Does anyone know yet how this works?
If I have padding set, does it just add it on to the billed start time, and then ignore any schedule changes?
I missed the end of Grand Designs last night.
Interestingly, when I went to record it from CH4 + 1, the schedule was showing it starting at 10.05, whereas CH4 was showing 9.00.

If I just add padding to the end, will it still add extra time if the schedule is running late, or does any change of settings mean that the schedule is ignored, and it reverts to manual type timer settings?

For some bizarre reason i believe that padding just adds time to the original billed time and does not take into account scheduled changes.

Where as "auto" take scheduled changes into account.

Why it works like that i have no idea.

I can't seem to win whether using auto or padding I miss some endings! We need padding to take schedule changes into account as paulb67 suggests above. It would also be good to have a 10 min padding option.

It is possible to add as much padding as you like via the Schedule> Highlight the Program> Press Yellow Button> Here you can edit the times.

isn't it based on a signal sent by the broadcaster for auto padding?

That's true and so it relies on the broadcaster sending the signal at the correct time which isn't always the case, missing the end of a program using auto isn't the Humax's fault but the broadcaster, we are sort of at their mercy.

I too missed the end of Grand Designs last night, but fortunately spotted this in time to manually record the ending on C4+1.

In my experience, Grand Designs is notorious for overrunning its scheduled 10pm finish time; particularly noticeable as I like to watch the BBC 10pm news. It looks as though C4 are completely ignoring any Freesat+ signalling, so I have set my timer to be a manual weekly repeat from 20:59 - 22:10. As the programme is always in the 9pm - 10pm timeslot, this shouldn't be a problem. I'm also going to create manual timers for all commercial broadcasters as they are quite clearly a bunch of amateurs.

Geoff

I know how annoying that can be, I recorded Grand Designs on Auto but I did not miss the end so your incorrect finish time must be post code related.

I decided to email Humax about this and got this reply.
"The padding function will only add time to the billed start time and will stop the auto-tracking function form working."

So any padding at the start will stop any auto timing.

Sort of defeats the object : (

So are we saying that if we have a program thats on from 8:30 till 9:00 and I have padding set for x minutes before and y minutes after and due to a previous program overrunning the EPG is updated so the program now runs from 8:40 till 9:10 that the humax will not automatically update its scheduled recording time? Isn't that the whole point of the schedule tracking feature?

cheers - another feature I hadn't discovered. Still a pain to have to do this manually on all recordings, but at least the option is there until hopefully a firmware update gives the option of bigger default padding..

Seems so, according to Humax, at least for the start time.

I'm not sure I would have bought the machine if I'd known this.

Although recordings that stop too soon is clearly a broadcaster problem, there is something that Humax could do about programmes that are signalled as ending sooner than they actually end. That would be to use the broadcaster's signalled end but delay stopping the recording by the amount set for padding the end of the programme.

A similar technique could be used for the start of a recording. The channel could be buffered while the PVR is looking for the start signal. When it gets it, all but the padding would be discarded.