might the PVR need a software update?
Possibly that is also a factor. Initially the 9150T didn't attempt to store the epg between startups, and would start off with a totally blank epg each time you switched it out of standby and take 9 minutes to populate it as best it could (which prior to 2012 was the whole epg from at least 1 transmitter). Due to the population of the epg slowing down the unit every time it was switched on Humax issued a software update in 2010 that not only cashed the epg to disk during standby, but also deliberately slowed down the epg population so that it took longer than the previously 9 minutes
Which software version are you on? Should be 1.00.23 or later. The main one was 1.00.26 but some kept it on 1.00.23, or reverted back to 1.00.23 as 1.00.26 would cause a recording failure if 2 episodes for a series were broadcast consecutively.
To update the software you would need to find an old owner who has the software and can share it with you, and then update the unit via a serial port using a PC and a null modem cable. If your PC hasn't a serial port there are USB/serial adapters. Although back in 2009 I updated the similar 9300T using a serial port I can't currently remember which controlling software I used, but I think it was inbuilt into windows XP. Back in the day Martin Liddle wrote a utility for those who were having difficulty updating but I'm not sure if it will still work on a modern PC (
https://www.tynecomp.co.uk/flash9200.html ).
It makes no difference which channel you switch to. The EPG information is transmitted the same for all services on all muxes,
Yes, the full epg for the transmitter is transmitted on every multiplex from the transmitter, but on the PVR-9000Ts it does make a difference to the storing of the full 7 day epg, especially with the limit to how many entries the PVR-9000T series can store.
Before the memory issue arose the PVR-9000T series usually took two rounds of the carousel to store the entire 7 day epg, with the exception of when the channel being watched was form the SDN multiples which often would take a bit longer, (and I think some reported other non-BBC multiplexes were also reported to take longer than 9 minutes).
After the memory issue arose there were multiple user reports that a PVR-9000T tuned to the full set of SD multiplexes (i.e. not Freeview lite) the unit would favour the current multiplex and remove a stored entry for an event from a different multiplex when it came across another entry it wanted to store.
What this meant was that if you wanted to search, or set an AR schedule entry, for a programme which you knew would be on a particular multiplex you could tune to a channel on that multiplex, and then after 9 minutes use the search function or set a recording timer for that programme.
I can only say deleting unwanted channels worked for me on the 9150T.
Are you sure about that? There were a few reports of people, instead of missing out a mux deleting channels instead, and then saying that missing out a multiplex did not work for them. Perhaps the 9200T did have some differences with the 9150T/9300T with respect to deleted channels and I just didn't pick up which they were referring to. Do you remember if it was possible to tune to a single multiplex and then from the found list remove channels before storing the remaining ones?
Perhaps it would be worthwhile victor-anthony deleting unwanted channels first. There are plenty of streaming channels on the SDN multiplex.
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victor-anthony Do you have any channels in the epg that are against channel number 800 or greater? If you have then that would indicate, you are also receiving from multiple transmitters which would aggravate the epg storage issues but also reduce the reliability of timers working.
Deleting everything apart from services on 1 or 2 muxes may, or may not, make things better. It depends how the software has been implemented and what it does with the information on services from un-tuned muxes.
It does make things better. There were a lot of reports of that only tuning into just 1 transmitter and omitting a multiplex resulted in an immediate fix to the issue, albeit with a reducing range of available channels to watch.
I had a 9200T which I used, and a 9300T (which is even more similar to a 9150T), and they both would behave fine as far as population was concerned when tuned to just 4 multiplexes, but not if I then added the 5th multiplex with the most channels. Doing that that and the epg would almost immediately start playing up, as well as some additional lag on some of the remote usage.
Also at least with least with the the 9200T manual tuning a single multiplex did not immediately remove the previous epg entries for that multiplex. This made it possible to examine what was being stored by resetting the unit, tune to just 1 multiplex, immediately removing the aerial, delete all but 1 channel, reconnect the aerial and wait for at least 9 minutes, retune the same multiplex, immediately remove the aerial to stop further epg population and then re-examining the epg.
Also then retuning to an additional multiplex and immediately removing the aerial would result in either all channels for that second multiplex not having any entries, or next to no entries depending how quick the aerial was removed after the second tuning. I.e. non-tuned multiplexes were just ignored.
Are you sure you have correctly identified the Humax model? The 9150 has not been manufactured or supported for many years.
Looking on eBay for the past 90 days there have been an average of 6 PVR-9150Ts sold each week.
The PVR-9300T, the PVR-9150T's big brother, has an average of 13 sold on eBay each week.