Crashing

[Black Hole]

It was not clear to me if 1B was requiring the official firmware to be installed first.

It's not a question of "first". The purpose is to ensure the crashing is not the consequence of a corrupted boot image, and the instructions explicitly say:

Download and install (or re-install) the latest Humax firmware via USB.

Note "Humax" not "Custom", so that it is a standard boot image for the purpose of baselining. The instructions also say:

It will require custom firmware users to re-install their custom firmware.

...meaning the Humax firmware will have over-written it and custom firmware will need reinstating afterwards (if desired). Maybe I could reword it a bit, if this is causing confusion.

However, there is no reason to believe a custom firmware download might not work when a standard firmware would.

I then restarted the machine and now it only shows initially:
L000

It then comes up with E-OS until I turn off the machine.

This does not sound good. I assume the screen showed the proper sequence of "downloading" then "programming", each with a progression from 0 to 100% (with pauses)? Try again, with a standard Humax update this time.

BTW
Just checking - zip files do need unzipping before installation

If it were not unzipped, it would not have been accepted as a firmware update

 

[R7814N]

I reinstalled the standard firmware, followed it by the flush program, and the o/s sprung to life. I went through the set up wizard and all was well, so I installed the firmware mod and it is now working. So all that is left is to check the package settings via my LAN. My thanks to all who have helped me.

 

[R7814N]

Since the reinstall I have looked at the Queued task list. There are a lot of entries there which say decrypt, with status, defer. Detect adds had warned that sharing was not switched on, but I have now done that with the Boot -settings package. I have just rebooted the machine, in the hope that the cause of the deferral was the absence of data sharing. What else should I do to resolve the decrypt deferral status?

 

[Black Hole]

What else should I do to resolve the decrypt deferral status?

That's probably all it was. On-box decryption (not slow software decryption) requires Menu >> Settings >> System >> Internet setting >> Content Share = ON, an active network connection (or at least a loop-back plug), HiDef recordings to have been unprotected, and the DLNA indexer to have crawled the file.