We The Undersigned...

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MrPloppy

Member
Unusually, there's a lot of disgruntlement going on over on the DS forum about the lack of TV portal. People are saying that it was false advertising to suggest the tv portal will be coming in October when, as we know, its looking more like February now.

There is a school of thought that "software is software" and delays happen. Being in the business myself, a 4-5 month delay on a software build is probably not acceptable, and questions would be made about our software development practices. Our customer would probably look elsewhere, or ask for a reduction in price.

Here, however, the customer is "us". We've already paid for the box, and this portal update is effectively free. I guess there's no reason for humax to deliver on time as there are no real commercial pressures. This still leaves us customers unhappy but the difference is that we can't do much about it.

Over on the DS forums, there is mention of people sending their boxes back for a refund. This is the ultimate thing to do, but does smack of martyrdom. Once youve got your money back, what else is out there that matches the humaxs capability?

Of course te other thing to do is to collectively raise a complaint to the advertising watchdog for false advertising. This, I think is a better option as we would show humax that we, the customer, are not happy, and still keep the box.

I'm not saying anything much here, I'd rather a box that works, rather than be subject to endless beta releases to see.if this build fixes that bug. but I wanted to simply gauge peoples feelings on here. How mad are you that this is still delayed? What would YOU do about it?

Answers on a postcard.... :)
 
here here. they are right royally taking the piss and i bought the box based on this advertised capability.
 
here here. they are right royally taking the piss and i bought the box based on this advertised capability
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But the box may be capable , if nobody transmits the data is that the fault of Humax? , I bought a TV that receives terestrial TV but its not transmitted round here anymore, thats not the fault of the manufacturer. If Humax somewhere in it terms states" capability when available," they are in the clear
 
I'm not really bothered one way or the other about the TV Portal, and knew nothing about it at the time I purchased my HD and HDR boxes, so was not influenced in any way with my purchases.

I will certainly use the BBC iPlayer when it is available, and would like to see catch up services from other channels if they become available.
 
The delay is frustrating, but given that there's a closed beta test going on at the moment and the review of the portal that was posted didn't seem to encounter any obvious bugs, it can't help but think we are only days away now. So raising a complaint at this stage may make folks feel better, but I don't see it's likely to make any real difference to the release date. There is also a possibility that it might make them more secretive and less likely to make announcements/promises (however rash) about future updates. I also agree with what has already been said, I'd rather wait a bit longer for a stable release, rather than suffer a rushed bug ridden one. I may also be a bit biased, as I know I'm already three weeks late on delivering some a php script I promised someone.
 
I couldn't care less if the portal never comes as I will never use it anyway. It would have been much more sensible to fix the few problems that exist with the basic device. Then I would be more than happy.:)
 
MrPloppy said:
Unusually, there's a lot of disgruntlement going on over on the DS forum about the lack of TV portal. People are saying that it was false advertising to suggest the tv portal will be coming in October when, as we know, its looking more like February now.

There is a school of thought that "software is software" and delays happen. Being in the business myself, a 4-5 month delay on a software build is probably not acceptable, and questions would be made about our software development practices
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Currently it's only running 3 months behind, Every company I know that says it will be released in month X means the last day of month X. 31st Jan is therefore 3 months, even Feb 4th is only 3 months and 4 days not 4 months as some would have it.

MrPloppy said:
Over on the DS forums, there is mention of people sending their boxes back for a refund. This is the ultimate thing to do, but does smack of martyrdom. Once youve got your money back, what else is out there that matches the humaxs capability?
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Even then they wouldn't get all their money back as they've had use of the box for so long using what must be counted as the major functionality of a PVR which is what it is advertised as, I don't see any adverts saying "here buy our portal for £300 and by the way you get a free twin tuner PVR".

MrPloppy said:
Of course te other thing to do is to collectively raise a complaint to the advertising watchdog for false advertising. This, I think is a better option as we would show humax that we, the customer, are not happy, and still keep the box.
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Maybe, and they may get a slap on the wrist, next time they'll just say "October subject to xxxx". People will still get annoyed as they won't read the small print (who does) but Humax be in the clear. There will then be others who find out that having a broadband reliant on wet string doesn't work; those who don't realise that they need an internet connectopin at all as they assumed it would work through the aerial; those who expect it to support their favourite other channel catch up service; those who ... There will always be complaints, whatever Humax does.

MrPloppy said:
I'm not saying anything much here, I'd rather a box that works, rather than be subject to endless beta releases to see.if this build fixes that bug. but I wanted to simply gauge peoples feelings on here. How mad are you that this is still delayed? What would YOU do about it?
:)
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I have my PVR, it's what I bought, even with access to the portal I don't use it.
 
Thanks everyone.

I was trying to gauge feeling on here, after all, this forum send a bit more mature than the ds forum! :D
So the consensus is something like this:

We, the undersigned, do hereby announce that we are not very happy with the delay and lack of communication. We believe that you have falsely claimed that the portal will be available in October, yet 2/3/4/5 months later (delete as applicable! :)) we still do not have this capability.

However, we are forgiving people, and we want you to know that while we're annoyed, we wait with baited breath for this update, not only for the portal software, but in the hope that the underlying software problems will be fixed, making this the box we all hope for.



I'm not sending it off anywhere, but I think that pretty much sums up everyone's feelings?

Just a thought, really. :)
 
It's the 31'st of January and Humax's MD said the portal would be available this month when the beta was shown on TechRadar.
Will we be getting this update today, or do we have another delay?
Can we have some feedback Humax please, we know they monitor these forums?
We afterall are the customers who paid a high premium for these boxes in anticipation of this functionality.
 
This is normal Humax procedure, we have had this treatment, many, many times in the past - broken promises - still waiting for the last update.

Often the new software introduces more problems than it solves, as I say normal Humax procedure.
 
It's very bad from a supplier customer instance though. It seems a good product from a hardware point of view which is let down in many cases by its software.
For example when I got the box back in October if you searched for a tiltle in the guide section the box locked, or if you tried to play a file through dlna the box crashed.
I understand that there are issues when delivering software, I am a developer myself for financial modelling software, but come on. We couldn't get away with this sort of attitude, our product solutions can cost between tens of thousands to millions of £, and are required for specific times dictated by trading rules and treasury obligations.
As a collective group of purchasers we must easily fall into the latter group, so please Humax treat us with some respect, after all we only expect what we thought we had purchased.
 
dickie said:
For example when I got the box back in October if you searched for a tiltle in the guide section the box locked
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IIRC, that wasn't really humax's fault. BBC changed the way they transmitted/encoded the EPG data on the HD channels, right about the time Humax released the HDR.
 
>> Which version do you claim introduced more problems than it solved?
You have misinterpreted what I wrote, as I didn't claim a version introduced more problems than it solved - I pointing out that the supplied product I bought had some very basic bugs that had obviously been passed by Humax QA.
Both of the issues I mentioned were well documented on forums, and were fixed by version 1.01.09.
>> My information is that Humax are not interested in this forum.
That's a shame if you are correct, I have seen them answer questions in other forums such as DS, and they were very active when there was hummy.org, hopefully this will become like the old hummy.org.
If you have a special contact that gives you this information then perhaps you could ask them to pass on the feelings to Huamx.
 
dickie said:
>> Which version do you claim introduced more problems than it solved?
You have misinterpreted what I wrote, as I didn't claim a version introduced more problems than it solved - I pointing out that the supplied product I bought had some very basic bugs that had obviously been passed by Humax QA.
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No you are confused. I was responsing to a post from keithatrochdale as my message shows. The search bug was due to a change in the meta data; it worked originally and then failed region by region as the change was rolled out by the broadcasters.
 
dickie said:
I understand that there are issues when delivering software, I am a developer myself for financial modelling software, but come on. We couldn't get away with this sort of attitude, our product solutions can cost between tens of thousands to millions of £, and are required for specific times dictated by trading rules and treasury obligations.
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I suspect that given the type of software you develop there is a lot more money available to throw at development than for a mass market cheap box where a few pounds can mean lost sales. I accept that bad software will also lose sales but the average punter will put up with some terrible software. Of course Apple proves that people will pay for style over substance but you can't walk around with a T2 so that everybody can see you have one.
 
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