FenderBender
31-07-2006, 09:47 AM
I did some tests a while back and found it depended on the broadcaster as to how fast the Guide could show EPG data. Its still not fast anyway, but it may be helpful to those new owners who want to take steps to maximise the EPG before Humax change it.
Firstly there seem to be a lot of people who either just schedule recordings for that day or couple of days, and some people that like to spend time in the Guide setting everything up once a week. For those who like to set things up for the whole week in one go I find that doing it at any time other than that point in time when the machine has just been turned on the straight forward way to do it.
The other recommendation for new owners is to make use of the 'automatic switch on and switch off at a certain time' setting. Setting your machine to come on and populate the EPG at anytime before you use it is will appeal to a lot of people. Some people will set it up to come on before they get in from work or before they get up in the morning. When you get to the PVR its nicer to have the EPG populated so you can get on with doing the weeks schedules. You can choose the channel it switches on to also and I'll explain in a minute how this is sometimes important.
For those who normally like to plan that day/evenings/couple of days scheduling, its not as long to wait because they get done in a few minutes and so like me dont take bother to take the autoswitch on and gather EPG option above. If only the whole 7 days of the guide was populated in a few minutes though! This is where PIP is useful because when testing (if you know the right channels - see below) it shortens the time to populate the EPG by about 50% and this is because the machine is making use of both tuners to do the EPG gathering.
None of the broadcasters/channels are obliged to keep up to date EPG data for all channels so note this. Indeed they are not obliged to keep up to date EPG data for their own channels or any EPG data at all. Most of the time though I find the reality patchy. The only thing broadcasters are obliged to do is transmit Now&Next data. Talk about making the problem worse eh! This is changeable but most of the time the good old beeb will broadcast EPG data for all 7 days and for practically all channels. At the other end of the spectrum I found some channels will often not transmit any EPG info or just the EPG info for channels in its MUX and it can be slower. TMF and Five come to mind and I suppose it goes for channels in their MUX. ITV seem better at broadcasting EPG data than most but not as well as Mux1 (BBC1/BBC2 etc).
Therefore my recommendation is to use BBC1 one for gathering the EPG and when using the auto-on settings. If using the PIP method because you have just switched the machine on and want to reserve some stuff, I would use BBC1 and PIP onto ITV1. Being on a particular channel you can see that broadcasters seem to send EPG data for their channels/channels on their MUX first quickest. So if you are on BBC1 and want to see the EPG data quickly on say FIVE - use PIP for FIVE and low and behold the other tuner is receiving from FIVE listing for its channel and other in its MUX.
Hopefully this will be food for thought and give new owners some ideas until the EPG is configured to speed up considerably or when it is able to be saved to disk. This might also go some way to explaining to Toppy owners reading why they have found their new EPG varies in speed of population by a few minutes - although I would have thought that after 7 months of work on the toppy EPG it would have been infinitely more fine tuned for optimum speed than what was released with the Humax.
Firstly there seem to be a lot of people who either just schedule recordings for that day or couple of days, and some people that like to spend time in the Guide setting everything up once a week. For those who like to set things up for the whole week in one go I find that doing it at any time other than that point in time when the machine has just been turned on the straight forward way to do it.
The other recommendation for new owners is to make use of the 'automatic switch on and switch off at a certain time' setting. Setting your machine to come on and populate the EPG at anytime before you use it is will appeal to a lot of people. Some people will set it up to come on before they get in from work or before they get up in the morning. When you get to the PVR its nicer to have the EPG populated so you can get on with doing the weeks schedules. You can choose the channel it switches on to also and I'll explain in a minute how this is sometimes important.
For those who normally like to plan that day/evenings/couple of days scheduling, its not as long to wait because they get done in a few minutes and so like me dont take bother to take the autoswitch on and gather EPG option above. If only the whole 7 days of the guide was populated in a few minutes though! This is where PIP is useful because when testing (if you know the right channels - see below) it shortens the time to populate the EPG by about 50% and this is because the machine is making use of both tuners to do the EPG gathering.
None of the broadcasters/channels are obliged to keep up to date EPG data for all channels so note this. Indeed they are not obliged to keep up to date EPG data for their own channels or any EPG data at all. Most of the time though I find the reality patchy. The only thing broadcasters are obliged to do is transmit Now&Next data. Talk about making the problem worse eh! This is changeable but most of the time the good old beeb will broadcast EPG data for all 7 days and for practically all channels. At the other end of the spectrum I found some channels will often not transmit any EPG info or just the EPG info for channels in its MUX and it can be slower. TMF and Five come to mind and I suppose it goes for channels in their MUX. ITV seem better at broadcasting EPG data than most but not as well as Mux1 (BBC1/BBC2 etc).
Therefore my recommendation is to use BBC1 one for gathering the EPG and when using the auto-on settings. If using the PIP method because you have just switched the machine on and want to reserve some stuff, I would use BBC1 and PIP onto ITV1. Being on a particular channel you can see that broadcasters seem to send EPG data for their channels/channels on their MUX first quickest. So if you are on BBC1 and want to see the EPG data quickly on say FIVE - use PIP for FIVE and low and behold the other tuner is receiving from FIVE listing for its channel and other in its MUX.
Hopefully this will be food for thought and give new owners some ideas until the EPG is configured to speed up considerably or when it is able to be saved to disk. This might also go some way to explaining to Toppy owners reading why they have found their new EPG varies in speed of population by a few minutes - although I would have thought that after 7 months of work on the toppy EPG it would have been infinitely more fine tuned for optimum speed than what was released with the Humax.