Constant Digital Interference

C

CeC

New Member
After many years of loyal service, my old Thomson Freeview digital recorder finally lost the will to live and I bought the HDR Fox T2 after it was recommended to me. 2 days later I'm ready to take it back. All I get is constant interference in both picture and sound. Playback of recordings is horrendous, it just jumps all over the place and a 1 hour programme ends up being 30 minutes. This happens on all channels at different times of the day. I have an external digital aerial. Whilst the Thomson wasn't perfect, I can honestly say I never had these sort of problems and am at a loss as to what to do. Thought I'd try here before returning it. I may warn you - am just a normal tv watcher with absolutely no techie no how whatsoever!
 
Hi Martin, many thanks for this. Will try it but just wanted to check a couple of things first as I really have no idea - I can't see HD Mux listed anywhere once I go into the transmitter & reception page, but NI Mux is listed. Am assuming I ignore? Also, you say that I must tune the HD channel to DVB-T2. Is this in relation to the HD Mux channel you mentioned? If I don't see it listed on the postcode page, do I just ignore this? Apologies for being clueless..........
 
Many thanks for the advice. Manually re-tuned but it's still the same. Think it's bye bye Humax which is a shame as the extra features on this box is great
 
I think it's worth giving a replacement Humax a try before leaving this product behind and moving to something else
 
CeC said:
Many thanks for the advice. Manually re-tuned but it's still the same. Think it's bye bye Humax which is a shame as the extra features on this box is great
Click to expand...

Would you care to share your postcode so we can check what you are trying to do?
 
Hi. It's BT29 4PY. The Humax was playing with me last night. I manually retuned it twice. After the 2nd time it was great for about 1 hour then went back to it's original state. My postcode shows three transmitters - Divis, Black Mountain and Limavady. Divis and Black Mountain are the closest. I've used Divis which has all of the channels I need although Black Mountain also now has RTE1 and RTE2 which I would also like.
 
Apart for transmitters, there are also potential problems with wiring. Make sure the aerial feed to the Humax is well away from the HDMI lead to the TV (any active HDMI lead come to that), and if you are using the horrible thin aerial coax replace it with some decent screened cable.

Anybody got experience of the Belfast area transmitters? It is less important which transmitter is closest than which way your aerial is pointing. Trying to tune both Irish and UK channels may be a fools' chase, we are not sure whether the EPG can track both at the same time (and therefore recording may be unreliable).
 
Thanks. Have looked into this a little more as well. Checked the signal strength. A couple of channels are 100% strength and between 85/90% quality but most of them are 100% strength with 45/50% quality. I then found a very informative page explaining the difference between strength and quality and have come to the conclusion that the box isn't faulty but possibly something to do with my aerial. When I think about it, we only started having problems with my old Thomson box once the full DSO had taken place. I've found suggestions about a signal booster/splitter aerial amplifier. Doesn't cost much and thought this may be worth a try before spending a fair bit more on getting an aerial company out to look at the aerial, etc. Husband's in the loft as I type looking at the aerial setup!
 
High signal strength and low quality could mean that you have too much signal - do you have an amplifier fitted? You could try removing that and seeing if that improves matters.
My new HDR Fox T2 is showing only about 65% signal strength, but 100% quality.

Apart from that, the low quality could be due to interference from the HDMI cable as has already been suggested, or from other equipment. Its important to use double screened aerial cable.
Loft aerials are also susceptible to picking up interference from domestic electrical wiring.

Good luck,

Peter
 
Have separated the HDMI cable from everything else so it's now just a case of elimination.
 
CeC said:
When I think about it, we only started having problems with my old Thomson box once the full DSO had taken place.
Click to expand...
This points the finger at too strong a signal, the digital multiplexes were boosted when the analogue channels got turned off. As said, if you have an amplifier try it without, otherwise try an attenuator.
 
CeC said:
Checked the signal strength. A couple of channels are 100% strength and between 85/90% quality but most of them are 100% strength with 45/50% quality.
Click to expand...
100% strength is way too much. If you have an amplifier then try removing it from the circuit. If you don't have an amplifier then you need to fit an attenuator.
 
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