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Thank you Martin. Won’t fiddle then, just keep screaming in frustration!
Erica Clarke – 11 minutes ago »
Thank you Martin. Won’t fiddle then, just keep screaming in frustration!
The only thing that sometimes works is to pause – then wait a moment for the video to catch up – then press play again. Probably you already know this – but I mention it in case.
If yours is anything like mine, it stutters for a while – trying to sync the sound and video – and then gives up and jumps forward half a minute, or so. The most frustrating thing is rewinding (several times) to try and catch an important part of the dialogue – which sometimes works, depending on where you start again.
I’m going to have to replace it, because if I don’t it’s going to end up being thrown out of the window.
Far more therapeutic is to place the 9300 on a slab of concrete, take a large sledge hammer and go at it! Very cathartic.
I’m having the same problems on my 4 year old PVR 500GB of intermittent frame freezing while watching recordings.
Thought it may be caused (on a programme A) due to fast forwarding through the adverts of a watched previously recorded programme B while recording programme A, or alternately perhaps corrupting B by holding a watched live programme C?
I’ve thought of cleaning out the box and returning it to manufacturers settings, but would this delete recordings?
On my box, the freezing happens mostly on ITV, not on BBC. Odd!
Joger Rones – 7 minutes ago »
I’ve thought of cleaning out the box and returning it to manufacturers settings, but would this delete recordings?
You can certainly try and it will not delete your existing recordings. It will delete the schedule of future recordings. I am doubtful that it will help with your problem if it is only certain programs that suffer from the problem.
Joger Rones – 1 hour ago »
I’ve thought of cleaning out the box and returning it to manufacturers settings, but would this delete recordings?
On my box, the freezing happens mostly on ITV, not on BBC. Odd!
Not sure if this is the same problem – mine stutters, rather than freezing, but I haven’t found any solutions. Restoring default settings won’t affect your recordings, but if you format the disk, which sounds like what you want to do, it will wipe everything. To be honest, this is the one thing I haven’t tried, but I think the problem is with the processor, rather than the disk, so I don’t think it will help.
Having had this problem for many years I have followed this thread with great interest and weighed up all the observations and suggestions. I too have noted that the worst channels are ITV, Channel 4 and Film 4. As Joger says, not so much on BBC. I have pretty much reached the conclusion that it is something in the transmission from some broadcasters which the box cannot cope with and basically there is nothing which we, as consumers, can do other than buy another box which does not suffer from this. I would dearly love to know whether Humax have identified the cause, fixed it, and brought out a product which actually works properly. I read reviews of later models in the hope of finding one but every time I think I have identified one it seems someone reports this same fault. I may have to start looking at other makes.
pmb – 10 minutes ago »
Having had this problem for many years I have followed this thread with great interest and weighed up all the observations and suggestions. I too have noted that the worst channels are ITV, Channel 4 and Film 4. ……. I would dearly love to know whether Humax have identified the cause, fixed it, and brought out a product which actually works properly. …..
Yes, they have. I have a Humax Youview and it works perfectly on Film 4 and Channel 4.
pmb – 46 minutes ago »
I have pretty much reached the conclusion that it is something in the transmission from some broadcasters which the box cannot cope with and basically there is nothing which we, as consumers, can do other than buy another box which does not suffer from this.
Yes that is the conclusion I reached. As far as I know this problem doesn’t affect the earlier 9200 nor any of the later models ie it only affects the 9300 and 9150
I read reviews of later models in the hope of finding one but every time I think I have identified one it seems someone reports this same fault.
Are you sure it is the same fault? Several things can produce picture break up but these are usually correctable by the user.
pmb – 3 hours ago »
Having had this problem for many years I have followed this thread with great interest and weighed up all the observations and suggestions. I too have noted that the worst channels are ITV, Channel 4 and Film 4. As Joger says, not so much on BBC. I have pretty much reached the conclusion that it is something in the transmission from some broadcasters which the box cannot cope with and basically there is nothing which we, as consumers, can do other than buy another box which does not suffer from this. I would dearly love to know whether Humax have identified the cause, fixed it, and brought out a product which actually works properly. I read reviews of later models in the hope of finding one but every time I think I have identified one it seems someone reports this same fault. I may have to start looking at other makes.
Yes, I’m of much the same opinion – and quite disappointed that my search for a replacement seems to lead to another Humax – just on principle, you understand. I feel I should be compensated for years of frustration – or punish Humax by shopping elsewhere. 😉
Incidentally, I’m watching a BBC 4 documentary at the moment – and one of the things the infernal machine seems unable to deal with is still images – the documentary is about an artist, so there are many segments with no moving images – just commentary over paintings – and the box tends to just skip those parts. I just mention this because it’s another channel – and another kind of broadcast it finds problematic – the others being dark images, or quiet scenes.
In addition to the above:
I’ve had my Humax 9300T for about 4 years.
My main issue has been the skipping problem described above. The problem is mainly with FilmFour programs, especially dark scenes in thriller/horror films.
Channel Four also seems to be affected – it has happened in the last few episodes of Humans, and also a few episodes of Pointless on BBC1.
The programs will skip 30 seconds. Sometimes if I rewind 27-28 seconds, I can get the program to start again normally. Sometimes, the audio drops in and out. And sometimes the program will skip an extra 30 seconds, so I have to rewind about 50 seconds to try again. It can add about 10 minutes to my viewing time!
I have also had periods where the box freezes and won’t respond to anything. The only solution is to unplug it and let it reboot.
Finally, I’m now finding that the box is cutting out and rebooting itself. This seems to happen when a program has just finished recording, or one channel is already being recorded and another one has just started. Or sometimes it’s just when it feels like it.
I’m now thinking about getting a replacement. Humax is probably not top of my list.
Can anyone recommend a box that doesn’t have any of the above issues. OK, I may consider another Humax model – but I’ll need some convincing.
gwd440 – 40 minutes ago  »Â
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Can anyone recommend a box that doesn’t have any of the above issues. OK, I may consider another Humax model – but I’ll need some convincing.
My partner has a 9300 that occasionally skips in the manor you describe, it seems that something triggers the machine into skipping but you can then wind back to just after that trigger and successfully watch the 30 seconds or so that you missed. I have seen this skipping happen almost at the end of Corro or Emmerdale, can’t remember which, as well as the well known problems with Family Guy and American Dad. Her 9300 does not suffer from the ‘reset to defaults’ problem that some people are reporting, neither does it reboot itself.
I bought a Panasonic this time last year and it has been rock solid reliable, the only niggle to me is that it sometimes jumps to live TV when a recording starts or finishes when I’m watching say another recording. People will say the UI os old and not very good, maybe it is and I certainly prefer the UI of my 9200, but I want a machine that will record and play stuff with absolute reliability and that’s what the Panasonic has given me so far.
Since my last posting on 23 October, I have conducted several operations which have, since I completed them anyway, eradicated my Humax 9300 PVR box problems with playback.
First I returned the box to default settings (Installation/Default Settings), and also reformatted the box hard drive (Record/HDD Control), then reprogrammed the channels with the aerial disconnected, to ensure the box was completely clean, then Automatic Search to reinstitute programmes as usual.
The only residual problem I had after doing this was that I had to reset the screen ratio (Preferences/AV Control) back to 16:9, correcting the 4:3 it had defaulted to.
This made an improvement in playback performance, but I was still getting minor incidences of instability.
My live TV reception was quite good, but I was getting the odd short picture freeze frame and sometimes ‘snicks’ in the sound, indicating an almost imperceptible brief loss of reception from time to time. So thinking that this may also be a contributory cause to the Humax problems, I bought a new digital high gain wideband aerial and fitted that. This resulted in an increased strength of signal to the Humax from 64% to 75%, with 100% quality maintained, and has so far resulted in a complete stop to all the reception and playback instability.
It would be tempting fate to say that this has completely resolved the problem, but it has certainly made it much better. A new aerial only costs around £30, so that’s money well spent anyway!
Joger Rones – 33 minutes ago  »Â
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then reprogrammed the channels with the aerial disconnected, to ensure the box was completely clean, then Automatic Search to reinstitute programmes as usual.
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Unfortunately retuning with the aerial disconnected doesn’t do anything with these machines, because the machine doesn’t find any channels with the aerial disconnected (obviously) you are not given the option of saving the result so you are left with what you had before. If you are on version 26 of the software the Automatic Search deletes all old channels before the new scan is started whether the aerial is connected or not. You might be interested in my Manual Search instructions in the FAQ section of this forum.
I’m a great believer in the manual search for a couple of reasons. First is that if you are living like me in an area where you can pick up one or more transmitters of the same station – eg BBC1 – but from different regions then you can end up with channels stored in the 800 range.
Second, I found that with my 9300 with the plethora of rubbish shopping channels that the EPG never populated properly as there is not enough room in the way that the 9300 was configured/programmed by Humax. (At least that is my understanding). The solution for me was to decide which multiplexers I could do without and so not tune to them. If you are on automatic then you will pick them up.
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