Friday, January 04, 2008

StarHub - Smart TV HubStation Set Top Box Update


I was one of the early adopters of Starhub's Smart TV HubStation DVR set-top box back in March, 2006. I did a review at the time. And it was dreadful. The unit was consigned to the dead box and forgotten.

Having moved to a new apartment, and re-installed the home theatre at our new place, the Starhub box ended up connected again.

After powering up and loading new firmware, I am happy to report the thing actually, mostly, works properly now. The firmware revision has moved from 1.10 to 1.23, so there have obviously been continuous attempts to fix the problems.

The freezing that happened every time one fast forwarded through recorded material is gone. The scheduled recordings now actually take place. The time to move between channels is still too slow, and of course there is no way to burn DVD's of the recorded material. The user interface has a couple of bugs, particularly the inability to select a channel from the schedule screen, which the normal digital set-top box allows.

All in all, a pedestrian offering, but one that is now functional.



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