OK, overall the Humax Foxsat HDR is a great bit of kit. However there are a few item I'm not too pleased with.

My last receiver was a Pace Freeview recorder (now 2 years old) so I am drawn to the comparisons

THE CONS:
1. No reverse slow-mo - so trying to review a small section of recording several times is not easy and made worse by the fact that the slowest reverse speed is X2! I can imagine that footie lovers would love to see the ball go in the net several times in slo-mo - lol
2. Slo-mo goes down to 1/8 speed but click one more time and instead of pause, it goes straight to play.
3.Poor button location for playback controls. Why oh why was the Bookmark, Bookmark List and Slo-mo buttons placed well away from the other rec/playback buttons? Reviewing is sooo fiddly!
4. Fast Forward and Reverse has no X8. I find that skipping adverts during playback X4 is too slow and X16 makes it hard to guess Play when the program restarts.

All the above were not a problem with the Pace and therefore I miss that, but I did have a few issues with that receiver

None of the above are bugs as such and are just my personal opinion, others might not agree that these are a problems.

Alan

for 4, just have 1 min for the forward skip and 15 secs for reverse skip and you can skip ads way quicker than faster playback. Overshooting isnt a problem as you skip back easily.

As for the slow mo, I couldnt find a frame advance anywhere when I was ironically trying to see if the ball was in the net or not.

1) Remote is a bit of a disaster generally. (Fortuanately I have a Harmony that wasn't doing anything).

2) Inability to remove channels from guide whilst leaving them there for finding an alternative instance (probably the fault of Freesat and if that's what it took to finance the EPG we can't really complain).

3) Inability to delete while something is recording - if it's that hard at least let us mark programmes for the box to delete when it has the chance.

4) Daft habit of restarting a paused programme when you perform some unrelated activity. It's almost as if it sees not doing something as a scarce resource.

5) Moving in the EPG is slow and erratic (which makes the inability to remove channels all the more annoying).

6) Turning subtitles on during chase play.

7) Inability to turn subtitles on/off during chase play - what's that about?

8) Subtitle button will not operate as a true toggle even when off/on is the only option.

9) Box does not keep track of subtitles so that if you turn them on there is a significant pause while it waits for the next batch to appear in the data stream. Humax are not going to fall foul of the child labour laws if the have it keep subtitles buffered when they are not being displayed.

10) Loud pop emitted through audio out when box is turned off.

11) Length of time to boot. Worth putting up with for the low standby power but it really shouldn't take that long for a single purpose box to boot.


That may seem like a long list but I still think it's a great piece of kit and if they never address a single one of the problems I'll still be happy with it!

Out of interest roughly how long does it take to boot out of standby? And once it has booted, is recording pretty much instant once you press the record button?

thanks

I don't understand why the slow boot time is causing annoyance for anyone. Am I missing something? When exactly do you need to reboot it?

My Sky HD box took about two minutes to boot, but it was always on so it didn't matter to me.

You reboot it every time you bring it out of standby. The Sky box fakes standby by switching off its outputs and lights but otherwise remaining powered up and consuming almost as much power as normal. That's why turning it on is so quick - it's already on! The Foxsat HDR shuts down its main power consuming components in both of its standby modes. This results in significant energy savings amounting to something like a couple of hundred KWH per year, say about £25 worth.

Thanks for that, now I understand. That's pretty stupid then. I'll be leaving mine on then, once I can find one to buy!

You'll be operating the hard disk continuously as it will be buffering the last two hours of the channel it's set to view. Although the disk should be designed for 24/7, it's still not going to last as long that way.

3) If this is really a problem why don't you create a folder called Delete and move programmes there after you have viewed them by using the file manager

5) As posted previously you can access the programme guide by pressing the SHEDULE button followed by the RED button - this shows you a whole weeks EPG without any jerkiness - much better than Sky where you always have to wait for the data to be populated if looking a few days ahead

Well, it's a solution, but a very clunky one that would actually be much harder work than remembering what you wanted to delete and doing it later. This is a 'rough edge' and one that Humax can easily smooth over by simply allowing you to mark programmes for later deletion.


I must admit I hadn't seen that. So why does the 'guide' button not take you to that state? It's certainly an improvement.

On the subject of moving through the guide, one couldn't call it a bug but it's annoying nontheless: Why do the left-right buttons insist on moving only a half hour at a time rather than from one programme to the next? I know you can move two hours at a time if you wish but surely the most logical and intuative way to move horizontally would be programme by programme.

On slow boot time, is 30 seconds really a problem ?
I really cannot see how a 30 second boot time once a day could be a problem to anybody.

I'm cool with the slow boot time. It was slightly annoying when I switched from Sky and had to wait so long for the box to start but once you get used to it and the fact that you are actually saving money at the same time, it's no problem.

I'll take the risk! My TiVo has been doing exactly this for the last six years, and my SkyHD for the last two.

Feels fine when I'm downstairs turning it on - after all the Topfield that its replaced wasn't the quickest to boot up ! Problem for me comes when I'm upstairs using it remotely, because I can't see the display I can't see if its starting up - it would be great if the box could display something, even just "Humax" so I know its coming on.

I disagree. I like to scroll right and peruse all the channels on the screen to see what's coming on later. If I came upon a three hour film and it suddenly shifted the whole screen right by three hours I would miss all the programmes on the other channels, and would need to scroll down one and then go back again.

I wish there was a page down option on the programme guide, because it seems quite low to go down one at a time, sometimes pausing for several seconds on a programme while I repeatedly press the down button, waiting for it to catch up.


As for the slow boot up, I don't have a problem with it. I was used to my Sky box taking a minute to boot up, as I would always power it off at the wall. I don't with the Humax because of any possible recordings that might be imminent, so it seems to boot pretty quickly.

People are just too impatient these days!

There is....and it is marked page on the remote P up/down button

Interesting that they knocked nearly 50% off their competitors boot up time yet people still moan about it.

Um, not really.

Just because someone else performs poorly does not mean that anyone else can only be measured by that yardstick.

When you can get a Windows machine up faster than a single function box something is wrong somewhere.

Well, in those circumstances you would simply move to a channel that did not have a three hour film on.

I've found my box boots up in about 30-45 seconds and is able to record straight away, moving around in the guide is smooth and no problem.

Youre comparing apples to oranges, it performs miles better than the #1 product in the group. I have no clue how the others perform.

You can only compare a product to its competitors.

Sorry, that's just plain wrong. There is absolutely no reason why you have to use any particular thing as a base for comparison. True if you compared the acceleration of a bus with a sportscar it would be absurd but here we are just saying: "Why should it take 40 odd seconds to boot a single function box when you can get a general purpose one that has to contend with many more drivers, services and housekeeping software, much quicker".

Humax
CPU STi5518
Flash 4 MB
SDRAM 24 MB
EEPROM 8 KByte

You are seriously comparing that to a machine with dual cores and machines that have 100 times that memory?

Totally different, youre asking a cyclist to beat an F1 car.

I don't have freesat yet but we are getting it soon as Sky HD is just costing too much at the minute and we are not using it enough to get our moneys worth.

One thing i have noticed after looking at pictures of the remote for the Foxsat HDR is the play/pause/record etc buttons all look a little small and cramped compared to the Sky HD controller. I know this won't be a problem, but that is one feature i use a lot which is why i like the sky remote as every button is so easy to find, and i know the whole remote without even having to look at it.

I heard that when they made the HDR they just used the old remote and changed it slightly, not sure if that is true, but if it is it seems a shame they couldn't make it completely new and different, but like i said i don't think it will be a problem, i will just have to get used to it