Poor Signal Quality?

EEPhil

EEPhil

Number 28
Strange occurrence on my Aura last night (Friday 29/5/26). I'd just watched HIGNFY on BBC1 (SD) without incident and switched to U&Dave for part of QI (anything but Mrs Brown). Pixelating like mad. I tried other channels including BBC1 both SD and HD. Everything apart from HiDef and local multiplex was pixelating . Aha, I thought, hot weather - tropospheric ducting. Checked other devices and no such problem. Checked aerial leads - no problem. Checked Aura signal strength/quality and the quality was up and down like a yoyo. Did the same for 2000T and 5000T - steady at 100%. Have the Aura's tuner(s) bust? Tried an experiment - started recording from three multiplexes and checked signal quality. All three tuners showing 100%. Stopped recordings. Checked quality of a few channels - all 100% and steady. So far no further problems.
Another Aura quirk?
 
EEPhil said:
tropospheric ducting
Click to expand...
I had heard about this phenomenon, but never knew the proper name for it!
Initially I thought tropospheric ducting wouldn't have anything to do with the issue you had, as the phenomenon causes the signals that would normally go out into space to instead bounce around the planet in the 'inversion' layer, and exit back down towards earth further away... effectively increasing your local transmitter's range. But, the very same phenomenon causes other, far away transmitters' signals (that would normally not interfere with your signal), to indeed potentially interfere! Could be that the Aura is not as good at filtering out interference compared to your other boxes.
P.S. No matter how many times that I type phenomenom, I always seem to spell it wrong and get the red squiggle underneath! Except for no red squiggle for the wrong spelling in this P.S. 🤣
 
EEPhil said:
Strange occurrence on my Aura last night (Friday 29/5/26). I'd just watched HIGNFY on BBC1 (SD) without incident and switched to U&Dave for part of QI (anything but Mrs Brown). Pixelating like mad. I tried other channels including BBC1 both SD and HD. Everything apart from HiDef and local multiplex was pixelating . Aha, I thought, hot weather - tropospheric ducting. Checked other devices and no such problem. Checked aerial leads - no problem. Checked Aura signal strength/quality and the quality was up and down like a yoyo. Did the same for 2000T and 5000T - steady at 100%. Have the Aura's tuner(s) bust?
Click to expand...
Have you reported this to Humax Support?
 
Interference from other transmitters is basically what the Freeview prediction tool is all about:

Detailed transmitter information for industry professionals

If you're an industry professional, use this tool to check local DTT transmitter coverage and UHF channel allocation for an address.
www.freeview.co.uk www.freeview.co.uk

with the numbers S = served = Percentage of locations in the 100m x 100m prediction square affected for less than 1% of time (less than 88 hours per annum in dribs and drabs)
and
M = marginally served = percentage of locations affected between 1 and 50 percent of time...

{It also has some base minimum signal requirements built in; but it's all about the likelihood of interference affecting reception.}

So first check those predictions and then see if BBC Reception Advice are advising that the weather is right for such effects... https://www.bbc.co.uk/reception/ to know there's not much that can be done about it. None currently but there was a period last month.

NB its not normal that multiple mux frequencies are affected at the same moment in time by HP weather conditions as the different wavelength land differently and DTT is more tolerant than analogue via its error correction mechanisms. {Many here will, no doubt, remember the horizontal venetian blinds where the broadcasters synced via frequency offsets the interferers or diagonal moving lines from other sources.}
 
I think some people are missing the point. This happened on an Aura. A 2000T, 5000T and TV had no problem. My initial thoughts were interference. I checked the BBC reception link as well.
The Aura's tuners had got themselves into a tangle - and recording on all three seemed to shake it back into working properly.
 
EEPhil said:
The Aura's tuners had got themselves into a tangle - and recording on all three seemed to shake it back into working properly.
Click to expand...
I wonder... something fundamental in the tuners, or a software bug that can't handle a certain state of the tuners (caused by interference) and is cleared by recording on all three?
Saw someone on YouTube doing a "Restart Apps" to solve a picture problem - did you try that too? Although their issue was no picture.
 
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