There shouldn't be any difference when woken up from reminder. The network isn't always available in half-awake mode if you use wireless and don't have wireless-helper but everything should be on with a reminder.
Oops! Well I can confirm it does NOT seem to be 'Reminder' that is causing the problem, but there is still a problem :-(
What I did this morning was to manual switch the Humax out of standby, then try CF. I got the menu, but update failed.
It eventually reported:
>>> opkg update Collected errors: * opkg_conf_load: Could not lock /tmp/opkg.lock: Resource temporarily unavailable.
I left it for about 30 minutes and tried again, still no joy.
So then I put the Humax into standby and waited for my 'Reminder' to kick in, and when it did there was NOT a problem.
Tomorrow I will switch the network on well before Humax 'Reminder' starts. (My connection is hard wired, not wireless.)