On Moday 19/01/09 I wanted to watch 'Unforgiven' on ITV and record 'Hunter' on BBC. Both programs were available in HD. I discovered it was not possible to watch HD on ITV while I was recording the HD - BBC program.

So only one Sat channel is available in HD for the Humax?

I'm not that technically minded but is the clue in the spec for this machine?

i.e.
LNB 1 IN: Max 13/18 250mA
LNB 2 IN: Max 13/18 500mA

IMHO I think over time this will be a serious shortcomming of the Humax as more and more programs are made in HD

Alan

Strange, I was recording both, and could watch either by switching! Something wrong with your setup (feeds) or something wrong with your box... (Did you have it set up with one cable connected, then added the second afterwards, by any chance?)

Were both recordings in HD?

I cannot remember exactly what happened but when I pressed the red button to switch ITV to HD there was some message about cancelling the BBC HD program I was recording (which I did not want to do).

I took little notice of what was going on as 'Unforgiven' is a gripping drama (rare for ITV ) and I didn't want to miss any of it.

BTW I had connected both LNB feeds to the Humax before I switched it on for the first time. The only other cable connected is HDMI to the TV

Alan

On two occassions under the same circumstances I have had a similar experience. With A BBC HD and a ITV HD due to start at the same time I have turned on the foxsat just before recording was due to start intending to watch ITV HD (as well as record it). On attempting to tune to 103 just before the programme started to record a longish error dialogue comes up detailing a tuner clash. This dialogue shortly disappears and you can then access ITV HD without any problem. Both recordings completed without problems. Suspect it's a problem that is caused by the tuner switching from ITV SD to the ITV HD data stream. Should mention I had set both to record.

I suspect you are confusing yourself - it sounds like you don't have two independent feeds to the receiver. There's no such shortcoming on the Humax with HD (although you will struggle finding two HD programmes to record at the same time).

This sounds to me like a consequence of the way ITV HD is transmitted as a red button service. To watch ITV HD you first have to tune in ITV SD to get the red button prompt. If two channels are already recording (doesn't matter whether they are HD or SD) the channel you want to view has to be on one of the transponders already tuned in. If ITV SD is not one of those channels, you can't tune it in to get the prompt. It should be possible for the box manufacturer to be aware of this issue and implement a work-around (e.g. automatically give you ITV HD if it is recording when you select ITV SD) but it doesn't surprise me if this slipped through the cracks on the first release.

Once the ITV HD recording has started, tuning to 103 takes you to the HD version with the other tuner recording BBC HD (at least it did for me) it's only as it starts is there a short term problem. I was going to watch ITV HD in chasing playback but in the end was able to watch the live transmission. The error arises when you have a BBC HD recording and you tune to 103 just before the recording starts the box warns you with a rather long and difficult to understand message before stealing the tuner for ITV HD anyway.

OK. It looks as if Humax spotted the issue but made a wee bit of a hash of the work-around.

Both of mine were HD timers. I was watching another channel (not BBC HD or ITV HD)... when both timers started recording I got a message popping up on screen - basically (translated as) saying 'you are watching a channel not on the same transponder as the 2 programmes that are about to record - do you want to continue watching this channel and cancel one of the recordings or do you want to switch to one of the channels that is about to start/is recording to view and record (default)' - I left it alone and the box switched me to BBC HD's Hunter... I later switched to channel 977 to see Unforgiven...

I have both HD recordings in my Media list... I have no idea what happened in your case, but recording BBC HD and ITV HD at the same time is definitely possible via timers or the Red button (for ITV HD). The message that popped up seems to either have confused you or the box itself (my only explanation).