Humax Aura
andyd1302 - 1 day ago »
It's good if Humax are taking on board the issues as constructive criticism, as it's meant that way. I certainly want Humax to succeed with this box & I get the feeling the commenters here want the same.
The Humax HDR-1000S I'm running alongside the Aura, so my direct comparison is with that plus the Panasonic Plasma panel I'm outputting both Humax units to.
If certain features can be imported into the Aura that are present on the HDR-1000S, I'd have no hesitation to recommend it to anyone looking for a one box solution but at present I feel that the Aura is still off that point due to various issues which I feel sure can eventually be resolved in time.
It's good that Humax support are listening though and are open to suggestions.
I logged the lack of 1080i/50Hz selection in the Aura's Audio & Video Settings with Humax Support, which is a major issue for me due to the Aura's inferior PQ on SD content compared to the HDR-1000S.
A 'direct' or 1080i/50Hz setting on the Aura to let the panel deal with the deinterlacing would be a start to match the specs on both the HDR-1000S and the FVP-4000T/5000T.
Both boxes I've found are much better performers with SD content than the Aura.
Another massive miss for me is the lack of a Humax Client on the Aura for Media serving, similar to the "Humax Media Share" on the HDR-1000S.
Using the most popular Android apps on the Aura is a nightmare to try to get a reasonable PQ from items stored on a Home Network.
The plus point is Plex on the Aura is snappy & responsive in the app & the GUI looks good, but the file transcoding is bad & the picture stutters.
For example:
For a SD 576 (interlaced) .TS file
A cursory push of the S/AD button on the Aura remote says the original file is 704x576@25fps.
The "Output" for display is 1080p@50Hz.
The "Video Resolution" however, has 1080P@60Hz during playback. It's then where the footage starts to stutter and go out of sync, presumably meaning frames are being dropped either in the app or by the Humax box itself.
In Kodi for Android, the same (interlaced) file :
704x576@25fps
"Output" 1080p@50Hz.
"Video Resolution" 1080P@60Hz
The audio is well out of sync too on Android Kodi, and even the GUI button presses have a sound delay from the remote button input.
After looking at the 'system', 'display' settings in Android Kodi on the Aura, the refresh rate seems to be fixed at 1920x1080p 60Hz with a greyed out area where you can normally amend to match, which might mean the Aura on the Android side is locked to the US standard?
The Client on the HDR-1000S (via Humax Media share) plays all files flawlessly using Media Share as a client and Plex as a server from a Windows PC, with excellent SD and HD PQ.
So as a workaround I'm currently using the HDR-1000S for media streaming as the original quality seems to be maintained with no lag.
Both Aura and HDR-1000S are ethernet hard-wired.
Whether this is an easy fix I'm unsure, but I hope this info is of some use somewhere along the line...
Related to this I’d like to see 1080p24/23.98 support. Aura doesn’t appear to support that output which I find odd given that for media playback it is a common resolution and frame rate.
I’ve got ripped Blurays in my library that I play back using Plex, plus I use Prime video which has a mostly 1080p content. Aura selects 4k24 for 1080p24 material resulting in poor upscaling quality.
