I've had a few starnge incidents recently....

Occasionally the box will not wake up out of standby to make a recording. If I manually power the box up, the recording begins straightaway.

One morning the box was 'On' as if it had woken up to make a recording (just the clock showing), but no recordings were scheduled at that time.

This morning the box would not boot-up. The lcd backlight lit up, but 'BOOT' did not appear. No response to the remote, so I had to do a power cycle, which fixed the problem.

I've experienced other makes of pvr which occasionally seemed to require a power cycle to cure a range of ills. This seems to be endemic with these beasts, doesn't it?

Geoff

I've had that happen once in 2 months, I also switch everything off from the mains at night.
I just hope that the power supply capacitors are not failing already, this fault is common with older equipment when the mains are disconnected for a while, nearly always due to poor quality capacitors in the power supply, lets hope not in this case
Bob

Yep, even the dear old TiVo is not immune. Mine didn't fire up when I expected it to record a programme last night. So I power cycled it and it woke up to record the rest of the programme - something this box doesn't do

I experience exactly the same problem, but only for a particular recording (Chris Moyles Show, BBC Radio 1). It's on series link.

For all other recordings (including series link ones) it wakes up with no problem.

I thought it may be a problem with the EPG, so I set it as a manual repeated recording for that channel and time, instead of selecting the show from the EPG, but the box still did not wake up.

Very odd, given that it is only this one programme.

Correct me if I'm wrong but series link doesn't work on the radio programmes


This is the only way to set a repeated radio show..

Sorry I don't know the answer to your problem

You're right - a better description would have been that the first time round I selected the programme from the EPG, and then edited and chose Weekdays (or whatever the equivalent is, I'm not in front of the box right now).

The second time round, I manually entered the start and finish time and then chose Weekdays (or equivalent).

I don't know if this has already been covered, such a long thread to read!

If recording the last programme on BBC HD, it sometimes missed off the end, and I have the time adjustment doodah on auto. It's usually "Live at the Apollo" btw.

This is a nuisance when you are watching a programme from another source when the Humax fires up. You suddenly find yourself looking at the Humax boot screen. It's no good switching back to your programme until its finished booting, either, due to the messy way it keeps seizing and releasing the input while booting.

How it got past beta testing with a bug like this is a mystery.

I have no doubt that this problem has already been mentioned, but this thread has got unmanageably long now. Can we have an edited list of confirmed bugs somewhere, please?

Ho ho ho... This is a huge opportunity for you Ardee.

Another strange thing (and again, apologies if this has already been mentioned further back) - if you're watching a recorded programme, and pause it to look at the guide, as soon as you press the button for the guide, the programme starts playing again behind the EPG.

That's just odd - surely must be a bug, can't have been designed that way?

I had noticed that, but couldn't quite figure out what it was doing...

Perhaps it flips somewhere to get all the EPG data and the background is black, then when it has read it all it puts the current program back behind?? I've no idea really.

Taliska

No, the instant you press 'Guide' the paused programme restarts.

It's a bug pure and simple and one that I very much hope they'll correct in the next update because it just makes the box look amateurish.

We recently received our HDR and of the first set of recordings quite a few scheduled ones didn't work. The strangest incident was last Sunday's scheduled recording of 3 programs in a row on BBC HD (starting wirh the Antiques Road Show), the first and the last one failed and the second one was ok.

The problem is that missed recordings are most likely to be because the broadcaster has messed up the data, but we have no way of proving this. Perhaps Humax could replace their "failed for unknown reason" message with a proper error log?

Well, I encountered a strange problem.

Was watching Dave Gormon last night (C4) and at middnight decided to record the reminaing 25 mins - by pressing the red record button.

This morning, I came down stairs to find that it was still recording C4. I stopped the recording and I now have a 655mins file in media. I've checked and it is an actual recording (yay hours and hours or big brother :-/ )

I'm beginning to get very irritated by this.

Yesterday, my Hummy failed to record Working Lunch at 13:30. Because I was out all day, I have no idea whether or not it actually came out of standby, but the series timer has moved on to today's date.

Then last night it was set to record several programmes; a mixture of BBC2 and BBC HD. The early evening programmes on BBC2 recorded correctly. It was then supposed to record The Secret Life of of Elephants on BBC HD and The City Uncovered on BBC2, both starting at 21:00. I decided to watch BBC HD and so I switched to channel 108. The REC symbol had appeared, so I assumed both programmes were being recorded. Not so! At 10pm I looked in the Media folder and was disappointed to see no evidence of the BBC2 programme. There had been no folder created for it and no recording made.

So what happened then? It's not as if the Hummy had to come out of standby; it was already on. The more this happens the less confident I become in the machine's ability to reliably carry out its primary function.

This is all too reminiscent of other pvr's, both Humax and Topfield which, in their early days, had a reputation for missing recordings. Mostly these pvr's were made more reliable following firmware updates and, in the case of the Topfield, some clever firmware patches by a dedicated user.

At the moment, I have installed a mains timeswitch to give the Hummy a 20 minute power failure at 05:10 every morning. This used to work wonders for the Topfield; I'll see how the Hummy responds.

Geoff

I had it fail to record the whole of Friday nights programs, 3 or 4 of them. It also failed to record Tuesdays CC highlights, it came out of standby but just didnt record it.

Hopefully this gets fixed in the updat.

So far nothing I have set has failed to record but I have avoided series link and use auto padding, the same strategy has also worked for months with my Humax9200 and Topfield 9800 which also used to frequently miss series link and accurate recording reservations

That's interesting. I too, use Auto padding but I am also using the series linking. I'll try deleting all my scheduled timers and set it all up again sans series links. Although that's not very convenient for an ongoing series like Working Lunch!

Geoff
Last edited by Geoff_W : 22-01-2009 at 12:39

If after you set a reservation you press yellow to get the schedule you can edit the repeat to the usual weekly, daily, weekday etc.

My HDR also failed to record "The City Uncovered" - but I did get a "Recording failed for unknown reason" in the media list.
"Secret Life of Elephants" recorded at the same time OK.
both on Auto padding.

I also had a recording for Motorsport Mundial in the early hours stop after 10 minutes (less than half way through) with the same "failed for unknown reason" message. This had a manual 30 minutes of padding added (since early morning shows on Ch5 often run very late).

Very odd.... and frustrating.

Luckily I can get the City programme again on Monday morning (or online)... but Motorsport Mundial is gone for good.

Can I clarify exactly what you mean, Graham?

Are you saying that to set a scheduled recording, you select it in the EPG but choose 'Single Recording' rather than 'Record Series' and then manually edit the schedule to make it Daily or Weekly as appropriate?

If you have padding set to Auto, does this not then expose the recording to the provider's Start/Stop signalling accuracy (or otherwise)?

Geoff

Yes Geoff, mine's set to auto on and off (thought I had +- 2 mins but seemed to have gone back to auto at some time). Not sure why this always seems to work, may be the problems relate to just to series codeing problems rather than accurate record. I only ever record HD (ITV & BBC) and have not missed any despite postings that the ones I succesfully recorded have failed. Done so many now it looks unlikely to have been sheer luck (I have a 1Tb disc). Got Hustle set to record tonight in HD, will post if any in future fail. On the freeview front series is disabled on the 9200 by setting plus and minus 2 min and on the 5800 by pre series link firmware.

I must admit I've never had a problem with recording BBC HD. Most of my issues arise at the transition of programmes at 9pm. There is often a 4 way change between the 8pm - 9pm programmes and the 9pm - 10pm ones. If any of the first batch overrun, then anything may happen, including a scheduled programme being ditched.

Ah, the price we pay for technology! Life used to be so much simpler with my Betamax video recorder....

Geoff

LOL! You sound just like my girlfriend when I first brought the Humax home and was telling her all about it.