Humax DRT800 Owner's Club

deputydog95 · 11-23-2004, 06:33 PM

I though I might post a thread on here for Humax owners, since we don't have our own forum. Might be nice to have a single thread identifying owners, problems, and tricks/solutions related to our unit. I've seen a lot of different posts on here involving Humax specific issues, so why don't we try and get them all in one place to make it easier for everybody. Post up if you got a Humax DVD

JoeBarbs · 11-23-2004, 07:00 PM

I just purchased a 400GB Seagate drive to install into my DRT-800! A 440 Hour Humax DRT-800! ! ! ! I might end up putting it on ebay to help offset some of my previous TiVo expenses. Any idea what this would fetch on the open market? no upgraded humax DRT's on ebay to compare with.

deputydog95 · 11-23-2004, 09:21 PM

Do you have more than one humax? why would you want to get rid of it so soon after upgrading it. go to weekknees and see what they are selling their upgraded humax's for. i think their most expensive one was around $800. i don't rememeber how many hours it was though.

d_anders · 11-23-2004, 09:30 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by deputydog95
I though I might post a thread on here for Humax owners, since we don't have our own forum. Might be nice to have a single thread identifying owners, problems, and tricks/solutions related to our unit. I've seen a lot of different posts on here involving Humax specific issues, so why don't we try and get them all in one place to make it easier for everybody. Post up if you got a Humax DVD

You might have a little difficulty getting the forum owner and moderators convinced of creating a specific forum for a specific model. I think you would find much wider support for a specific forum setup for discussion for all TiVo based units with a DVD reader/recorder (Pioneer's, Toshiba's, and Humax's).

That said, it appears that Humax has the advantage in terms of shear marketing support and retail sales deployment. That said, the majority of folks participating in a given forum would be probably be Humax owners.

JoeBarbs · 11-23-2004, 09:32 PM

I got it from Best Buy a few weeks ago while they had that pricing glitch. Got it for $200 after rebate. Figured I would try it out for a few months, upgrade it and either keep it if I loved it or sell it and make a few bucks. I think its a great unit, but if I could score $800 for it, then its sold!

JoeBarbs · 11-23-2004, 09:39 PM

Just checked out weakknees and they carry a 350 hour DRT-800 for $800 after a $100 rebate.

My unit would have 33% more recording capacity and no $100 rebate to deal with. I'm just not sure eBay is the right place for me to sell it right now. There are no upgraded units on eBay for me to research the price.

deputydog95 · 11-23-2004, 09:41 PM

A Tivo/DVD burner forum would be great. I emailed the forum a couple days ago about exactly that. I would be fine with them lumping them all together. I got a response saying that they had already had numerous requests for such a forum and they are considering it. They already have a HD tivo forum. I figured something like this would be perfect until they decide to do so.

deputydog95 · 11-23-2004, 09:42 PM

By the way, i'm in the process of burning a test dvd using sony's dvd-rw media. the speed was not listed on the box, but it seems to be burning at 4x. so far so good. the humax at least recognized it. i'll post the results after i do a test play.

deputydog95 · 11-24-2004, 01:02 AM

Success. The sony media worked great. No probs at all. A little pricey at almost $2.20 each for their dvd-rw's. But they work.

Greenwing · 11-24-2004, 03:13 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by deputydog95
Success. The sony media worked great. No probs at all. A little pricey at almost $2.20 each for their dvd-rw's. But they work.

?...So you are saying the HUMAX using will record at higher than 1x as has been reported earlier in other threads? I think the same issue was mentioned about the toshiba units...All only been able to record at 1x...I thought the pioneer was the only unit that did high speed dubbing...(from reading other posts, as I have none of these units myself to try it on)...

JoeBarbs · 11-24-2004, 05:24 AM

Is it possible for the dvd burner to be flashed to a higher firmware during a software download? Therefor giving it higher recording speed?

hoffcs · 11-24-2004, 08:39 AM

Good idea for a forum on this.

I have basic model 2 on regular cable. When I buy a Humax how does my lifetime membership transfer to the new box?

If I choose to keep the old unit in operation what is the cost of an second lifetime membership? Do they reduce price of second lifetime memberships as they do with the $6.95/month charge they advertise?

deputydog95 · 11-24-2004, 09:54 AM

Your lifetime membership does not transfer to the new box. I just found that out the hard way. I will no longer do lifetime's as the technolgy changes too fast and I know that I will not keep these units longer than two years. Maybe when they come out with the Tivo HD DVD burner unit, I will consider it... That's about all I really want in a reasobably priced package. Although I don't see how they will be able to get much programming on DVD with the HD shows unless they do a ton of compression.

Yes, they do reduce the price of the monthly if you already have a Tivo in your household. That's exactly what I did.

As far as the speed, I can take four hours worth of programming and burn it in less than hour. I'm not sure what speed it's burning at, but it is burning it four times faster than real time. That includes prepping and erasing the disc.

The Sony DVD-RW media seems to be excellent. There's definately cheaper stuff out there, but I figure if you're going to use the RW media over and over, you might as well get something quality you can count on.

I haven't heard anything about the firmware being upgradeable. I'm sure it's possible. Four times faster than real time is fine for me though. BTW, that's recording using medium quality tivo shows.

deputydog95 · 11-24-2004, 10:02 AM

Three small issues I've noticed with this unit so far.

One, the left side of the LCD display (Pic of the CD and some writing around it) stays very dimly lit, even when the display if off. Not a big deal. Maybe as the LCD burns in some, it will go away. You only notice it when you're up close.

When you play back a burnt cd on my laptop, the opening tivo menu seems to shake slightly. I also have noticed this during playback where this stationary text in the show. Much more noticeable during the animated tivo top menu on the disc though.

I think the tuner quality is worse than my series 2. I don't exept much out of my tivo, especially when recording because I only use medium for the sake of space. However when you flip between tivo and the cable box, the cable box picture is much clearer. I am only using S-video connections, but that's the way my series 2 was setup as well. I use the cable box when watching HD or my designated DVD player for movies. Kind of disspointing that the image is a little crappy compared to the cable box's picture. I am running a splitter from the cable box, with a cable going to the Tivo and another going to the Tivo (so I can watch something else while recording), but's a pretty expensive Monster brand splitter and it doesn't seem to affect the cable's picture.

Oh well, I still love this thing

deputydog95 · 11-24-2004, 10:03 AM

By the way, if you've got a Humax, post that you've got one. I figure if we get enough activity on here, maybe we can a DVD burner tivo forum.

deputydog95 · 11-24-2004, 10:04 AM

One other thing, I have heard of issues with MRV and the Humax. No probs at all. Got it going last night. Have not tried to burn a transferred show. I was told that it was not possible.

flymhi · 11-24-2004, 12:25 PM

deputydog,

I have the DRT-800 as well and noticed a setting for the display (Off, dim, & bright). Have you tried to change this setting?

I also use an expensive 3-way splitter at the wall. I have not noticed any signal difference between the cable direct and TiVo signals.
1) feeds the Cable box ---> to Tivo---> TV
**I use component feeds for the link between the cable box, TiVo, and TV.**
2) feeds the TV directly for wacthing other channels while recording
3) feeds the VCR for taping alternate shows---> TV

I also use a MA111 wireless usb adapter for HMO and love it.

I have no complaints yet...

Flymhi

deputydog95 · 11-24-2004, 01:10 PM

Yep, tried low, high, and off. Part of the displays stays very dimly lit. I posted about this before on another thread and someone else had the same issue.

Where is your splitter located in your setup?

Mine actually goes through a cable surge protection device (which probably degrades it some), into the cable box, out of the cable box to the splitter, from the splitter to the Tivo and the Television.

I am only using S-video cables. I have a dedicated DVD player and cable box using components. I only use the Tivo for taping and burning. I watch live tv (which isn't often and usually only the HD channels) through the cable box. I was told there is no advantage to using components on the Tivo if you are not using it to play DVD's. It will downgrade the signal as it goes through the component cables.

I am also wireless. Belkin 54g network with Linksys B adapters for the Tivos?

Talked to Tivo today. No word on the horizon for G networking.

deputydog95 · 11-24-2004, 01:11 PM

FLM: Try switching channels back to back and let me know what you see. I didn't really notice the difference until I did a quick swap between two channels.

deputydog95 · 11-24-2004, 01:18 PM

I take back what I said.

Cable feed to Cable surge protector.
Cable surge prot. to splitter.
Splitter to Cable box.
Splitter to TV
Svideo cable to Tivo input.

Doesn't seem like I could do much better than that.

flymhi · 11-24-2004, 01:45 PM

My splitter is at the wall similar to yours. I'm sure the surge protector does degrade the signal somewhat although it's probably marginal.

Also, I have a friend who used to work for Comcast (AT&T then). According to him the number of splitters you run without ghosting or signal degredation varies in different areas. (You can also run active splitters / powered splitters" instead of the Walmart brand passive splitters) For passive units, it largely depends on how many houses are served from the nearest hut. Comcast mainly has fiber to the curb in most metro areas so it's no longer dependant on how far you are from the cable head-end.

dvdmon · 11-24-2004, 02:13 PM

I got my DRT-800 a couple of weeks ago and got the BB price-glitch discount.

So far so good. Guys, if you are having issues with quality, try setting the default recording quality to best. I'm not sure if that also makes the 30-minute buffer best, but it's worth a shot. Maybe I'll test it out today and set the default to medium and see if my quality goes down the tubes.

I have the best setup possible for this - DirectTV to Humax via SVideo, then Humax to TV via Component. I can still see a difference even at Best, and I'm sure it's because of the inherent technology here. After all, you are doing a conversion from digital to analog via the Satellite receiver, then to digital in the Humax, then to analog again to the TV. All of those conversions have got to degrade things at least some!

I've only encountered two "issues" so far. One is that on some programs I seem to get a "hickup" at one point during the program. It's like a skip in the audio and video and sometimes this is accompanied by a split-second grey screen. Has anyone else encountered anything like this? I've only noticed this on the TiVo playback, but I haven't watrched many of the DVD's I've burned yet, so I don't know if these experience this problem as well. I have no clue whether they coincide with burning at the same time that a recording was being made, but at least in once case I don't believe anything esle was going on other than the HD recording and watching...

The other issue regards the recording of content in 16:9 aspect ratio. I have a wide-screen TV and on the HD channels off the satellite it will display in 16:9. When I record these with the Humax, I can play them back of the hard drive and they will display in 16:9 (widescreen). However, when I burned one of these to a DVD-R, it put bars around all four sides. When I loaded it into my laptop and checked the DVD's properties, it told me it was in 4:3. I have progressive scan set to Auto, but I have no idea whether that would be related. I tried calling Humax about it, but after getting transferred a couple of times and then told they needed to call me back, I never heard from them - this was a week or so ago.

As for DVD's, I've been able to find 4x DVD-R's for about $.50 each and DVD-RW's for about $2 each. There's no indication on the DVD-RW's what speed they are, so I assume that means they are 1X and recording with them seems to confirm that. The DVD-R's however do seem to record stuff a lot faster. Not sure if it ends up as 4X, but it's at least 2X (based on the assumed speed of the DVD-RW's) and perhaps 3-4X...

I think it would be great to have a forum on DVD recording TiVo's, but if the admins don't want this, I'd be happy to start up a Yahoo! Group for the purpose of talking about this model if there's any interest.

jonb · 11-25-2004, 11:10 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Greenwing
?...So you are saying the HUMAX using will record at higher than 1x as has been reported earlier in other threads? I think the same issue was mentioned about the toshiba units...All only been able to record at 1x...I thought the pioneer was the only unit that did high speed dubbing...(from reading other posts, as I have none of these units myself to try it on)...

Whether I buy the DRT-800 will depend on this as well as: 1)Is burning strictly an overnight job(cannot do normal fast-forward, normal hard-drive tivoing at the same time)? 2)How much picture quality is lost from original cable source to playing back the dvd on a separate dvd player? There has to be other gotchas as well in this? Please early DRT-800 owners, HELP US FUTURE OWNERS!

dvdmon · 11-25-2004, 11:36 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by jonb
Whether I buy the DRT-800 will depend on this as well as: 1)Is burning strictly an overnight job(cannot do normal fast-forward, normal hard-drive tivoing at the same time)? 2)How much picture quality is lost from original cable source to playing back the dvd on a separate dvd player? There has to be other gotchas as well in this? Please early DRT-800 owners, HELP US FUTURE OWNERS!

Overnight? No! Even at 1x, it's still real-time, meaning a two hour movie will take two hours to burn. I can burn a two-hour move in a lot less - 30-45 minutes maybe? I haven't timed it, though.

I'm not sure about quality loss because there's no way to quantify it. Suffice it to say you aren't going to get true DVD quality. You're doing lots of analog-digital-analog conversions. The quality isn't bad at the "best" level, but it's not perfect. Maybe 95%? Again, I have no way of quantifying it. If you want pristine copies of shows you will either need to buy the DVD of it (if it's being sold) or build your own PVR with a computer and an HD Tuner card and record it that way.

Gotcha's? Nothing's perfect! The one thing that annoys me most is that the recording options are pretty much nonexistant. You can span a movie onto multiple discs or fit multiple smaller programs on one disc (the worse the quality setting they were recorded on the more you can put on one DVD), but that's about it. I would love the ability to record just a piece of a program - even if commercials can't be edited out, there's often stuff at the beginning and/or end that has nothing to do with the given program/movie. Ok, well in most cases they are commercials, but I think in such cases we should be able to edit them out. Also, sometimes there may be only one segment of a given program that I'm interested in, but I'm forced to burn the entire thing.

retired_guy · 11-25-2004, 12:06 PM

[quote]Originally posted by deputydog95

As far as the speed, I can take four hours worth of programming and burn it in less than hour. I'm not sure what speed it's burning at, but it is burning it four times faster than real time. That includes prepping and erasing the disc.

>>>

You're burning at four times viewing time when burning four hours worth of material to DVD in one hour but you're actually only burning at 1X recording speed. The Pioneer will burn the four hours worth of material (medium quality) to one 4X DVD in about twenty minutes. The Pioneer burns a full 1X media DVD in a little under an hour. The recording time is a function of the amount of data, not the viewing time. A 4X recorder will record a full DVD's worth of data in twenty minutes regardless of what quality level the program is originally recorded at. A standard DVD holds the following:

Quality level Viewing time
Extreme 1 hour
High 2 hour
Medium 4 hour
Low 6 hour

dvdmon · 11-25-2004, 12:39 PM

[quote]Originally posted by retired_guy

Quote:

Originally posted by deputydog95

As far as the speed, I can take four hours worth of programming and burn it in less than hour. I'm not sure what speed it's burning at, but it is burning it four times faster than real time. That includes prepping and erasing the disc.

>>>

You're burning at four times viewing time when burning four hours worth of material to DVD in one hour but you're actually only burning at 1X recording speed. The Pioneer will burn the four hours worth of material (medium quality) to one 4X DVD in about twenty minutes. The Pioneer burns a full 1X media DVD in a little under an hour. The recording time is a function of the amount of data, not the viewing time. A 4X recorder will record a full DVD's worth of data in twenty minutes regardless of what quality level the program is originally recorded at. A standard DVD holds the following:

Quality level Viewing time
Extreme 1 hour
High 2 hour
Medium 4 hour
Low 6 hour

Actually, I do think that the Humax can burn up to 4x, meaning 1 hour at BEST quality in 15 minutes, given 4x media. I've done this mysefl. It could be this doesn't work with DVD-RW, just DVD-R, but it does seem to be 4x with 4x DVD-R...

lwsexson · 11-25-2004, 01:24 PM

Another Humax owner. Any kind of forum to concentrate the issues would be good. I am still having trouble with Multi Room Viewing. I have not tried to reconnect it lately. It never worked longer than three days and it is just not worth the trouble.

If someone can shed any light on the problem beyond turning MRV of on the web site, forcing calls to make the MRV inactive on the Tivo boxes. Reactivating online and forcing calls to reactivate, etc -- I would appreciate it.

LWS

Tivo Series 2 - 40 hour
Humax DRT 800 - 80 with DVD-R/RW
Wireless Linksys WRK54G and WUSB11 wireless adapters
Comcast Cable TV and Broadband

jonb · 11-25-2004, 09:28 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by jonb
Whether I buy the DRT-800 will depend on this as well as: 1)Is burning strictly an overnight job(cannot do normal fast-forward, normal hard-drive tivoing at the same time)? 2)How much picture quality is lost from original cable source to playing back the dvd on a separate dvd player? There has to be other gotchas as well in this? Please early DRT-800 owners, HELP US FUTURE OWNERS!

Does anyone have an answer to 1)? Do you DRT-800 owners multi-task burning at the same time you are doing normal tivo tasks? I ask because I have a 1yr old XP PC system, where they tell you to "shutdown other programs when burning cd's". Does the DRT-800 have similar warnings? Have you destroyed dvd media when burning and tivoing at the same time? Or is the DRT-800 software setup to disallow any other tasks when burning?

GT7420 · 11-25-2004, 09:41 PM

I also own the Humax DRT800. Count me in. I've had it for about two weeks so far, and upgraded it to 286 hours with a 250GB drive. So far it's working perfectly. I've only burned one DVD-RW as a test and that went well too. I haven't tested it enough to determine what speed it might be burning at.

sting · 11-26-2004, 03:42 AM

I have a DRT800 for just over a week and I've been reasonably happy with it so I also picked up a Lifetime sub. The only thing that I'm disappointed is its lack of high-speed DVD dubbing, which is a step back from Pioneer's last year model 810H.

Here's my experience on DVD burning speed on a DRT800 using both Memorex 4xDVD-R and 2x DVD-RW -

for a full DVD -

Best Quality ~2X (35 minutes)
High Quality ~1X (50 minutes)
Medium Q. ~ 1X (60 minutes)

Hope this information helps.

I'm thinking about upgrading my DRT800 with a 300+GB drive by myself but am not sure which drive's the best to get and if there are simple to follow step-by-step instructions. I'm not even sure it's doable for me as I only have a Win98SE IBM notebook (w/ CD and floppy drives) and a WinMCE2004 Toshiba notebook (w/o a floppy drive).