Humax PVR can't receive same range of channels as Hotel TV - how come?

trellis

New Member
I was staying in a Holiday Inn Express last week (Yep, I know how to live the high life), and the room TV seemed to be an "almost" standard Samsung terrestrial Freeview receiver. Aside from some of the Installation menu options being greyed-out, it didn't seem to have any other "hotel" firmware customisations. This TV could receive all the Freeview muxes, including commercial.

When I connected my Humax HDR-2000T up to the aerial feed in the room and ran a scan, it was only able to find the public-service muxes, effectively giving me "freeview lite". I rescanned again, and again all the commercial muxes were missing.

Connected the aerial back up to the hotel room TV, and confirmed it could receive all the commercial channels.

What's different about the aerial feed in the hotel room that stops the Humax seeing all the muxes?
 
What do you mean "commercial muxes", exactly? Like what?
Just that. The humax picked up the PSB muxes, giving BBC, ITV, Channel 4/5 etc and the HD channels, but failed to receive any of the COM muxes, so no access to the likes of Dave, Pick, Challenge etc.
The hotel TV received all the channels on all the muxes.

No I’m not from Wales. Why do you ask?
 
What's different about the aerial feed in the hotel room that stops the Humax seeing all the muxes?
This could happen if all the following are true:
(1) The TV's tuner is more sensitive than the HDR-200T's tuners.
(2) The transmitter being received from is one of those that transmit the non-PSB muxes at lower power than the PSB muxes.
(3) The signal level of the non-PSB muxes is strong enough for the TV but not the HDR-2000T.

When I connected my Humax HDR-2000T up to the aerial feed in the room and ran a scan, it was only able to find the public-service muxes, effectively giving me "freeview lite".
Did you check the signal strength for the non-PSB nuxes?
 
I wonder if the hotel system sends to the (special) TVs on non-broadcast frequencies. This would make the sets useless to light-fingered guests and avoid interfering with nearby 'normal' TVs. If local PSB broadcasts are strong enough to be picked up by the wiring and thus into your HDR, but the others are lower power, or possibly just at frequencies the cabled system is less efficient at, then you'd be seeing those rather than what the TV is seeing. The results might have been different in another room even.
 
I wonder if the hotel system sends to the (special) TVs on non-broadcast frequencies. This would make the sets useless to light-fingered guests and avoid interfering with nearby 'normal' TVs. If local PSB broadcasts are strong enough to be picked up by the wiring and thus into your HDR, but the others are lower power, or possibly just at frequencies the cabled system is less efficient at, then you'd be seeing those rather than what the TV is seeing. The results might have been different in another room even.
One can't take anything for granted on a hotel system. TVs are supplied with special firmware (which would not have been possible pre-digital, and a lot of hotel room TVs went walkies), and the signal is often regenerated somehow and not a simple distribution system from a communal aerial - possibly from cable or satellite rather than terrestrial so as to include sports and movie services. At one particular hotel I frequent, all TVs default to the hotel's own information service and background music.

failed to receive any of the COM muxes
If you had said "COM" in the first place, I would have understood. The D3&4 mux is also commercial.

Neither am I:frantic:
"We have received a letter, from Mrs Trellis of North Wales..." (running joke; I paraphrase)
 
Ah, now I get the North Wales reference. Sorry, I was a bit slow there. I am a ISIHAC fan, as it happens, I just missed the reference.

The Hotel TV *seemed* to be a pretty normal Freeview set, with no additional channels. I had discounted the signal strength possibility on the basis that, as Black Hole mentions, the signal is usually re-generated within the hotel, or at the very least it would be coming through a huge distribution amplifier, so I would expect all the muxes to come through at a similar signal level. Although I confess I didn't check the signal strength on the missing muxes on the Humax.

The signal strength and quality on the muxes the Humax was able to pick up was excellent, so I'm also sceptical about the hotel using non-standard frequencies and the Humax just picking up a local Freeview transmitter via the hotel wiring.

All the theories suggested so far are of course possible, but they seem unlikely to me.
 
Ah, now I get the North Wales reference. Sorry, I was a bit slow there. I am a ISIHAC fan, as it happens, I just missed the reference.

The Hotel TV *seemed* to be a pretty normal Freeview set, with no additional channels. I had discounted the signal strength possibility on the basis that, as Black Hole mentions, the signal is usually re-generated within the hotel, or at the very least it would be coming through a huge distribution amplifier, so I would expect all the muxes to come through at a similar signal level. Although I confess I didn't check the signal strength on the missing muxes on the Humax.

The signal strength and quality on the muxes the Humax was able to pick up was excellent, so I'm also sceptical about the hotel using non-standard frequencies and the Humax just picking up a local Freeview transmitter via the hotel wiring.

All the theories suggested so far are of course possible, but they seem unlikely to me.


Were you able to check the Hotel TV used the expected UHF channels for each mux for the most likely transmitter ? The hotel may be using a DVB-T digital modulator to send DVB-T HD to the TV's using a completely different frequency for the single channel mux these produce. If you knew the frequencies a manual DVB-T scan may well have picked up the HD DVB-T modulator source.

They could be using anything to provide the HDMI input to the modulator(s), Sky-HD box, Freesat box, generic FTA box etc. Did you test to see if the usual epg appears ?
 
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Were you able to check the Hotel TV used the expected UHF channels for each mux for the most likely transmitter ? The hotel may be using a DVB-T digital modulator to send DVB-T HD to the TV's using a completely different frequency for the single channel mux these produce. If you knew the frequencies a manual DVB-T scan may well have picked up the HD DVB-T modulator source.

They could be using anything to provide the HDMI input to the modulator(s), Sky-HD box, Freesat box, generic FTA box etc. Did you test to see if the usual epg appears ?

I actually thought of attempting a manual tune on the Humax, but I couldn't check the TV's UHF channels because the relevant menu options were disabled.

The Humax box hasn't been retuned since it was used in the hotel, so I will hook it up later and check what UHF channels it tuned to. The hotel in question was in Kettering, and from memory, I'm pretty sure BBCB was on C21, which would be correct for Sandy Heath transmitter, which seems feasible. But I'll check the other channels later and confirm.

EDIT: Sorry, forgot to say - Yes, the EPG functioned as normal on the Humax.
 
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