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Unfortunately, it wasn't only those episodes. All of the episodes for the last several weeks have been showing in the guide as repeats, and hence not being recorded. Setting repeats to record isn't really an option, as the show is repeated many times after its initial Friday night showing on ABC News around 8:30PM. I've been manually telling my IceBox to record it, which kind of defeats the purpose. :-(

Regards,
Ned

Wow, that was quick! It looks fine now, thank you very much.

The guide for late tonight has 10News+ at 23:05 followed by a blank 30 minutes, followed by Home Shopping. It should be 10News+ followed by Late Night with Stephen Colbert. My IceBox has ticked the blank and the Home Shopping, trying to accommodate the missing Colbert.

Please fix by tonight if possible.

I have a recurring problem with repeats being scheduled for recording when the series is marked first runs only. IceTV knows it's a repeat, as there is a [R] identifier in the title. The show that runs late Monday/early Tuesday is always a repeat, but is almost always scheduled for recording. The Android app even says "Repeat showing but series set for first runs only". I have deleted and recreated the Series Recording several times, but the problem continues to happen.

Hi,

The IceTV app seems to have fallen into the "Edge to Edge" display trap on my Pixel. The screen doesn't make allowance for the heading and status/navigation lines. This causes the heading to obscure the top of the app's display, and the navigation bar to cover any controls at the bottom of the screen, making it impossible to change the day or the channel in the guide.

Ned

Hi,

For the last month or more, I have had no problems with lock-ups, loss of HDMI, or any of the other things I've had. All I did was to make sure the IceBox was playing TV before switching my TV to another input, rather than leave it in the menus. This includes absences from home of two days and six days. It could be a fluke, but I've never gone this long without a problem before.

Ned

A couple of more data points.

I noticed that when two new episodes of a show are screened back to back that it seems to create a problem with ad skipping. Usually, the second episode, and sometimes the first as well, doesn't have any  ad skipping.

A show that consistently has no ad skipping at all is SWAT on 7HD.

Ned

Hi,

When I went to watch Wednesday's recordings on Thursday morning, I was not able to start any; I got a dialog that "recording did not play" or something like that. When I tried to reboot, the box said that it was still recording DI Ray on SBSHD from the previous night. I forced the reboot, and when the box came up I was able to start playback on other recordings. D I Ray would play, but I was unable to skip, fast-forward or rewind. It was like watching catchup TV! As it happens, I had to go to catchup anyway, as the recording was only about 10 minutes long.

This is the second time I have had the "record forever" problem.

Ned

Don't suppose you documented your repair process so I could see which cap it is, and how you did the repair ?

(fingers crossed)

furbies

To be clear, I didn't repair the box; I just replaced the disks with an SSD and a 2.5in hard drive that don't require a 12V supply. I found the information by googling "humax boot loop when disk connected" or some such. This post nominates a specific capacitor, but it might not be the exact hardware we're talking about:

https://hummy.tv/forum/threads/start-up-fails-when-hdd-connected.10164/page-7#post-158648

It's an electrolytic capacitor in the 12V supply for the disk drive.

Swapping out the drive is easy. If the recordings on the old drive are still required, it can be put in a USB case and accessed through the normal Humax storage facilities.

Ned

Hi,

I was away for a couple of days last week (25th and 26th of June). When I got back I noticed some odd characteristics in several of the recordings done on the 25th. Three of the recordings had durations displayed in excess of 20 hours. On one, the full program was there, but the other two were only around 12 minutes of the content. The file sizes were consistent with the amount of content actually recorded. None of the recordings had any ad skipping.

I had rebooted the box prior to leaving to try to circumvent the problem of ad skipping stopping after a few days of uptime.

I'm still having the problem of losing video after a variable amount of time running. I used to think the box was locked up, but I've found the box seems to be still running, because it shuts down normally when I press the power button.

Ned

Hi,

I suppose it's possible that the capacitor could cause intermittant reboots on it's way to failure. In my experience (a sample size of 2), the symptoms are a boot loop on power-on that never resolves. The boxes I put a 2.5in drive in are still working fine.

Ned

Hi,

I've noticed what seems to be a pattern in the (seemingly increasing) failure to detect an ad break. When the missed break starts, it almost always starts with a promo, rather than an ad. Sometimes the skip will start after the promo, sometimes it doesn't happen at all. It's been like that on 7 for the longest time, but seems to be increasing on 10 and 9. Ad breaks always used to start with an ad.

Another thing I've had happen twice is that after running for a few days, ad detection stops completely. It's like there's a supervisor process that detects that a recording has finished and spawns an ad skipping process or thread, but the supervisor is failing for some reason. A reboot fixes it.

Ned

I don't know if anyone is looking at this, but I think I've answered my own question. Further research has indicated that this problem is caused by a failed electrolytic capacitor in the 12V HDD power supply. This causes the Humax to detect a faulty power rail and reboot when the disk is powered up. This explains why the SSD and the 2.5in HDD worked, while 3.5in drives didn't, as those form factors only use the 5V supply. For the moment, I'll use these two disks to keep the boxes going until something else fails :-(

Ned

Hi GregM

I have two HDR7500Ts with EXACTLY this problem. When the first one failed, I assumed that the fact it would boot with the HDD disconnected probably meant a fault in the disk controller. When the second one failed, I found your post in a Google search, and immediately tested it. I plugged my original IceBox SDD in, and the Humax booted as you described. I bought two brand new WD 1TB drives, but neither one fixes the problem. I plugged in a 1TB 2.5in drive from an old laptop, and it worked fine. I then tried copying the first GB of the 2.5in drive to one of the new drives using dd, but it still wouldn't accept it. Do you have any idea what's stopping the Humax from accepting these new drives? They work fine on my computer via a USB case.

Ned

Thanks, Daniel.

Ned