Pixelation when recording and playback at the same time

Adrian Web

New Member
I had pixelation on the Humax Fox HDR T2 when set as follows
Channel set to view Film4
Channel Recording PicTV
Playing a recorded Video (during adverts on Film4)

Pixelation was so bad that eventually Film4 displayed the no broadcast signal message.

Is this a known fault or am I stressing the box beyong it's capabilities?
 
I had pixelation on the Humax Fox HDR T2 when set as follows

Pixelation was so bad that eventually Film4 displayed the no broadcast signal message.

Is this a known fault or am I stressing the box beyong it's capabilities?
The box should be be easily able to do what you outline. What is the signal strength and quality reported by the Humax when watching Film4.
 
The box should be be easily able to do what you outline. What is the signal strength and quality reported by the Humax when watching Film4.
Current Strength is 80-82% and Quality 100%
I tried it again this morning and it works OK!
I receive via a loft aerial + 4 way splitter/booster. As this was already installed when I moved in 12 years ago, I wonder whether the splitter / booster is failing.
I've been into the loft and tested Aerial reception which shows 75% on a signal tester.
It seems to happen about 8-9 pm only and as I live next to a Nature Reserve and weather was OK last night I can't see how interference could be a problem.
 
New variation on Pixelation. When starting up from standby there is a short period of pixelation which disappears after about 30secs. Had just enough time to check signal quality and found the quality jumping about from 100 down to 20 up to 50 than back to 100. Once it settled down it remained as it normally shows at 100%. Strength remained about 75% throughout.
I checked CPU utilisation and that was spiking between 25 and 60% then settled down to 25% for that period.
 
I am using the customised firmware and it now appears on another thread that the cause of the problem is excessive CPU usage, in particular, when deleting recordings.
I realised in looking at those threads that my problem was not
Fragmentaion (1Tb disk and only 1 month old).
HD recordings - have not done any yet.
What I did do, in hindsight, was to be recording and playing back at the same time. Then deleting the played back recording at the end of that playback. The CPU was then trying to record and delete at the same time when watching another channel (Pixilation).
Blackhole suggested I use the undelete program, which I will try.
I will come back and report success or failure in a couple of days.
Thanks.
 
What I did do, in hindsight, was to be recording and playing back at the same time. Then deleting the played back recording at the end of that playback. The CPU was then trying to record and delete at the same time when watching another channel (Pixilation).
We do this frequently without problem. What packages for the customised software do you have installed?
 
BootHDR, anacron, auto-unprotect, auto-update, binutils, busybox, bzip2, cron-daemon, disable-dso, disable-ota, epg, ffmpeg, file, gtar, hmt, humidify, id3v2, inotify-tools, jim, jim-cgi, jim-oo, jim-sqlite3, lamemp3, libreadline, libutil, lsof, mediatomb, mongoose, multienv, ncurses, nicesplice, ntfsprogs, openssi-command, pkgtools, portmap, procps, python, redring, renumber, rsvsync, samba, service-control, smartmontools, sqlite3, squashfs-tools, ssmtp, sysmon, trm, uclibc-devel, undelete, unencrypt, virtual-disk, webif, webif-channelicons, webif-charts, wget.
 
BootHDR, anacron, auto-unprotect, auto-update, binutils, busybox, bzip2, cron-daemon, disable-dso, disable-ota, epg, ffmpeg, file, gtar, hmt, humidify, id3v2, inotify-tools, jim, jim-cgi, jim-oo, jim-sqlite3, lamemp3, libreadline, libutil, lsof, mediatomb, mongoose, multienv, ncurses, nicesplice, ntfsprogs, openssi-command, pkgtools, portmap, procps, python, redring, renumber, rsvsync, samba, service-control, smartmontools, sqlite3, squashfs-tools, ssmtp, sysmon, trm, uclibc-devel, undelete, unencrypt, virtual-disk, webif, webif-channelicons, webif-charts, wget.
So rather a lot. I will leave it to the experts on the custom firmware to determine if there are any candidates for causing your problem. I will move the thread to the Custom Firmware section as I suspect that is likely to be the cause of the problem.
 
I don't understand Martin. Large deletions were shown to have a significant impact on processor and disk load a long time ago. Are you using undelete yourself?
 
I don't understand Martin. Large deletions were shown to have a significant impact on processor and disk load a long time ago. Are you using undelete yourself?
No and we have never seen the problem reported by the OP. Of course that might be because we watch very little live TV, almost everything is recorded but my instinct is that watching a recording will take more resources than watching live.
 
So rather a lot. I will leave it to the experts on the custom firmware to determine if there are any candidates for causing your problem. I will move the thread to the Custom Firmware section as I suspect that is likely to be the cause of the problem.
Martin, most of the items on the list are populated programs that are inserted by default when loading the customised software. I am a windows user and am not familiar with the use of most of these programs or how to access the humax via telnet.
 
Odd. I would monitor signal strength and quality if it happens again to see if there are any clues.
10.25 and the Humax has been on BBC1 for 10 minutes. All of a sudden - pixelation with no recording, playback or deletions going on. CPU utilisation shows below 20% signal strength 75% and Quality jumping about 100, 20, 30 80, 100...
Then it suddenly stopped and quality back to 100%.
 
I would suggest almost certainly you have one or both of the following:

Loose or poor aerial feed/plug
Trees or other moving objects in the path towards the xmitter
probably the second

This may be exacerbated as the power on the HD channels seems to have been reduced
by 10-15% in the last month or so.
This is unlikely to be box related in my experience

The give away is the bouncing power/Q level. Thats not software.
The power level seems to have a higher latency than the Q - sometimes it seems stable
even when Q drops to zero - IF the Q bounces back quickly enough
 
I would suggest almost certainly you have one or both of the following:

Loose or poor aerial feed/plug
Trees or other moving objects in the path towards the xmitter
probably the second
That was my original conclusion before I reported this to the forum.
Yes I do have trees but they are rapidly loosing their leaves and the problem is intermittent but the trees are not.
I went through the process of laying in a new shielded Aerial line from a spare port on my booster to a new wall socket. The problem hasn't changed.
I'm beginning to consider changing the booster. Has anyone ever had a booster with an intermittent fault?
 
It could be a faulty room or fridge/freezer thermostat. Some years ago I had one where the contacts would 'chatter' for about 30 seconds when they were about to open/close. Try detuning an old AM radio, it may be able to detect RF interference when the problem occurs.
 
It could be a faulty room or fridge/freezer thermostat. Some years ago I had one where the contacts would 'chatter' for about 30 seconds when they were about to open/close. Try detuning an old AM radio, it may be able to detect RF interference when the problem occurs.
It just so happens that I have such a radio in the Kitchen. If I tune it to short Wave - off station will that show it up?
 
That was my original conclusion before I reported this to the forum.

I'm beginning to consider changing the booster. Has anyone ever had a booster with an intermittent fault?
Yes mine is about the same age as yours and the output from mine is starting to fluctuate. I think the capacitors must be drying out in the plug-in power supply. When you checked it last were you checking the power output using the Humax screen or using a separate power meter. If the Humax then CF software could still be the cause. If a separate power meter then I would check the power supply output of the aerial splitter/booster.
 
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