not from the beginning of the programme. Now I know I can do some nonsense with rewinding and then pressing record, but WTF? After a few beers? The default behaviour should be "grab what you can".

Thirdly, I don't like Accurate Record since it doesn't work on a lot of channels. Instead I set the padding to 3 minutes each end of the wanted programme. I come back the next day and find out that the recorded programmes list contains THE NAME OF THE PROGRAMME THAT WAS ON WHEN THE RECORDING STARTED, not the name of the programme I wanted! So I have a whole list of programmes like "The Ten O'Clock News" because I recorded something after the news, it started 3 minutes early and just named the programme file when it started recording. Aaarrrgggh how useless is that? How do i find what's what? The Thomson may be 5 years old but at least it can name the programme file correctly regardless of padding.

There are more rants - the remote has teeny tiny, but important, buttons UNDER A FLAP?!! There are three or four ways to get to the list of what was recorded, but depending on how you get there they show different information. And in some recorded menu lists you can't delete recordings, but you can in others. The shortcut to the list of recorded programmes (IIRC) requires pressing a menu button (one of the teeny tiny ones iirc), then doing a SECRET RIGHT PRESS on the joypad to move from channel menu or something to recordings menu. What am I, psychic? If I go to the recordings menu, press play to start watching, press "stop" to stop watching and it doesn't go back to the recordings menu? Iirc it goes to live TV? Aarrrrgggh!

[/RANT MODE]

Yes, the Humax does some things better than the Thomson but there are so many user interface inconsistencies and needlessly poor design choices that I couldn't hack it. My OH and I agreed that the only things it did better than the Thomson were (1) sorting out redundant padding between consecutive recordings on the same channel (2) more disc space and (3) could in principle record 2 and watch 1 live if the muxes allowed it. But that's no great benefit - I've got a Freeview TV anyway. Fortunately I only had it for a fortnight - it was a present for the mother in law. My OH spend most of a day translating the manual into language a 60 year old non-techie would understand!

I look forward to being intuited! I have seriously thought about stockpiling another DHD4000 ready for when this one blows up. Or else coughing up for the dreaded Sky+....

Firstly: Lost of the buffer problem has been with the Hummy from day one. Changing channels, going into menus, etc will cause the buffer to be lost. (This has nothing to do with the interface design - it is a technical problem that the engineers have not looked into solving...)

Now you know this, you won't get annoyed when you do these things and lose the buffer. If you want the buffer, rewind and record or use the PiP trick (for changing channels) before doing those things that lose the buffer...

Secondly: You can record all of the buffer if you know how to use the facility... (also never drink and operate a PVR )

If you press record you will record from that point onwards. To record the whole buffer, rewind back to where you want and record from that point.

Thirdly: AR is part of the FP features and its behaviour will depend on the FP metadata being transmitted (which will affect all FP boxes - not just the Hummy).

Use autopadding if you don't think AR is any good. (At least the Hummy has this options - other boxes don't.)

Everyone agrees the remote is a poor design - people just remove and throw the flap in the bin...

As an engineer, I get infuriated when other engineers blame technical problems for egregious flaws in the use case or UI design. IT'S BROKEN. FIX IT.

Loss of the buffer is a technical problem that Thomson could solve in 2004... so why can't Humax solve it in 2008? It's a massive flaw in their product and yet.... they can't be bothered?? Sounds like about 5 lines of code to me "if you have spare tuners, continuously record the currently displayed channel and the last channel switched to. Do not erase the recording unless you have to, eg the user switches to a third channel"

Secondly I know I CAN record my whole programme by rewinding to the start and pressing record. But the whole point of the PVR is to make my life easier... why can't it do the logical, user-friendly thing without me intervening? I know I CAN start my car by pushing it down a steep hill and lifting the clutch. But why not do the easy thing? Why save half a programme when at no cost AT ALL you can save the whole programme? Again sounds like another 5 lines of computer code... "if user presses record during a programme, and you have part of the programme in the buffer, extract from the current buffer as much of the current programme as you can, from its nominal start time until 'now' and then append to this with live feed"

My problem isn't with AR which I know isn't Humax's fault, my problem is that if you use manual padding it appends the padding metadata to the file, not the wanted programme metadata. Now I can think of at least 3 ways to solve that, again a few lines of code. Humax must be aware of this problem - beta testers or their own engineers must use the box in this way. It's easy to fix, Thomson could fix it in 2004. SO FIX IT.

And finally, jeez, if everyone says the remote is crap, why don't they DESIGN A BETTER ONE.

Anyway, I'm enjoying the rant. It's all good clean fun.

I know the Humax isn't any worse than other consumer products, but I spend lots of my time watching TV and as my brain switches off, I need my PVR to be much smarter than I am.

We've heard this one before... when some one says "As an engineer/programmer/developer..." the phrase "If you're so clever, why aren't you _______? ... and why are you hanging about here in dead end forums?" comes to my mind...

The point here is that people - whatever their knowledge and skills are, always think they can do better... if so why don't they ever go and become a PVR engineer so that we can benefit from their superior knowledge on how things should be done or how they should be! And at the same time run a business and produce an affordable PVR... and solve world peace and poverty while they are at it!

Not as easy as typing SO FIX IT!


If the Thomson is so good, why isn't it around any more? In fact why have you gotten a Humax to replace it?


See first reply!


Not really, it's always the same crap that goes around...


If so I suggest putting your money where your rant is and spending some really money and paying for something you think does everything for you - say get Sky+ and see how better that does over your Thomson or Humax...

But after a while you will find problems and quirks the Sky+ box will have too... and you've paid all that money for it and... you SHOUT in the forums WHY DON'T THEY FIX IT! And I would reply and say, Murdoch has your money now - so why would they fix it?

Samey old crappy - around and around...

You are right - apologies. What started as a harmless discussion about the merits & demerits of particular PVRs turned into a rant about the intransigence of softies in general and Humax softies in particular. Not helpful and way off topic.

Suffice to say I was very disappointed in the Humax, I thought it was going to be the Box For Me, but it wasn't. Fortunately I was able to turn it into the box for my mother in law!

As for this thread being a dead end - you're probably right. It's only really relevant to those with particular brands of PVR and particular Samsung TVs who experience particular vertical lines on the screen.

Hopefully my next post will be on topic, I'm going to do more experiments on my residual vertical lines in case it helps me or anyone else who suffers the problem.

.... and of course if anyone has any suggestions based on my last "useful" post - post 125 - I'd be pleased to hear it or carry out any experiments. Ditto if anyone else has this problem.

Markpax why dont you use the PIP function to see whats on other channels ?

As for the white line interferance i get taht but only use when i first swith on the unit on a crt tv

Let's not go there!


Interesting, can you be more specific? If you read my post 112 (or the OP) you'll get an idea of what we've got. Do you think you have the same thing? What TV & PVR combo gives you the problem? How long does it last (seconds, minutes, hours)?

Cheers