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Thanks Viccot for your suggestion.
Shortly after my last post in mid November, the machine seemed to right itself and from then until a month or so ago, I got 100% faultless service. Anything I set the machine to record was recorded faultlessly: no corruption, recordings started during the station ident, and finished after the credits had rolled.
And then, for no discernible reason, the machine started to fail again. Since then almost all recordings have been as originally when I bought the machine: corrupted almost from the start and starting minutes into the programme.
But not all. For example, I was able to record and watch every episode of Royal Navy school on Channel 4 without a problem. But The Simpsons, also on C4, every episode corrupted without exception.
Occasionally one episode has made it: one of Question time, one of University challenge in the recent past. I’ve just checked and Friday’s Newsnight made it, but not the previous two days’. Yesterday’s QI has made it.
Because the quality of recordings, when the machine does record, seems fine, and because I could watch tv live if I wanted to, it’s very hard to believe that the problem is something to do with the aerial or any connections.
What seems to be happening is that, given a choice of aerials where I live (Stroud, Glos near Cheltenham and Gloucester and about 20 miles north of Bristol), it’s pot luck which aerial the machine picks. Except for that period of over three months when it invariably picked the right aerial. It’s as if, having found and “locked onto” the correct aerial earlier this year, some event unlocked the setting and the machine is floundering again, as it did when I first bought it.
Normally, I do not switch off the machine at night, I just mute it and switch off the tv. There was one event which seems to have coincided with the machine starting to play up again when it wouldn’t replay recordings (or do anything), so I switched it off and on again.
Any thoughts?
Jeremy Marchant – 1 hour ago »
Any thoughts?
As previously posted by Graham …
Hopefully someone with the new box will post the required manual tuning procedure. (One for the 4000T faq).
Edit: Ah! Just noticed post #11 which outlined the procedure.
Jeremy Marchant – 4 months ago »
Thanks for the replies which I will study and act on later.
Have you, or is ‘later’ still to occur?
The procedure will need to be followed at every retune.
Here are the manual tuning instructions, courtesy of Humax Tech Support.
Please follow these instructions to manually tune a Freeview Play unit. Performing a manual tune can help with picture/sound, signal and recording issues.
Please NOTE: System settings such as screen ratio will be reset and your schedule will be deleted but recorded programmes will be saved.
Press Home on the remote
Using the directional buttons move and select Settings
Select System Settings
Choose Factory Default with the OK button
Select ‘YES’
Enter Password 0000
The unit will restart, please allow up to 2 minutes for this to happen
Please choose your preferred language
Please choose your Internet Connection Method
Select Next on confirmation Screen
Select “I agree to the privacy policy” and press OK
Select “I agree to the terms and conditions” and press OK
Choose Next
Select Next and stop the automatic search before any channels are found
When presented with the message ‘Do you want to stop the search?’ select YES
Select your “Power Saving In Standby” preference and press OK
Then select Next and press OK
Then choose Exit
Software check will take place
Once finished scroll through the onscreen guide and press OK on the last screen
When given the message that no channels are available press the OK button,
Select manual channel search and press OK
Select Channel and enter a channel number from the list below:
Please see the following numbers for your local transmitter.
My transmitter is Craigkelly so your MUX channel numbers will be diferent. Manual tuning forces it to one transmitter. Stroud is a relay transmitter from Mendip. This will tell you which TV channels you can receive https://www.freeview.co.uk/channels-at-your-address/results If you ask nicely Freeview support will tell you your mux channels for manual tuning.
Channel: 27
Channel: 24
Channel: 42
Channel: 45
Channel: 39
When tuning HD Channels please select transmission and change this to DVB-T2.
Channel HD: 21
Channel HD: 33
Channel HD: 34
It may also be worthwhile checking the aerial alignment with a compass and that it is aligned correctly to vertical or horizontal. Also check that the band is correct an upgrade to Craigkelly a few years back changed it to K band and although round here you can get reception on a piece of wet string I changed the aerial to match the transmitter.
Sorting out the aerial leads improved the reception but did not get rid of all the picture problems. Pixellation happens less frequently and is not so bad. Now manually retuned and waiting to see what happens.
If the unit is on the internet it can update itself. Are the problems related to a software update? Looks as though you will have to manually retune after these as well.
I had one instance of a recording being so badly pixellated it was completely unwatchable. My Signal Quality is always 100% when I check it. I receive the Mendip main transmitter for all channels (I don’t have and 800+ numbers) and I never had it occur to me on my 9200T.
I can only conclude it was either
a) the Humax doing something wrong
b) the transmitted signal was poor due to a fault at the transmitter
c) some inteference came in from somewhere and corrupted the received signal
It has only happened once since Christmas.
Hi JohnH77, I think there’ll always be one off problems as yours seems to be. In the last couple of weeks, I had two recordings fail due to “lack of power”: I am sure that was down to one the short power cuts we enjoy around here.
Viccot, I am now stuck. Tempting as it is to get the drains up and make the changes you suggest, over the weekend the player has settled down and none of the test recordings I made on Sunday failed. It seems to be recording properly right now.
I like the idea that it was pushed off its proper settings by a software update and has taken weeks to automatically reset itself. Next time I have a problem, I’ll try your fix. If that doesn’t work, I’ll try making lots of test recordings: maybe the number of attempts it makes to find the good signal is also relevant.
Check your downlead – water in it, or a chaffed cover will create intermittent havoc.
Be sure to use satellite coax cable – ie cable with a thin sheet of copper or aluminium as a shield. The traditional “brown TV coax” used for analogue TV is worse than useless for digital TV as it is very susceptible to inteference – there is so little copper in the so called screen that the screen doesn’t screen.
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