badbones – 32 minutes ago  » 

I’ve just been through all the menus on my Panasonic Viera TV and I cannot see any mention of anything to do with the HDMI connections.

What model number is it?

With respect to the HDMI handshaking problem I have been experiencing since the latest firmware update.

Even with the HDMI-CEC turned off on my Sony tv I am still having a problem with a blank screen if do not turn on the tv and HDR1000 in the correct sequence. I have to turn on the tv first and then turn on the HDR1000 so I see the HDR 1000 start up graffic on screen other wise I get a blank screen and no sound. This did not happen before the latest update and must be a bug.

How do we report this to get it sorted out?

badbones – 6 minutes ago  » 

-gonzo- – 57 minutes ago  » 

badbones – 27 minutes ago  » 

I’ve just been through all the menus on my Panasonic Viera TV and I cannot see any mention of anything to do with the HDMI connections.

Have you got anything in the menus that maybe called Viera Link?

Yes there is a viera link button on the remote control.

That’s apparently panasonics name for HDMI-CEC control.

I’ve seen some pics online showing menu options for each device connected.

-gonzo- – 2 hours ago  » 

badbones – 27 minutes ago  » 

I’ve just been through all the menus on my Panasonic Viera TV and I cannot see any mention of anything to do with the HDMI connections.

Have you got anything in the menus that maybe called Viera Link?

I have resolved the problem by disabling the Viera link completely. This is not a problem for me as I have never used this function.

Thanks for the advice Barry and Gonzo.

deej78 – 42 minutes ago  » 

souporjuice –

2. They chose a bargain-basement CPU for the box, then when they finally ran the software on the hardware they realised just how slow it was and ran around like headless chickens trying to optimise the software. Hence the initial launch delay;

3. Now they’re not even bothering to optimise the UI further as they know they just can’t – HTML rendering is CPU-intensive. If they cut costs with a slow CPU, not much you can do.

4. UI designed by one clueless person and/or by committee – feedback from paying customers is ignored. Hence the UI won’t change now, they’ll just keep tacking things on.

I don’t agree. I have been reading up on the CPU and its more than capable. It renders and animates bbc iplayer, YouTube and 4od pretty well. The freesat ui is the issue, not the hardware.

Seconded, it will cope with full bitrate 1080p24 Blu-ray rips in a .ts container (around 34mbps) no problem. And amazingly 1080P50 camcorder recorded content (about 28mbps, support for 4.2.20 required for 1080p50/60 is rare). MKV isn’t a broadcast supported content so it’s not really a surprise the custom chip doesn’t support it. A good dnla server should transcode on the fly for other containers.

The cpu has zero problems recording two HD streams and displaying a third (also recording it to the time shift buffer) without breaking into a sweat. That’s a broadcast stream of around 30mbps and simultaneous real time decoding of 3 Full-HD AVC/H264 compressed streams.

I’m glad your bluray movies stored on one machine play great over your network without a hiccup. No doubt you’re also happy with the UI performance as well, so all power to you.

So the CPU is brilliant at everything except rendering HTML? Either that or I’m the only person who thinks the UI is unacceptably slow.

souporjuice – 2 hours ago  » 

I’m glad your bluray movies stored on one machine play great over your network without a hiccup. No doubt you’re also happy with the UI performance as well, so all power to you.

So the CPU is brilliant at everything except rendering HTML? Either that or I’m the only person who thinks the UI is unacceptably slow.

Rendering HTML ?

Not sure what you mean.

Can you explain ?

I don’t find the UI slow, but I don’t measure the response time in milliseconds.

Every consumer device based on a cpu has to balance cpu and memory costs against affordability. I have a fast core 5 PC with lots of fast memory, 64 bit OS and a high end graphics card. It’s lightning fast at rendering HD video content. Guess what the CPU alone, the motherboard alone, the graphics card alone and the memory individually cost nearly as much as the HDR-1000S. (That’s ignoring the case, motherboard and a power supply to support this sort of processing power).

A freetime pvr based on this sort of spec would cost from £1000.00 upwards. Who would buy it ?

Sorry you aren’t happy with your box, what are going to replace it with ?

Your expectations are totally unrealistic at the price level of the box.

souporjuice – 11 hours ago  » 

You love the box. That’s great, but please understand my criticisms should not be taken to heart by people who love this box. I am not criticising you folks by extension.

I didn’t think it was cheap, though. And we’re not talking about milliseconds here. Scrolling through the TV guide takes 3 seconds to paint each page of results (before anyone suggests my box has a fault this is my second, the first having died and been replaced, and both performed the same). I don’t think it’s unrealistic to expect this to work the same way as every other device I own, even – dare I say it – my Sky box from 2006 that I said goodbye to when I bought the hdr1000s, which scrolled instantly through page after page of channels. The Sky box was awful in other ways though, and yes, I am going to stick with this, for now.

The UI is generally sluggish, you can almost see the box straining (animations aren’t smooth), also the design doesn’t help, there are too many clicks needed to accomplish simple things. Sure, there’s some nice stuff in there. I like Showcase, and I like the way it resolves scheduling conflicts, and even the colour scheme. It just needs more work, and I don’t think it’s going to happen.

And as someone who has worked in IT and UI design since the mid nineties, yes, I have very high expectations. Unrealistic, though? No. Definitely not.

I agree.