Poor Signal strength

CDude7

CDude7

New Member
I have an HDR 2000T, a Sagem PVR and a Sony TV all connected to the same TV aerial cable.

Signal Quality shown by all three devices is 98-100%.

However, For the main 5 TV channels (BBC1 - Chanel 5) Signal Strength shows 49-53% on the Humax, 73-75% on the Sagem and 98-99% on the Sony TV.

Whilst I understand that the readings shown may be approximate, the Humax reading is so much lower that it would suggest a problem. I believe this is evidenced by occasional failed recordings and occasional recordings where the picture suffers from 'pixelation'.

I have re-tuned the device many times but to no avail.

I was contemplating buying a better, higher gain aerial but somehow I suspect this won't bring the Humax signal strength up.

Any useful suggestions (or commiserations) would be appreciated.
 
50% is not a problem. Keep an eye on the quality figure - that's the real deal.

You have no idea what the signal strength 100% datum is. A sensible engineering datum would be "the maximum signal that can be accepted without overdriving the input" - and if so 100% would be different on each device according to its design, and the Humax would be telling you that it has more headroom than the others.

What matters is the signal strength at which the quality figure starts dropping (the quality will also drop off if the signal is too strong - over 100% - although the strength figure will 'stick' at 100).
 
(BH beat me to it)
The signal quality are far more important than the strength readings. The strength readings vary greatly between different sets. With your quality readings, what are you hoping to achieve with a higher gain aerial? How do you hope to improve on 100% quality. Just sit back and enjoy the TV without worrying about the signal strength, it's only relative.
 
Trev said:
(BH beat me to it)
The signal quality are far more important than the strength readings. The strength readings vary greatly between different sets. With your quality readings, what are you hoping to achieve with a higher gain aerial? How do you hope to improve on 100% quality. Just sit back and enjoy the TV without worrying about the signal strength, it's only relative.
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I don't have a problem with the 98-100% quality readings and I don't have a problem with the picture on the TV or my Sagem PVR. It's the Humax that is sometimes failing to record programs due to poor signal and/or it's sometimes recording a pixelated picture with corresponding sound problem to the point where I can't watch the program, so something is wrong.
 
CDude7 said:
It's the Humax that is sometimes failing to record programs due to poor signal and/or it's sometimes recording a pixelated picture with corresponding sound problem to the point where I can't watch the program, so something is wrong.
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You said in your first post that you have retuned many times. Are these automatic retunes or manual retunes? If you haven't tried a manual tune then that would be my next step following the instructions at http://hummy.tv/forum/threads/hdr-fox-t2-tuning-advice.472/page-2#post-5824
 
Martin, I have only ever done Automatic channel search. I'll give the Manual search a try and report back. Many thanks for your help.
 
I say again: it's the signal quality figure which tells you whether you have a signal problem. 50% strength should be plenty good enough. What quality are you getting?
 
I have carried out a manual re-tune, selecting the channels listed for my local transmitter (Oxford). I won't know whether it's done the job until I've watched several recordings (preferably on ITV in the evening, when it's raining as that seemed to be when the recordings suffered).

Two things I noticed during the manual re-tune. 1. The channel numbers on the transmitter are 53+ 60- 57 50 59- 55 31. (57 and 31 are the HD channels). Any idea of the meaning of the "+" and "-" ? 2. I noticed that several, if not all of the TV programs found on channel 60- were also found on channel 55. I'm new to this channel malarky but that seems odd. How does my poor old Humax tuner know which of those 2 channels to use for a given program?
 
Black Hole said:
I say again: it's the signal quality figure which tells you whether you have a signal problem. 50% strength should be plenty good enough. What quality are you getting?
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"Signal Quality shown by all three devices is 98-100%." So I don't have a problem with the Signal Quality readings shown. I just have a problem with the quality of the picture and sound on SOME recordings and only on the Humax.
 
CDude7 said:
Two things I noticed during the manual re-tune. 1. The channel numbers on the transmitter are 53+ 60- 57 50 59- 55 31. (57 and 31 are the HD channels). Any idea of the meaning of the "+" and "-" ? 2.
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They mean there is a small offset in frequency to avoid interference from another transmitter. It doesn't matter as the Humax will tune to the actual frequency.
I noticed that several, if not all of the TV programs found on channel 60- were also found on channel 55. I'm new to this channel malarky but that seems odd. How does my poor old Humax tuner know which of those 2 channels to use for a given program?
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Multiplex Channel 60 is PSB2/MUX2/D3&4, multiplex channel 55 is COM6/MUX D/ARQ B. You can see which programme channel is provided by a particular multiplex from the list at http://www.digitaluk.co.uk/industry/Channels/channel_listings (note you can click on the column headings to sort by channel number, multiplex etc. I don't see anything that is carried on both 55 and 60; can you give some examples please?
 
MartinLiddle said:
They mean there is a small offset in frequency to avoid interference from another transmitter. It doesn't matter as the Humax will tune to the actual frequency.

Multiplex Channel 60 is PSB2/MUX2/D3&4, multiplex channel 55 is COM6/MUX D/ARQ B. You can see which programme channel is provided by a particular multiplex from the list at http://www.digitaluk.co.uk/industry/Channels/channel_listings (note you can click on the column headings to sort by channel number, multiplex etc. I don't see anything that is carried on both 55 and 60; can you give some examples please?
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Martin, Thank you for your reply. Film 4,Film 4+1, ITV+1 & Channel 5 appeared on the list of TV stations when I manually searched channel 55 AND on Channel 60. There were a lot of others that duplicated but I couldn't write them all down quickly enough!
 
I think you were looking at an accumulating list, not a list of services only on the last multiplex tuned. If not, then you must have been tuning channels from multiple transmitters.
 
It appears as though network search is selected on the manual search screen, plus the desired transmitter is one of the many that is not set-up for network search correctly.

Deleting all channels again and then repeating the manual tuning without the network search selected should help with progressing the situation.
 
Black Hole said:
I think you were looking at an accumulating list, not a list of services only on the last multiplex tuned. If not, then you must have been tuning channels from multiple transmitters.
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Thanks Black Hole, I'll check that out. I'd assumed (always a mistake) that on Manual search the stations listed were only for the channel being searched.
 
Luke said:
It appears as though network search is selected on the manual search screen, plus the desired transmitter is one of the many that is not set-up for network search correctly.

Deleting all channels again and then repeating the manual tuning without the network search selected should help with progressing the situation.
Click to expand...


Thanks Luke. Not sure what "network search" is but I'll search for it and turn it off if I find it.
 
Luke said:
It's on the Manual Search screen. It needs to be set to 'Off'.
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Thanks Luke. I'll have to wait until my scheduled recordings finish before I can access that again.

You don't know how I can avoid having to reset all my scheduled recordings after every re-tune do you? That's becoming rather tiresome. ;)
 
Something which the custom firmware for HDR-FOX addresses, but not a possibility for the HDR-2000T (which is a big reason we don't like it much).
 
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