Underpowered Tuner?

A

AlanB

Member
One of my main reasons for buying the 2000T as a second PVR was to record Freeview channels 10 and 20 (ITV3 & Drama). I'd recorded 8 such programmes before I got around to watching them. All 8 were hopelessly garbled and had to be deleted unwatched. I had previously successfully recorded programmes from the same series on these channels both on a now defunct Topfield 5810 and my first PVR, a Humax Fox-HDR T2.

To investigate why this was happening on the 2000T, I tuned both my Humaxes and the TV connected to the 2000T to these channels. The reception was fine on the Fox-HDR T2 and the TV, but the image frequently froze on the 2000T. From this I hypothesized that the tuner on the 2000T was underpowered compared to the Fox-HDR T2 and the TV. The aerial that fed the 2000T then went on to the TV, so I assume it wasn't the aerial at fault, nor 4G interference, since this would have affected all the machines.

Since the 2000T is clearly not fit for (my) purpose, I've sent it back to Amazon for a refund. [Amazon were good in extending the refund period, which I was just out of by one day :-( ] I intend to buy a 2nd Fox-HDR T2 instead.

I wondered if anyone else had had similar experiences. My current conclusion is that the 2000T is inferior to the Fox-HDR T2 in both this and several other respects.
 
Black Hole said:
Clearly a possibility.
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Especially when the HDR-2000T's poor auto-tuning is taken into account.
In the presence of more than 1 transmitter the HDR-2000T asks which region you want to store. With the PSB multiplexes the HDR-200T pays attention to the selected region and does the same as the HDR-FOX T2 would do, but with the other duplicate multiplexes it stores the multiplexes that have the lowest frequency. It does this with both the old and the new software versions.

From some comments that are on-line I get the impression that Humax support are quite good at explaining over the phone how to manually tune!
 
Then it seems that it's about the only thing they are good at.
Luckily, my mpx's are all low freq and the 'interfering' ones are all higher, so I just pull the aerial connector when I know it has tuned all the ones I want, and of course with no signal, the rest of the tune just flies through.
 
Why is Humax autotuning so bad? I can receive reasonable signals from two transmitters. I tune my HDR-Foxes manually as otherwise I always get >800 duplicate channels: sometimes it assigns channels from the 'wrong' transmitter as primary. My Samsung TV always gets it right and deletes the duplicates while it is at it.
 
Black Hole said:
Did you perchance gather the signal detection data?
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Sadly not. I had intended to do a series of signal tests, but the combination of the small returns window extension that Amazon granted me and some personal constraints meant I had to package up the 2000T and post it off in short order or lose the opportunity altogether.
 
Trev said:
I wonder whether it has tuned to the 'wrong' transmitter?
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That's definitely a strong possibility. It's a pity I did not think of that before I returned the 2000T. I've never had trouble with the Fox-HDR T2 auto-tuning nor that on my various TVs, so it just did not occur to me. Also, the reception on some channels was fine. I made successful, high-quality recordings from Freeview channels 3 and 704, and reception on the ex-terrestrials seemed fine. I had not previously heard that Humax auto-tuning was unreliable.

I should have thought of transmitter mix-ups. I always had that problem with my Topfield. It usually tuned to every transmitter in range, with the result that I got up to 4 copies of some channels and a big chore in deleting them. Eventually, I learnt to manually tune just to the 5 Craigkelly muxes. If I'd thought of it in time, I could have tried that with the 2000T. I think I'll do it on all PVRs in future.

It seems there are two possibilities:

* It might have tuned everything to Black Hill, which is the other major transmitter in my area. The reception of some of the major channels from Black Hill is acceptable, which would fit with my experience. I did go through the dialogue about which area I was located in when auto-tuning, but it was a bit coarse grained: Central Scotland was the best fit.

* It might have mixed up two or more transmitters, e.g., with some muxes from Craigkelly and some from Black Hill. This happened once with my Topfield and the main symptom, apart from some poor reception, was that the EPG screwed up: it would alternate between two competing muxes at random, never showing the full set of channels. I did not have this EPG problem with the 2000T. If I had, I might have suspected transmitter issues.

Anyway, I'm not sad with have parted with the 2000T. It seemed inferior to the Fox in many ways -- not least the lack of customised firmware.
 
AlanB said:
I did go through the dialogue about which area I was located in when auto-tuning, but it was a bit coarse grained: Central Scotland was the best fit.
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If you did that and only Craigkelly and Black Hill were available then you would have ended up with BBCA, BBCB, D3+4 and ArqB from Craigkelly, and SDN and ArqA from Black Hill. (SDN carries both ITV3 and Drama.)
 
I often get "No signal" messages when I change channel, then the channel comes up fine. A few times recordings have shown with no image in the left hand column and a message that says something like "it may have failed to record" but its only once failed to actually record the show and that was on one of the more recently launched shows.

Like mentioned above my Samsung TV just finds everything no problem and I know the aerial shouldnt be the issue as the old Toppy was fine on the current cable etc.
Ive never done manual tuning so not sure where to start, is there anything on this site about how to do it?
Thanks for any help forthcoming. :)
 
Luke said:
Especially when the HDR-2000T's poor auto-tuning is taken into account.
In the presence of more than 1 transmitter the HDR-2000T asks which region you want to store. With the PSB multiplexes the HDR-200T pays attention to the selected region and does the same as the HDR-FOX T2 would do, but with the other duplicate multiplexes it stores the multiplexes that have the lowest frequency. It does this with both the old and the new software versions.

From some comments that are on-line I get the impression that Humax support are quite good at explaining over the phone how to manually tune!
Click to expand...

Oh for Pete's sake, why oh why does the 2000T auto tune differently to the HDR Fox T2? Humax finally got that right with HDR Fox T2 1.02.32 software, why break it again?
 
Owen Smith said:
Oh for Pete's sake, why oh why does the 2000T auto tune differently to the HDR Fox T2? Humax finally got that right with HDR Fox T2 1.02.32 software, why break it again?
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My sentiments exactly. I wonder if Humax forked the HDR-FOX T2 software prior to 1.02.32 to create the HDR-2000T code base and then never ported over the tuning fix; then when the HDR-2000T was late to market they ported the HDR-2000T code base back to the HDR-FOX T2. All pure speculation but I have known dafter things.
 
MartinLiddle said:
I wonder if Humax forked the HDR-FOX T2 software prior to 1.02.32 to create the HDR-2000T code base and then never ported over the tuning fix
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I wouldn't be at all surprised.
then when the HDR-2000T was late to market they ported the HDR-2000T code base back to the HDR-FOX T2.
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Eh, why would they do this?
 
prpr said:
Eh, why would they do this?
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We know that late production models of the HDR_FOX T2 had a different tuner arrangement and superficially it appears to be the same tuner arrangement as the HDR-2000T. I am guessing that the main changes for the HDR-2000T were support for the new tuner arrangement and support for the new browser so somebody thought that rather than backport the changes to the existing HDR-FOX T2 code base they would fork the HDR2000T code to produce an HDR-FOX T2 version. This could all be complete nonsense but suggest a better reason for the improved tuning code having been lost.
 
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