Freesat Tune Fails

[Black Hole]

mine randomly says no signal strength across one or both LNBs but you are watching stuff OK reboot and it all normal till it decides to play stupid again????

So it's broken.

one setting turns off freesat completely I forget what its called…

Non-Freesat Mode, IIRC

but set to this the box finds everything including Quest HD, Ch 4 HD and Aljazeera HD, but the guide never populates and you can't use to record

Not quite true, there's plenty to read about how to go about it if you are interested, but if your box is broken anyway...

why anyone perseveres with it I don't know

Maybe because it's the only Freesat box they can run custom firmware on? And with Nowster's Patch the recordings are not encrypted therefore available for editing, archive, etc. Try that with a Sky box!

I bought for 40 quid as an experiment and it was a waste of 40 quid and the petrol to pick it up

You bought a broken one.

 

[botus]

So it's broken.


Non-Freesat Mode, IIRC


Not quite true, there's plenty to read about how to go about it if you are interested, but if your box is broken anyway...


Maybe because it's the only Freesat box they can run custom firmware on? And with Nowster's Patch the recordings are not encrypted therefore available for editing, archive, etc. Try that with a Sky box!


You bought a broken one.

Not sure if broken, I'm guessing something needs a bit of solder or a fresh capacitor. Is this a user doable fix? The odd thing is it has the moment when the weathers bad... but the sky box that usually uses the LNB and wires is perfectly happy.

You didn't cover the Picture quality... staggering contrast when you view a decent tuner in a 1080P bit of kit

 

[Black Hole]

You didn't cover the Picture quality... staggering contrast when you view a decent tuner in a 1080P bit of kit

Come now. A digital tuner is a digital tuner - end of.

 

[Trev]

As we seem to be nit-picking, I don't think it is the tuner anyway. The tuner just tunes to the correct RF frequency and the output is then fed to a digital demux that sorts the required programme material from the others that are multiplexed onto the carrier. Neither the tuner or the demux care a toss what the TV frame rate/resolutions are.
Close but no cigar

But I also wonder how you "view a decent tuner"

 

[grahamlthompson]

Thanks for the quick reply 'Black Hole'. I can understand the channel caching and why that cache would be lost on an attempted re-tune. However surely the EPG is real-time. Wouldn't a dish alignment issue or LNB failure break the EPG pretty much immediately?

Every transponder that carries a freesat channel carries the full epg in a round data robin. This trickle charges the epg copy in NVram. You can get an instant epg by using schedule and then pressing red. What you should have done first is check channel 999 is present. This is the freesat home transponder. Without reception from here there is no way to download a temporary copy of the postcode channel allocation data.

If you have a friend with Sky-HD or freeesat if you set up the box on that this will restore the alternate schedule red displaying the cached epg.

Other than that you need to fix your dish. Check the cables at the lnb end for signs of water ingress. If wet you will need to renew the cabling. If dry try swapping the lnb. They are as cheap as chips on e-bay.

LNB skew is the twist the lnb needs for your location. If incorrect it means that the receiver will have problems seperating Horizontal and vertically polarises channels especially when the frequencies are close.

 

[grahamlthompson]

So it's broken.


Non-Freesat Mode, IIRC


Not quite true, there's plenty to read about how to go about it if you are interested, but if your box is broken anyway...


Maybe because it's the only Freesat box they can run custom firmware on? And with Nowster's Patch the recordings are not encrypted therefore available for editing, archive, etc. Try that with a Sky box!


You bought a broken one.

Interested to know how

Not sure if broken, I'm guessing something needs a bit of solder or a fresh capacitor. Is this a user doable fix? The odd thing is it has the moment when the weathers bad... but the sky box that usually uses the LNB and wires is perfectly happy.

You didn't cover the Picture quality... staggering contrast when you view a decent tuner in a 1080P bit of kit

Interested to know how you have a satellite tuner that can view a a 1080p source ? They do not exist. All content is interlaced. What are you using a decent tuner. ?

Only Freeview-HD has progressive content and only at 1080p25.

If you have the custom firmware and add Raydons convert files package then a G2 Humax box can stream the recordings in great quality.

The Foxsat-HDR is long known as being able to hang one to weak signals.

 

[botus]

Come now. A digital tuner is a digital tuner - end of.

I have what was once the best pani plazma TV out there, and am shocked how disgusting the LED pani I got my parents to buy is... this week I was updating TV channels on their 55" Panasonic and I was tweaking the picture settings as I couldn't believe how truly awful it is...

It was once their flagship TV and has a pre HDR jazz up the picture mode (HDR before the words were invented)… oddly in most picture modes this is disabled and it goes on about can't be enabled unless this is on, that is off etc. Some of which are buried in advanced settings. But in the THX mode I usually use this HDR tweak is off, and Advanced settings greyed out. The two professional modes seem way off and as I don't have the calibration kit I never preferred where I'd got these, hence why I was on THX preset with some mild tweaks. However whilst playing I discovered a custom preset that was close to what I had on THX but the HDR was turned on and all of a sudden it leapt towards something worth viewing.

Did some minor tweaks got a huge leap in quality. Flat bland images took on far more 3d effect and glass and shiny stuff looked real for once, even my 87 year old mother could see a significant change.

Then I tuned on their Humax FVP-4000T to retune and nearly fell off my chair. The picture quality was just horrendous ! it was like an analogue connection with a very low bitrate broadcast in SD, I had to check it wasn't zoomed in it was truly atrocious. I discovered somehow it was in joke 1080i mode, switching to 1080P it improved but not by much.... Then discover an update waiting to go which took forever to :

Software Details
– Application version : UKTFAE 1.03.53
– Loader version : UKTFAE 1.05
– Software Build date : 13 JAN 2021
– Micom version : N/A
– System id : 9010.7D31

After that, did a retune, rechecked for 1080P and made some slight tweaks to the picture preset, and flipped back and forth from the Humax tuner to the Panasonic tuner and the Panasonic one is light years better than the Humax manages...

Which is quite strange as my Panasonics tuner whilst OK, is a good 20% behind my BT youview box's tuner. So there is a huge change from one digital tuner to the next and the Humax ones are patently rubbish.

 

[Black Hole]

So there is a huge change from one digital tuner to the next and the Humax ones are rubbish.

I think you're blaming the tuner when actually it's the upscaler at fault. Is the TV 4K by any chance?

 

[botus]

yes theirs is 4k,

when swapping to 1080P, I found a new mode on the Humax 2060 or something (I'd not seem before), it made it worst of all,

yet trying another BT 4K box into my TV, its 4K setting gave a better picture then sending 1080P at my 1080 TV which was surprising for me

 

[Black Hole]

You'll get the best PQ by setting output sources to the same res as the original signal*, therefore rely on the TV's 4K upscaler for the whole conversion instead of going through two conversions.

This wasn't a problem with 1080 TVs: by setting the set-top box to 1080 output, the STB's upscaler is used and the TV does no upscaling. or set the output to native* and the TV does all the upscaling. It was not uncommon the STBs had better upscalers than the TVs of the time.

* Unfortunately it's not easy to set the Humax units to always output HDMI at the same res as the broadcast source, so it's easier to set 1080 and leave it at that - which is great for a 1080 TV but not so hot for a 4K TV.

 

[Black Hole]

...but whenever you're doing comparisons, it is vital you ensure the broadcast source is the same.

 

[botus]

yes theirs is 4k,

when swapping to 1080P, I found a new mode on the Humax 2060 or something (I'd not seen before), it made it worst of all,

yet trying another BT 4K box into my TV, its 4K setting gave a better picture then sending 1080P at my 1080 TV which was surprising for me

theirs is a 4k TV … that was upscaling 1080i broadcast from the pani tuner to fit its 4k screen and it was good, the Humax pushing 1080P at the 4k screen wasn't so clever (in normal or the HDR interpretation I go on about above)… which I put down to the Humax quality (….everything I was viewing was BBC1 HD)

mine is a 1080 TV and oddly pushing 1080P from 4k youview device (with 1080 content) the picture was not as good as my 1080P youview box.... but switching the 4k youview to 4k output and my TV then down converting it back, the picture was very good and was (without direct comparison - felt) as good as the 1080P box pushing 1080P at my plasma telly. I didn't understand why that would be the case

As I put in a much earlier post 1080P output from the bt 1080 youview box takes on much better detail and extra sparkle over the inbuilt 1080i pani tuner. The difference is enough to turn it on and swap to the 1080P tuner whenever there's something good to view +10 to 20% picture improvement. The Humax Freesat box is like the 1080i pani tuner -10%.... both using 50 quid HDMI cables

Brings me back to the 1080P Humax Freeview non recordable thing I've got somewhere, that seemed to add some sparkle but suffered signal drop out all the time... and for no good reason refused to pick up RSA radio stations that I wanted on its internet streaming... Highveld stereo (94.7 as they call it now)

 

[Black Hole]

both using 50 quid HDMI cables

...which makes not a jot of difference