Hi Graham,

Thanks for the suggestion, but no, my display is not at fault. I have a Panasonic PX60 42". I haven't ever had any problems using it with Sky HD or any other service over HDMI. It's most definitely the Foxsat at fault. I remember many Sky HD customers having this exact problem when it first came out - they sorted it out in the end through software updates.


Hi Kevin,

I'm not debating that the machine "does what it says on the tin", it's just I find the execution of the task at hand ever so cumbersome. I also think it's sadly not really a mainstream product at the moment: as I say, my mum and mother-in-law would have big problems trying to use it, I know it. That's my usual litmus test!

I'm also not taking away your right to like the product a lot, but please don't take away my right to be disappointed in it!

Hi Eric

I some ways I have to agree with you there does seem to be an incompatiblity problem, especially with Panasonic displays with each manufacturer blaming the other (passing the buck). And it's also easy for me with a display that happens to work without problems to comment on how well the Humax works, but appreciate how frustrating and annoying this must be. Like all engineering problems of this nature ideally there should be a way of locking a team of engineers in a room from each company with a foxsat-hdr
and a problem display and telling them to sort it .

Come on Bob_Sat how about a reasoned response rather than the bald (and without technical support) is that the foxsat hdmi port conforms to standard with a similar statement from Panasonic. In the interest of both companies it's time to cooperate and sort this out.

It's not the overall design that's amateurish, just a few odd bugs/features/UI clunkinesses that make an otherwise very professional box seem a bit that way.

I'm sorry if people are going to get unnecessarily offended but there are some UI features that a lot of companies would never have signed off for a finished product.

The subtitle switching is a mess
The unwanted un-pausing is daft
The whole delete situation needs a complete rethink.

I'm as impressed as anyone with the work done on this box but I'm not going to pretend that it's perfect because it plainly isn't.

That's not a criticism of the development team as some rough edges are only to be expected on a project of this complexity.

Graham, can I just ask, when you do a (HDMI) "Device List Update" from the HDMI setup part of your Sony's menu, does it correctly list the HDR? It doesn't on my 32W4000; which puzzles me...

Colin

It doesnt find anything on my 40W4000 either so youre not alone.

Kinda begs the question of what are the point of these so called "Standards" then?! (that nearly always "aren't" sigh....)

It does not, pretty sure that Bob_Cat has already stated that the foxsat does not work with Sony's CEC implementation. Like many of these integration systems, viera link for example CEC generally only works with products from the same stable. Because CEC is not a fixed standard and each maker can implement it in a slightly different way it's very hard if not impossible for a 3rd party to make it function with every variation

*Face-slap*

That'll teach me not to RTFM or pay attention to what's written on the controller!

Thanks.

Sorry if this has been mentioned.

Only had my Foxsat for 2 days now but i've noticed one thing it doesn't seem to do which i will miss.

On Sky, if you have been watching a program from the start, lets say it started at 4pm and something happens that you like and want to record it. If you hit record at 4:10 it will record from 4pm as it will store it in its memory as long as you haven't changed channel

I tried this yesterday on the freesat and it didn't seem to work, it just started to record from when i hit the record button.

Its a shame this as even my very old single tuner freeview recorder can do it.

Unless the freesat is capable of doing it but i don't know how. If it is possible please could someone explain.

Thank you.

It doesnt do it and has already been listed in the things we want fixed.

OK thanks, its such a shame, especially when my three year old freeview + can even manage it.

Another thing (sorry if this has also been mentioned, i haven't read the whole thread still) is that when you have recorded something, its hard to start from a certain time, you get the chapter thing which is set times like 4 minutes etc, but i wish you could enter a time like on Sky +.

Apart from those two things, so far i love it.

You can, while playing a recording press the nos buttons to enter hrs mins. eg 0030 jumps to 30 min
Last edited by grahamlthompson : 11-02-2009 at 15:17

I didn't know that!

Could be useful on the odd occasion.

Have you been reading the manual?

Yes (P66) but the 9200 does the same thing so kind of expected it

Inferring the action from a similar product is quite acceptable but reading the manual smacks of cheating!

Cheating?? have you read it?? the box it came in is more informative than the manual

There seems no excuse for the HDR to have such a clumsy UI. Designers should have had enough experience with Freeview PVRs to do better than this. There is also no excuse for the poor layout and performance of the remote handset.

The thing I find most annoying is that there is no standby mode. What Humax calls standby is what everyone else calls shutdown, and it means that if a recording starts while I am watching a DVD, I am suddenly presented with the Humax bootup screen. If there were an alternative Freesat recorder available, this one would have gone back to the shop long ago.

It would be nice if Humax would announce that some of the problems listed in this thread will be fixed.

You would think so, wouldn't you.

But this phenomenon is not limited to Humax nor PVR's. It seems to affect everyone and everything.

I call it the kettle syndrome.

The human race has been making electric kettles for well over half a century and yet every one I have ever encountered has at least one failing. The stupid and annoying thing is that a lot of them could easily be modified to remove the failing.

And yet instead of each manufacturer evolving their product until they produce a kettle which is nigh on perfect they keep redesigning them from scratch and introducing the same old faults in defferent combinations.

The same goes for MP3 players. Read the sites dedicated to these things and it's the same old deficiencies coming up year after year when there have been many models that could have easily refined to remove all the annoyances that people report over and over again.

[/rant]

Once in a very rare while, a manufacturer comes up with the perfect kettle entirely by accident. You may be fortunate to buy one, again entirely by accident because you don't know it's perfect until you've got it. When it comes to the end of it's life, you try and replace it only to find that it is no longer available. A year or so after it was brought out, it evolved gee-wizz gizmos that may sound interesting on the box but turn it into one of the worst kettles ever.

I have been following this thread for a long while, waiting to get my hands on "the box". This is not so easy where I live in the west of Ireland. In the meantime I've been making do with SKY HD where most of the British Channels are not on the EPG! (No BBC HD, ITV1-4, BBC3, BBC4...) Yes, they can be tuned in manually, but cannot be recorded, no live pause etc..

Anyway, I am now the proud owner of a Humax PVR. It is an excellent product and being able to record the radio is a nice extra. I joined this forum solely to be able to thank Bob_Cat and the rest of the Humax team. In common with some other members, I too work in software development. I fully appreciate the effort required to "get this out the door". It is a tremendous result for all concerned and I wish the Humax development team well.