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I’ve just bought an HDR Fox T2 to run alongside my old 9300T – mainly so that I have the option to record more than 2 programmes at once – and of course for the HD facility.
I’ve noticed a difference in signal strength between the two machines. The 9300 registers the BBCA multiplex (for example) at 81% signal strength, while the Fox T2 registers 67% to 68%. Quality in both cases is 100%.
These figures remain the same regardless of whether only one machine is connected to the RF feed, or both machines are daisy-chained, in either order.
I’m using manual tuning, and incidentally I’m in direct line of sight to the Hannington transmitter 5 miles away – in fact I can see the mast’s 3 red lights on top of Watership Down quite clearly from the living room!
So I’m just curious as to why this might be. Perhaps the Fox has a different idea of what 100% signal strength should be – or could it be that there’s a fault somewhere in the box that’s attenuating the signal?
The strength metering you get on kit is really only indicative and varies considerably with different kit. The important figure is the quality which is a direct measure of the amount of error correction that is required to create the original 25 fps data stream after mpeg decoding.
At 100% quality you have nothing to worry about
unless you have picture break up.In fact this close to a main power transmitter you may be slightly overloading the HDR FOX T2 very sensitive front end. Believe it or not fitting a attenuator in this case will actually increase the indicated signal strength.
Welcome to the forum.
Many thanks for that!
So I guess the signal strength is a more-or-less arbitrary value, whose main purpose is to compare the values from different transmitters? Anyway, I’m glad there’s nothing to worry about – though I will try an attenuator just for curiosity’s sake.
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