Recordings break up on Humax Freesat

J

joddle

Specialist Contributor
My Satellite Setup
2x Pace 2600 C1 (in a box just in case) , 3 x Humax HD Foxstat (2 of which in store as spares) . 3x Manhatten Plaza - Pasat 2.4 PF dish mounted on flat roof with Invacom C120 quad LNB .
My Location
Massanassa, Valencia, Spain
I have a Humax Freesat box (HB-1100S I think) which allows recording to a USB external disk drive. I live overseas so am unable to use BBC iplayer to watch missed programmes so record anything I don't want to miss. The recordings made from SD channels are always fine but those from HD channels tend to break up. Whilst BBC had SD and HD versions I was always able to opt SD when recording; but now they don't have SD anymore on Freesat so my recordings have to be from HD channels but despite having perfect HD reception the recordings made from HD channels are always breaking up. Currently for recording I am using a sata SSD drive in a usb box so would have thought this would not be an issue - so does anyone have any ideas on what might be wrong and how I may get more reliable recordings from the HD channels?
 
Do recordings of Europe beam HD channels such as NHK World work okay? If not it could be the SSD or caddy can't handle the write (or read) speed. You could try a decent USB stick and see if the same happens.

If you watch something live and record it at the same time, does the live channel show the same breakup?
 
is it two feeds into STB? if so, could it be one feed is marginal signal? dodgy fconnector?
 
The box has only one receiver but not thought about the caddy. It was a very cheap one so maybe the problem! The system does not work with a usb stick, only a drive. I have a few mechanical usb hdds so will try one of those to see if they work OK. if so will invest in a better spec caddy. Prefer to have ssd as it is permanently connected so there is no noise or wear. Any other suggestions welcomed
 
SSDs are not suitable for PVRs because of constant writing and caching.
 
statalite said:
SSDs are not suitable for PVRs because of constant writing and caching.
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Not in the early days, they weren't. But the current generation are perfectly suitable, with vastly increased available write cycles plus wear-levelling algorithms.
 
also , mechanical HDD's can fail at any moment, so its swings and roundabouts
 
I am going to try another usb3 SSD and if that fails to improve things then a small HDD - but what is it so different from recording a SD channel to a HD one? content - I presume its because more data being transferred?
 
you didnt even respond to post #3 , it is possible you know - ive seen it.
 
joddle said:
I am going to try another usb3 SSD and if that fails to improve things then a small HDD - but what is it so different from recording a SD channel to a HD one? content - I presume its because more data being transferred?
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Yes, higher resolution generally requires more bandwidth, although MPEG-4 vs MPEG-2 negates some of that. Did you try NHK World HD? If it records okay then it's not a bandwidth issue.
 
Get yourself a 128Gb USB stick. Format it for FAT32. Cheap as chips. You’ll have plenty of recording storage space and not have to worry about spin up times and power draw on your tuner.

When it fills just move the recordings to a bigger capacity disk drive.

Have you tried playing back those recordings you’ve made so far on a PC to check their integrity. Remember all you are doing is playing back a transport stream .ts file. Nothing fancy.
 
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Satspot said:
Get yourself a 128Gb USB stick. Format it for FAT32. Cheap as chips. You’ll have plenty of recording storage space and not have to worry about spin up times and power draw on your tuner.

When it fills just move the recordings to a bigger capacity disk drive.

Have you tried playing back those recordings you’ve made so far on a PC to check their integrity. Remember all you are doing is playing back a transport stream .ts file. Nothing fancy.
Click to expand...
I have tried a USB stick several times as suggested and they simply do not work no matter how they are formatted - only a proper disk drive works alas! Also it is impossible to play the recordings back on any other or pc device apart from the original box as they are encrypted - even another Humax box won't play them. Last night tried a different ssd in a USB3 caddy and a test recording seems fine so suspect either the ssd or more likely the cheap caddy I had bee using. Will know more soon.
 
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joddle said:
I have tried a USB stick several times as suggested and they simply do not work no matter how they are formatted - only a proper disk drive works alas! Also it is impossible to play the recordings back on any other or pc device apart from the original box as they are encrypted - even another Humax box won't play them. Last night tried a different ssd in a USB3 caddy and a test recording seems fine so suspect either the ssd or more likely the cheap caddy I had bee using. Will know more soon.
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I’ve just did a quick search on that box and it threw up this Humax HDR 1000/1010/1100S - Copying to USB

The mere mention of having my recordings encrypted would send me scrambling for an immediate replacement box. If you are regular recorder of content it may well be time to replace that Humax. Plenty of inexpensive alternatives out there these days.
 
All the HD recordings are encrypted as part of the agreement Freesat has with BBC, ITV, etc. On the earlier Humax HDR set there was a software hack that could turn the encryption off but I don't think that this can be done to later Humax boxes or other manufacturers' boxes. Happy to be proved wrong though!
 
PaulR said:
All the HD recordings are encrypted as part of the agreement Freesat has with BBC, ITV, etc. On the earlier Humax HDR set there was a software hack that could turn the encryption off but I don't think that this can be done to later Humax boxes or other manufacturers' boxes. Happy to be proved wrong though!
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No, Paul, you are right. I have the hack on my first generation Humax, but there's nowt similar for other boxes.
 
Well part one of the experiment is fine - it seems from an HD recording made last night it was the caddy as I had put the original SSD into a new a USB caddy The old recordings still show breakup so that must have occurred in the recording process rather than during playback. However the new recordings so far seem error free!!! Finger crossed for now that it was simply the caddy! If not I have a more modern SSD I can try although of much grater capacity so a bit of a waste to use for occasional recordings.
 
Update - all fine now so it was the caddy after all. I am still using the old SSD and the watched HD recordings from last night which are all perfect.
 
joddle said:
Update - all fine now so it was the caddy after all. I am still using the old SSD and the watched HD recordings from last night which are all perfect.
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Storm in a teacup (or a caddy in your case) so.
 
Satspot said:
Storm in a teacup (or a caddy in your case) so.
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Seems so - but I would never have suspected the caddy and may have spent more money on a new SSD! - so thanks to you all for your input.
 
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