HDR-FOX T2 to HDHomeRun, my journey

[Black Hole]

Weather For The Week Ahead hasn't changed S-CRID for years.

 

[dearleuk]

Dunno. However, even if the Pending entries stayed there for a whole year, they would still not record the next series of the same programme, because the broadcasters always change the series identifier. IIRC series indentifiers last for something like a maximum of 26 weeks. Even ITV News at Ten changes its series identifier every few months (which stiches up both the Humax and HDHomeRun.)

I know, they just irritate me

 

[Black Cloud]

So, scenarios where Pending entries are useful:
1. A broadcaster decides episodes once every three months is a good idea?
2. War is declared and we are all going to die, so this week's episode is postponed until next week?

 

[dearleuk]

Well re-tuning didn't help, still getting picture breakup on CH4 HD. It's just that channel, but it's fine when recorded on the Humax. Very odd

 

[MymsMan]

Well re-tuning didn't help, still getting picture breakup on CH4 HD. It's just that channel, but it's fine when recorded on the Humax. Very odd

I wasn't hopeful that it would, it is not like the old analogue days when you improve the picture with some delicate adjustment of the tuning knob. These days retuning is about determining which channels are being broadcast on each mux.

If you go to the HDhomeRun tuner status page you should be able to see what its view of signal strength and quality is


How does it compare to the Humax and how are the two boxes connected to the aerial - using splitters etc can reduce the signal.

 

[MymsMan]

So, scenarios where Pending entries are useful:
1. A broadcaster decides episodes once every three months is a good idea?
2. War is declared and we are all going to die, so this week's episode is postponed until next week?

Some series are well spaced out like Vera, and F1 is usually 2 weeks between episodes so will often be in pending.
It might be nice to have an auto-delete of pending entries older than x weeks where x was a user specified value.

I think the rule is meant to be that a Series crid can be reused for a different series six months after the end of the previous series but broadcasters use the old maxim "rules are made to be broken", Countdown has had the same series crid for donkeys years while the BBC change for every new series of long running quiz show like Pointless. Other times series crids seem to change mid-series for no apparent reasons and some times programmes are broadcast using the series crid of totally unrelated programmes. Quite often I see a programme listed to record and I think I would never have scheduled that crap! Specials are quite likely to get the crids messed up using the series crid of the programme they are replacing.

 

[dearleuk]

Signal is not as good as yours. We are about 4 miles from the Sutton Coldfield transmitter. Is the 81 and 86% good enough? Chanel 5 HD is the same signal strength and quality and that is fine

Humax is 48 50 strength and 100% qualiity

 

[Black Cloud]

We are about 4 miles from the Sutton Coldfield transmitter. Is the 81 and 86% good enough?

My sympathies to you. I used to live near Dover, at sea level, with Church Hougham transmitter about four miles away, and well over a thousand feet higher. Dover town needed a repeater to get anything at all! 86% quality is absolutely not good enough - that's your problem - so fiddling with your aerial is the way to go. If you have an indoor aerial, get another, preferably not a Yagi design. Log Periodic is good for quality issues, although the strength is often less. A simple dipole may work. You could even try resting a small screwdriver in the aerial socket and see what that produces (Elf and Safety will be along any moment with dire warnings about doing that ;-))

 

[dearleuk]

My sympathies to you. I used to live near Dover, at sea level, with Church Hougham transmitter about four miles away, and well over a thousand feet higher. Dover town needed a repeater to get anything at all! 86% quality is absolutely not good enough - that's your problem - so fiddling with your aerial is the way to go. If you have an indoor aerial, get another, preferably not a Yagi design. Log Periodic is good for quality issues, although the strength is often less. A simple dipole may work. You could even try resting a small screwdriver in the aerial socket and see what that produces (Elf and Safety will be along any moment with dire warnings about doing that ;-))

Right it's a trip up to the loft then and see what we have up there.

Thank you

 

[bottletop]

Right it's a trip up to the loft then and see what we have up there....

Before doing anything drastic, what other channels share the Channel 4HD mux?
Eg I now only receive 1 mux that contains all HD channels. So if I had an issue with a HD channel I'd expect it may affect other channels on that mux.

 

[dearleuk]

Before doing anything drastic, what other channels share the Channel 4HD mux?
Eg I now only receive 1 mux that contains all HD channels. So if I had an issue with a HD channel I'd expect it may affect other channels on that mux.

56 5SELECT, 101 BBC One HD (England no regional news), 102 BBC Two HD (England), 103 ITV HD (ITV Central West), 104 Channel 4 HD Midlands ads, 105 Channel 5 HD, 106 BBC Four HD, 109 BBC Three HD, 204 CBBC HD, 205 CBeebies HD

I think they are on 40

 

[Luke]

56 5SELECT, 101 BBC One HD (England no regional news), 102 BBC Two HD (England), 103 ITV HD (ITV Central West), 104 Channel 4 HD Midlands ads, 105 Channel 5 HD, 106 BBC Four HD, 109 BBC Three HD, 204 CBBC HD, 205 CBeebies HD

I think they are on 40

They are probably on all, or almost all. of 21 to 48.
What someone personally receives will depend where they, live and for some the set up of their aerial.

 

[lc200]

I've re-tuned, No Name On the Bullet is now on 5ACTION, just hope CH4 HD not longer breaks up.

Thanks all

Sorry one more question, do the Pending entries on the Recording Schedule page drop off automatically after a period of time?

Yes they will drop off as the general rule when using series link in the DVB spec is to wait up to 13 weeks to see if programs return, if they don't then drop the series link.

Probably not, since DvrOnTime keeps the recording schedule in its database. I re-tuned last week for other reasons, and everything was fine afterwards. However, things may go haywire if a channel in your recording schedule has moved since your last re-tune.

Exactly that, all the scheduled programs are in a database. When re-tuning you may see a lot of scheduled recordings show 'Pending...' until the EPG has refreshed again after the retune (10 or 15 minutes later).

DVRonTime and the HDhomeRun have different views of the channel map, For some reason the HDhomerun doesn't know about Dave but DVRonTime does have the schedule and is able to record the channel

Can confirm DvrOnTime doesn't use the tuned channels HDHomeRun as found and you can re-tune HDHomeRun without effecting DvrOnTime. In practice, unless you are using HDHomeRun's own apps or some others, you don't ever need to worry about tuning the HDHomeRun itself.

I'm having problems with CH4 HD, the recordings all have picture break up, but it's only on recordings from that channel. If I retune my HomeRun, will I loose my recording schedule?

If you have retuned the HDHomeRun then this has no effect on DvrOnTime. Odd if CH4 HD recordings break up but other channels on that mux do not, which is all the other main HD channels. Check in DvrOnTime on the guide page by finding CH4 HD and click the channel number 104, this will give you some info about it and see what frequency is being used to receive it, then cancel out of that and click 103 for ITV HD and that should be the same frequency, if it isn't it means your frequencies set under tuner settings on DvrOnTime includes an additional frequency from some other transmitter so worth while checking those. If you let me know which transmitter you use I can double check for you.

 

[dearleuk]

lc200

Thanks for that. I have checked the frequency as you suggested and they are both 626.

I have a new aerial cable on the way and hope that may cure the problem

 

[bottletop]

....I have checked the frequency as you suggested and they are both 626.

I have a new aerial cable on the way and hope that may cure the problem

It's unusual for channels on the same mux to behave differently. Is there anything at all between then aerial and the HDHomeRun device? If so, test to see what happens when you feed it directly from aerial (if possible).

 

[Black Hole]

It's unusual for channels on the same mux to behave differently.

I would say impossible. It's one data stream, from which the receiver selects and presents the relevant subset of that data.

If there are any reception problems for any specific mux from one transmitter, the data will be equally corrupt and affect all the services unless a particular service has better error correction than another.

Question: is the error correction applied to the data stream as a whole, or per service?

Regardless, one would expect all HiDef services to have the same error correction, StDef services to have the same error correction (but possibly different than HiDef services), audio-only services..., etc.

 

[EEPhil]

I would say impossible. It's one data stream, from which the receiver selects and presents the relevant subset of that data.

The only way one channel could be missing if the rest are in place would be if there was a fault in the transmission end and all details of the channel are missing from the data. (But the channel could still exist as a hidden stream). Unlikely, and would be reported by other people. Having said that, certain broadcasters have been known to corrupt their own part of the data stream.

 

[dearleuk]

It's unusual for channels on the same mux to behave differently. Is there anything at all between then aerial and the HDHomeRun device? If so, test to see what happens when you feed it directly from aerial (if possible).

I have a splitter plugged into the main aerial socket, cable going to the humax and the other to the HomeRun. The cable to the HomeRun is pretty cheap and nasty, so I'm hoping a better cable will solve the problem.

I've got a fair few things recording on the Humax, so don't want to remove the cable at the moment

 

[MymsMan]

I have a splitter plugged into the main aerial socket, cable going to the humax and the other to the HomeRun. The cable to the HomeRun is pretty cheap and nasty, so I'm hoping a better cable will solve the problem.

I've got a fair few things recording on the Humax, so don't want to remove the cable at the moment

I have my HomeRun connected to the aerial out socket of my Humax since I found neither got an adequate signal using a splitter on the input side

Personally I record/watch very little HD TV because:

1. We have seasonal interference (trees) that affects the HD mux more
2. I cant see that much difference in picture quality
3. Recordings take more disk space
4. Sound is out of synch with picture
5. Local BBC news is still not broadcast

 

[dearleuk]

I have my HomeRun connected to the aerial out socket of my Humax since I found neither got an adequate signal using a splitter on the input side

Personally I record/watch very little HD TV because:

1. We have seasonal interference (trees) that affects the HD mux more
2. I cant see that much difference in picture quality
3. Recordings take more disk space
4. Sound is out of synch with picture
5. Local BBC news is still not broadcast

That's really odd about picture quality, we can see a huge difference between SD and HD and we've never had an issue with sound been out of synch

Anyway replaced the aerial cable and as everybody said, it's made no difference