Padding versus Accurate Recording

What's the difference?

When you set a recording on the Humax from the EPG, whether as a one-off event or a series recording, then the Humax uses one of two strategies to attempt to capture the entire programme, either Accurate Recording (AR) or Auto-Padding.

If you go into the settings menu for recording preferences, there is the option to set pre- and post-padding; if both of these are off (zero) your recordings will be automatically AR; if either of them is set to a non-zero value the recordings will be made at the scheduled EPG times with an extra allowance before and after according to what is set.

With both strategies, the Humax monitors the EPG information from the broadcaster and adjusts the scheduled recording entry to reflect last-minute changes to the broadcast schedule, however it only does this when it is booted and not recording.

In Accurate Recording mode, the Humax wakes up 15 minutes before the scheduled start of the recording and waits for a signal from the broadcaster (carried in the Now/Next EPG information) that the programme has started. It continues to watch for the start signal until 30 minutes after the recording's scheduled start time. If the signal is not received within that time window then the recording fails and is reported as Failed to Track in the media list.

In Auto-Padding mode, the Humax wakes up at (scheduled start time - pre-padding time) and starts recording immediately. At (scheduled end time + post-padding time) it stops recording and powers off.

Which one should I use?

There is no right answer to that question; both options are attempts to ensure that you capture all of a recording that you schedule and both carry a risk that you will miss some or all of the programme. There are reports of the AR signal being unreliable on some channels (e.g. 5* which appears to just send the start signal when the programme was scheduled to start) and people in some regions do experience more recording failures than those in others. When it works, AR means that you have protection against a programme starting up to 15 minutes early or 30 minutes late.

Padding between consecutive programs on the same channel is supressed and EPG times are used, This can chop the end off a late running program and add it to start of the next recorded program.

With the customised firmware, it is possible to selectively apply the two strategies on a per-channel basis, so you can have the best of both worlds.