New Beta release 04
As the news has broken on another forum re this release, it would seem only proper to announce it on here as well, after receiving the permission of Humax
Some of the longer serving members will know that I have had close contact with Humax over the years, firstly with their DTT set top boxes, and then the 8000T before moving onto the 9200T.
Some of us are lucky enough to have been given the opportunity to test a Beta version of software (04) marc who you all know posts regularly is amongst those who have it, others will reveal themselves if they feel they want to.
It has to be stressed that this release is very much work in progress, and is not available to all at this time, neither will you get it by pestering Humax Support, when they feel it is ready for a wider distro they will give the nod.
Boring bit over:
The software is in Two parts...a new loader ver 4.09 which fixes the aerial loopthru lost when starting the PVR problem.
Second part has:
Chase Play recordings appear in the playlist after 30 sec
Auto-Padding The Record Menu has options added for Recordings start time and Recordings end time (on time, 1, 2, 3, 5, 10 Mins)
Find facility Use the Opt+ button to sort by Channel, Date Ascending or Date Descending.
I stress again that this is very much work in progress, there is still some tidying up to do eg, if you pad the start time the wrong name still appears in the playlist, and if you pad consecutive recordings then the second will not take place.
Hope you find this info useful.
Some of the longer serving members will know that I have had close contact with Humax over the years, firstly with their DTT set top boxes, and then the 8000T before moving onto the 9200T.
Some of us are lucky enough to have been given the opportunity to test a Beta version of software (04) marc who you all know posts regularly is amongst those who have it, others will reveal themselves if they feel they want to.
It has to be stressed that this release is very much work in progress, and is not available to all at this time, neither will you get it by pestering Humax Support, when they feel it is ready for a wider distro they will give the nod.
Boring bit over:
The software is in Two parts...a new loader ver 4.09 which fixes the aerial loopthru lost when starting the PVR problem.
Second part has:
Chase Play recordings appear in the playlist after 30 sec
Auto-Padding The Record Menu has options added for Recordings start time and Recordings end time (on time, 1, 2, 3, 5, 10 Mins)
Find facility Use the Opt+ button to sort by Channel, Date Ascending or Date Descending.
I stress again that this is very much work in progress, there is still some tidying up to do eg, if you pad the start time the wrong name still appears in the playlist, and if you pad consecutive recordings then the second will not take place.
Hope you find this info useful.
0
Comments
What is the Find facility? Could you give some more info on that please?
You can search by specific programme name utilising the on screen keyboard, or search by Genre, such as Movie, Sport, Drama etc.
The search results can now be sorted as per the first post.
Page 50 of the manual......I think
Auto padding feature was in Beta3, was it not? So what is new is just the Chase Play facility?
Are there any bug fixes?
Are you able to say whether the 20 timer limit remains?
Cliff
I think it would be handy if, when auto-padding, the 9200T set a bookmark at the scheduled start time of the recording.
So, with 3 minutes of padding, a bookmark at the 3 minutes would let the viewer quickly skip what should be adverts and the like and easily find the beginning of the programme they were after. If it didn't start exactly on time, the skip buttons are then nearby for fine-tuning.
Thoughts?
I've just tried the "sort" key after a "find" and it doesn't seem to offer much, and the find still only finds the first 100 matches.
Also is a bookmark at actual start of padded recording needed when the skip button jumps 1 min at a time? It jumps past the ads on ITV recordings pretty quickly....
I would agree with hda180hm that just using the skip button would soon find the start of your recording, however any more comments greatfully received.
As for the sort function, well it does what I stated earlier, it is not something I would use a lot...
But the reports above sound quite exciting. I look forward to your further notes and observations.
Although the information is exciting and interesting... the new beta seems a bit disappointing...
This proper chase play seems to be the meaty part of this release and although it is a top request, I was hoping Humax was working on the removal of bugs to make the machine more stable...
I guess this is better than nothing..?
What happened to 4 mins? A better and more sensible set of times would be 1, 2, 5, 10, 15, 30. When programmes tend to run late, they either run 1 or 2 mins late or very late! Can you confirm again that different padding times can be added to the start and the end?
Like you said, not often used, so not a lot of people would appreciate this feature either...
Some thoughts...
Are you sure about the name of programmes after padding? I thought this was fixed in Beta3? (Who said? marcdavis: http://forum.digitalspy.co.uk/board/showthread.php?t=337883)
I understand it's beta, no guarantees, yada yada yada.
Basically the provious releases dealt with editing the end time of a scheduled recording so that the name in the timer does not go blank - which helps when trying to identify what the hell you are trying to record when you go through the list. They did the same thing in beta3 for when you edit the start time of a recording, which also had the same effect and fixed 'em.
There is a different problem with the 'resulting' recording once it gets into the playlist. Basically the name that appears in the entry for the recording in the playlist can be that of theprogramme before the one you were intending to watch. this is because the timer was manually edited to start say 3minutes earlier. Looks like the name of the recording that is inserted into the playlist is whatever was in the EPG at the time the recording started.
this is what we want changed so that it always aplies the name in the playlist of that in the timer to begine with.
So with the autopadding we are testing at the moment we have to take into account this known issue that is still outstanding. Indeed auto padding is bringing this issue to the fore.
I am sorry, this is going to sound pompous, but this cannot be done at this time. Once Humax give the go ahead then of course anyone who wants to try it is welcome to it.
Edit: Snap
There is a simple solution to the 'names of programmes' problem: don't get all the information from the EPG!
1. When setting a manual timer, allow the user to set the title of that programme as well as giving the user the choice of using the EPG's title.
2. Once, in the schedual, allow the user to edit the name of the timer.
3. When using the EPG to select the programmes you wish to record, take on the EPG's programme information for that name. Once in the schedual the user can change the name as in (2)
When the actual recording is made, only take on the name that was given in the timing schedual. Forget about naming the recording from the EPG information - just use the schedual timers names...
Can anyone see where it goes wrong here? Obviously, if the actual programme is not shown during the period of the schedualled timer, the name will not match the programme, but then the user would immediately know this upon playing...
Makes sense?
You aren't saying anything that hasn't been suggested before. This system is actually an improvement over the 8000 because now you get a programme name from the epg when you do and instant record. I think they changed one thing for the better but it had an unfortunate side effect.
I'm sure given time all things things can be fixed but the main priority has to be stability and then the much missed (true) chase play.
I do hope the issue of auto padding consecutive recordings and losing the second one is resolved, if not the auto function is pretty useless.
Hi Redrob
Well they are aware, and probably as dissappointed as the rest of us that this was not resolved in this Beta release....however like I have said this is very much work in progress on the enhancement side of things.
The chase play works very well, even bookmarks where you left a recording if you go back to live TV momentarily and then back to your recording.
I'm pretty patient when it comes to these things. Once I got over the initial disapointment of no chase play I've been happy with my 9200 since the first week of issue because mine is pretty stable (only a few lock-ups) and does what it said on the tin.
For me the main requests were chase play, more than 20 timer slots and maintaining the timer slot name and recorded programme title when manually padding. If those things are added I'll be happy to manually pad when possible, a few extra button presses aren't the end of the world, I need the exercise and it keeps my fingers nimble.
If this is true, then someone in contact with Humax should suggest to them a method which can effectively achieve the 'correct names on recordings' with autopadding...
If this has already been done also, why aren't Humax able to implement the names and autopadding properly? Are they not listening?
Nice to see some movement. Humax have been pretty quiet lately, and the annoyance of people on this forum has been a measure of that.
Let's hope they put it up on thier web site soon (if the testers find no major bug in it).
Dont worry they got the low down on this. They have been notified about it and there have been no signs from them that there is any confusion about what they need to sort out as part of this process. When its done hopefuly within the next beta or two we will get a chance to road test it properly with this autopadding as well.
You enable the pre and post padding from the recording menu. (0,1,2,3 or 5 minutes)
When you select a program to record in the EPG it goes into the recording schedule, but only shows the time for the program - I was expecting the pre and post padding times to be added onto the time to show that the recording was being padded. I would feel alot more confident if the times in the schedule included the pre and post padding. What do others think?
I also manually added a recording directly into the recording schedule and discovered that the box also added the pre and post padding when it did the recording. For a manually entered recording I was not expecting this. What do people think about this?
Consecutive and multiple recordings seems to be a big problem with the beta. I setup 6 recordings in the schedule last night and when I checked this morning only 3 had worked.
In its current state I would suggest Beta 4 is likely to cause a lot more problems that it solves.
Chase Play is working (with a minor niggle).
matt,
I thought it was up to 5 minutes as well. I noticed that if you scroll through the options for number of minutes to pad from the drop down box one of them is 10 minutes. Its out of sight until you scroll down to it.
I am not sure about the second para (i.e. its something to think about isnt it). I would have thought the default behaviour is to not keep the schedule as it is because global padding is set to on anyway on everything. Also it means the EPG indicator for that entry is kept. My thinking is the only way to over ride global padding settings (other than switching them off completely) is if you go into the scheduled timer entry itself and manually edit the start/finish time. Should that include manual timers built from scratch and not the EPG? Its quite easy to go either way but I'm of the opinion that timers that are created manually from scratch should also be excluded from global auto padding rules set on the machine. What do others think out there?