There might have been an earlier thread on this but if not or if anyone missed it, you might like to try this.
When you switch on your Hummy put it on to BBC 1 and leave it on that channel. I find the EPG loades much much quicker. Just try it and see if it works for you as it does for me.

If you use PiP and have the PiP channel as ITV (or any different Mux to that from BBC1) this also speeds things up

BBC channels usually work well for EPG population.

The new firmware v20 fully populates under 10mins. Now and next info almost instant. The PiP trick does not seem to populate the EPG any faster under v20.

Despite being a pretty hard-core software chap, and having seen many screwy architectures that stopped you doing seeming simple things, I still cannot really imagine why it's so dammed hard for Humax to store the EPG on disk.

OK, they might have to serialise a data structure that really wasn't designed to be serialised (you really do need to consider this from the start!) but we're still only talking about a few days work to retrofit this. I've done this for *massively* more complicated data structures that a smattering of EPG data, and even when it's rich with inconvenient pointers you can walk and serialise pretty much anything.

At shutdown, freeze incoming data, serialise the EPG, write data buffer to a file on the disk, shut-down.
At startup, load serialised data file from disk, regenerate EPG data structures in memory, and then start adding new data as it comes in.

Job done, time for the pub!

Ian

[quote=gadgetmind;20223032]Despite being a pretty hard-core software chap, and having seen many screwy architectures that stopped you doing seeming simple things, I still cannot really imagine why it's so dammed hard for Humax to store the EPG on disk.

Totally agree on this point. I love the 9200T and think its easily the best piece of home entertainment kit I have ever bought but the losing of the EPG is its biggest flaw especially when the 8000 (now about 4 years old) retains it. So why could Humax not do the same with the 9200?

Maybe because the 8000T was flawed, and when its EPG got full of holes, you had to re-boot.

The two models are also completely different. You might as well compared an 80s Ford Escort with todays Ford Focus... (see here )

Hi


I agree completely there is nothing hard with saving the EPG to disc and like you I have done much more complicated things in little time. As it stands Humax seem to struggle with anything new no matter how simple, taking many months to get something working only for it to be buggy. They are likely under resourced and over-worked.

We know these things aren't difficult, just look at all the functionality added to the Topfield PVRs by individuals for free. The Humax and Topfield PVRs use exactly the same platform.

Regards

Phil

On the 8000 the EPG was held in NVRAM; apparently there isn't enough NVRAM available on the 9200.

The difficult part being that when the PVR is turned on, the data held is out of date. Makes no difference whether it is stored in the NVRAM or memory-dumped to HDD.

Hi


Indeed, but there are ways to overcome this. The Humax could update the EPG when it gets to being 12 or 24 hours out of date, it's doing this anyway to check for EPG changes with scheduled programs, but it just throws the EPG away afterwards.

It doesn't matter any more if we turn the box on and set a recording before the EPG data has refreshed, as should there have been any changes to that programs schedule it will be updated as part of the Freeview Playback features. So if anything saving the EPG data now is more appropriate than before.

Still it's better than it was as version 20 loads much quicker and the bug where if you were watching a recording the EPG never updated has been fixed. That used to be so annoying to have had the thing on for a couple of hours watching recordings then you go to look at the guide and it was completely empty.

Regards

Phil