Your signal could be too strong.

Search this forum for “attenuator”.

I have exactly the same problem as you bazarchie. I’m on my second fvp-4000t 1tb replacement. The effect is at random times and on different channels and muxes. I’ve tried attenuation with no effect. I get 100% signal and quality on three tuners. My Samsung TV is only connected to fvp via hdmi and strangely leaving the TV on all the time, on any channel solves the problem for me. Weird. Had a new aerial and coax fitted with no effect.

So it’s not just you.

I had this on channel five. Signal strength is 84% and quality is 100%. I suspect this may be occurring when all three tuners are in use for recording. If this is the case the problem may be with the data stream to the hard drive.

I have also had this problem with my Fox T2, sadly demised when the fan failed and it got hot. I have tried three channel recording again and all three produced perfect video. I am less than a mile from the transmitter so I would not expect this to be a signal strength problem. The television is on the same aerial and never gives this problem. On the Fox T2 it was more prevalent on HD channels.

giverny – 9 hours ago  » 

You are not alone with this problem according to my own experience and other postings I’ve seen on the net. I am on my second 4000T Nero and still getting the problem for 3 months now. I am running my old Humax 9300T in parallel with the 4000T off the same aerial feed with signal strength around 80% and quality 100%.

The picture on my TV is fine and all recordings on the 9300T are perfect (as they were on my older 9200T), but the 4000T consistently creates failed recordings/pixilated and noted that recordings start usually around 5 minutes late (but on time on the 9300T).

Humax are still trying to come up with an explanation.

I have been monitoring for some time but no explanation as to why it works OK sometimes and not others and nothing to show it is when 3 timers working either.

I had this problem myself when I first got my Nero model, but I put it down to user-error, as instead of connecting the aerial directly to the Humax and looping through to the TV I used a splitter to feed the signal directly to both.

I haven’t had any failed recordings since I rectified my mistake and I regularly record four programmes at once.

I originally ran an aerial direct to a Humax 9300T looped through to a Humax 9200T which looped through to the TV which all worked fine.

When I bought the 4000T I ran my aerial direct to the 4000T with loop through to the TV and endless problems of failed recordings.

For now, I’ve reinstated the 9300T so I can still record stuff.

Current configuration is aerial to 4000T, loop through to 9300T and further loop through to TV. In this scenario the 4000T still keeps getting the failed recordings whilst the 9300T works perfectly. Humax so far unable to explain, still waiting on them.

Why should a splitter give a better result than direct feed ?

Stephenesque – 4 hours ago  » 

A splitter should have given you a better result than loop-thru so that deepens the mystery. I use a passive splitter on my 2000T with excellent results.

With the splitter I had signal strengths of 1-70%; 2-67%; and 3 was only 48%.

After I connected my 4000T directly, my signal strengths increased to 1-84%; 2-85% and 3-78%

Signal strength has no effect on the picture when digital modulation is involved, unless it falls so low the built in error correction cannot cope. The effect in this case is obvious (the picture breaks up into a pixellated mess, and the signal quality varies dramatically) . The signal quality is the important number. A quality of 100% means that none of the built in error correction is required to produce a perfect picture.

The general accepted figure for the ideal signal strength (metering varies with individual box models) is reckoned to be about 60%. This avoids problems with sensitive tuners not bein able to cope with high signal levels, where clipping the peaks of the analogue carrier can produce distortion of the output signal. In this case high levels of signal actually look low, down to the distortion produced by the signal clipping.