You do not mention how the unit is connected to the internet – with connections other than hard wired the true connection speed will always be less than your direct connection – my ISP box allows testing of the connection via 500mbs homeplugs – for some reason they give about 12 mbs

I can’t comment on the 1000S, however my broadband is 2Mb/s and my hdr-foxt2 is fine on iplayer low-res and choppy on hi-res. The hdr-foxt2 will buffer iplayer so I press pause, wait 5 mins or so and enough has been buffered to watch hi-res iplayer with no problems at all for the rest of the programme.

Other people are mentioning on-demand problems with the 1000S and it makes me wonder whether it buffers or not. I’m guessing it does and some people, just like I was, are a bit impatient, however it shouldn’t be too difficult to work out by pressing pause for a few minutes and seeing if that helps.

2Mb/s won’t be enough to watch hi-res iplayer straight off in my opinion, however very easily got round on the hdr-foxt2 by pausing it for a few minutes.

itv player seem to be having their own problems aside from even the way it’s accessed on the box seems to cause issues.

Hi Chrisund123,

does pausing make any difference? i.e. can it build up a buffer

Also, if I were running sky/virgin then humax/freesat is in direct competition. It would make sense to traffic shape packets thus reducing the bandwidth to iplayer via the humax/freesat portal, obviously only in the interests of my other customers so they all get a fair share of the bandwidth (it’s a reasonable excuse).

With the box working fine and then struggling 30 days later with no changes being made I don’t see how the box could be responsible. Perhaps a factory reset on the box would prove this. I’m more inclined to point to the portal or traffic shaping. It’d be interesting if you could test your box at a friend’s house with a different isp.

Thanks Graham for confirming that it does buffer properly. It’s also useful to see that it took 30 mins whereas the same file at your full download speed 20Mbps would be less than 5 mins. There’s clearly some throttling going on. I’m going to have to have a play at a friend’s house who lives across the road from the exchange so gets stupid speeds and I’ll see how fast iplayer streams there.

I’m hanging back from buying the 1000S, mainly because I don’t need another box, however I’ve a friend who’s looking for a pvr and I really can’t make my mind up what to advise, hence my interest

Hi All,

I’m new to this posting game and I believe that I posted the following into the wrong thread so if you have “seen it all before” I’m sorry.

I don’t have any answers to the Humax iPlayer download buffering problem but I have the following observations.

The following points are made with the advantage of a direct comparison with my Humax HDR FOX T2 which co-located with my HDR 1000S 1TB. The HDR FOX T2 is fed from my Plusnet Internet Router via Cat 5 Ethernet cable. My Plusnet connection provides me with a download speed of approximately 4900kbps, well in excess of the iPlayer threshold for ‘HD’ video display of 3500kbps. My HDR FOX T2 streams iPlayer HD content without problem but this is certainly not the case with my HDR 1000S 1TB.

a. BBC iPlayer HD content using the HDR 1000S 1TB is unwatchable because of continual ‘buffering’.

b. When the transition from HD to SD is made there is a short period when the ‘buffering cycle’ period extends and the image and sound displayed settles down to a normal format.

c. As stated earlier, this phenomena is peculiar to my HDR 1000S 1TB and as the up-stream infrastructure is shared with my HDR FOX T2 I believe that the fault lays within the HDR 1000S 1TB.

3. The next problem is manifest when using BBC Text especially when displaying the weather forecast information.

a. All appears well until you select the option that requires the whole of the screen to be populated with text and graphics. At this point the sound stutters and then becomes mute. If you leave the display in this mode an ‘error’ message appears in the top centre of the screen. This message states “Audio/Video decoding buffer is underrun.”

I have two other Humax products other than my HDR 1000S 1TB a HDR FOX T2 and FOXSAT HDR, both of these breeze through this task faultlessly so once again the fault is with the HDR 1000S 1TB.

May I proffer a suggestion?

I wonder if the two faults aren’t inter-related and it is all down to data transfer and buffering within the HDR 1000S 1TB, a fault that can be fixed with a firmware update?

If this is the case I wonder why this fault wasn’t picked during bench testing or was this curtailed so that the HDR 1000S 1TB could hit the Christmas market. Of course, Humax also has the new Freeview YouView to sort and maybe their resources are being spread too thinly

Hi Damian.

You said “Humax holding back information doesn’t help anybody”.

I’m new to this forum but have owned Humax products for three years and up until recently if I have tried to contact Humax via phone or email they have been prompt with their reply and helpful with information provided.

Since I bought my HDR 1000S 1TB, direct from Humax I might add, I have tried contacting Humax repeatedly but, frankly, I’ve given it up as a bad job. Why try to contact? Because of issues with my latest acquisition which are exercising many on this forum.

Until recently I thought of Humax as amodel of customer service but how this reputation has changed and in what appears to be a very short time.

Humax have been at the tuner/PVR game for some time and you would have thought that they would have got it cracked and put in a suitable period prior to going to market to allow for exhaustive “bench testing” by people that have knowledge and experience of the product.

So what has changed? Anything I say is speculation but I believe the following:

1. There could have been company policy decision to “streamline” which of course usually means fewer feet on the ground.

2. Humax have taken on too much in a short period of time and and with a “get it out for the Christmas rush” syndrome people are “suffering”, people? The people that are keeping Humax in business.

All of the emails I have sent to Humax (still no reply) have been sent to Which?, these will be used as background by their researchers so this current situation could very well impact on Humax in regard to their future sales as potential customers are put off my doubtful after sales service.

I presume that those in “Humax towers” are aware of the wider world so they should be aware that their reputation is sliding and once it is lost it is very difficult to retrieve.