Paul Bton – 10 hours ago  » 

grahamlthompson – 2 hours ago  » 

boogersa – 42 mins ago  » 

grahamlthompson – 4 hours ago  » 

This thread gave me an idea. Mu aura is on a shelf with a HDR-1000S about 2″ above which is generally powered all day. It’s on a seperate glass shelf. All the Mux on my Lark stoke relay are of equal power.

I do get pixellation from time to time both on the DVB-T muxes and the the DVB-T2 mux.

I took an a4 piece of black card and cut out a piece of kitchen foil to the exact size. I folded over the edges about 0.25″ all the way round. And taped it down with the folded edges underneath . Inverted the card with the foil underneath and covered the box with the card foil side down. Theory is that the box screening in a plastic box could be poor to a rf source above the box.

Early doors but not seen a flicker all day today. Both recordings and live TV.

All channels meter at 95% signal and 100% quality with no fluctuation.

The coming high pressure system should be a good test.

The box sits on a 4K bluray player which is never used other than to test it’s DLNA client when the Aura is powered.

So I understand. The 1000s is sitting on the foil card on a shelf with the aura on the shelf underneath?

Thing is, great if it works but this the 21st century and we shouldn’t have to be doing this sort of thing. It’s all a bit “tinfoil hat” for me! but I’ll be following this thread closely.

But I get great signal quality in the morning and the aura doesn’t have pixelation only when the quality mysteriously drops. Does that mean my aura ain’t faulty?

No the 1000S is sitting on the glass shelf, The aura is on a lower shelf sitting on top a 4K bluray player, with the foil next to the aura top. Only visible sign is the black card covering the foil.

So far no problems. There are no vents on top of the Aura so zero effect on ventilation. Not had the top of so no idea if there is any screening over the motherboard.

If it works a simple internal screen on the underside of the motherboard may fix it as well.

Thing is all kit like HDMI cables and routers can radiate RF much of it in the UHF band or harmonics.

TBH humax have no chance of checking what we all have. However at the moment it is looking like it is vulnerable. Bring back steel cases.

Glass unless leaded or metallic coated has a minimal attenuation on radiated RF.

Simple enough to repeat the experiment. Just place a peice of foil on the top of the aura.

If you have some thin ferrite sheet it should work even better. Anything a magnet can stick to. Even a layer of tin can lids. You are in good position to test this.

Your issue of course might be totally external.

I remember a faulty street light ballast radiating UHF and blocking TV reception for instance.

The RF screen on coax cable on the best coax cable is copper foil under a copper wire braided screen.

https://www.fscables.com/products/wf-100-cai-approved.html?gclid=CjwKCAjwzMeFBhBwEiwAzwS8zFfQA8V4TAo3Pqaxfu0uHefkRQH9lZ0VxdLmJ2JEwbVHuEpUZ4ZTwhoCa7gQAvD_BwE

Very interesting, but as others have said, the Aura should not need to be covered in tin foil to work. Interesting experiment that might highlight a problem. But how come I had one Aura that had picture break up and a replacement that didn’t? Both were in same position on desk and not on top of another device.

Missing the point. The issue apparently is with a box above the aura but on a seperate shelf, not one underneath. Did not have a single glitch yesterday evening.

Might be a daft question, but has anyone dismantled an Aura to see what shielding does exist?

Like Graham, I have the Aura close to an HDR-1000S but the difference being since I bought the Aura the HDR is rarely out of standby.

Its also on top of a Blu Ray player, but this hasn’t been used lately either.

Throwing another curve ball in tbe mix, I noticed pixellation within the (BBC1) HD signal last night at exactly the same moment the “Guide” button on the Humax remote was pressed.

There was then additional pixellation on pressing “back” on the remote and for additional button commands afterwards, as if the (Bluetooth) remote control was generating interference of it’s own.

A scenario might be for Humax to experiment at their end with an Aura, take one apart and retrofit additional RF shielding round the aerial ports then put the modded unit on test.

I’d have a go myself but of course the second you remove the lid, the warranty becomes invalid but fair play to Graham and others for their efforts in trying to pin down what’s an annoying bugbear in an otherwise decent product.

ChemicalRob – 1 day ago  » 

I started the signal or software thread, and was going to post an update on there, but it fits in better on this thread.

My problem was 100% signal, 0% quality on The HD channels on channel 55, com 7. This resulted in no picture on those channels. An attenuator made things worse, but a booster gave me a picture with quality fluctuating between 0-35%.

Since then, I have now achieved a quality of 100% with the same setup. Spookily I achieved this the same way as mentioned above. That is, I did have the Aura sat on top of a Sky box, below a Blu-ray player sat on the shelf above. When I swapped the Aura to the top shelf on its own, the signal quality shot up, but was still fluctuating somewhat, I then found that if I pull the Aura forwards on the shelf the signal quality went to 100% and it was/is rock solid. It has been solid for a week.

If I slide the Aura back on the shelf, the quality goes down and it fluctuates again. Pull it forwards, and the signal quality stabilises again.

I have tried pushing the Aura back, and pulling on the cables to try to simulate the effect, but I can’t. I have no idea what’s going on, but it sounded so similar to what Boogersa is seeing I thought I would mention it here in this thread.

Switching the Sky box and Blu-ray off makes absolutely no difference.

I have just had another look at my system, and have made another change which “so far, about 2 hours” has made a huge difference again.

As I described above pulling the Aura out (away from the wall socket) improves the signal quality to 100%, whilst using it in towards the wall socket sent the signal quality to 0%. I have just realized that I have a TP-Link powerline connecting my sky box the internet right next to where the Aura is, so when I push it back it moves towards the powerline, and when I pull forward it moves away.

Anyway, it currently looks like it is either the powerline, or the lan cable connecting the powerline to the Sky Box, as when I took them both away, I no longer have the problem.

I should add, it didn’t solve fix the signal quality completely untill I also removed the master powerline box (connected to my router) on the other side of the wall. I would say the slave powerline improved the signal about 90% and the master about another 10%

I bought the Aura to replace Sky, so no longer need the powerline.

The Aura is connected by WiFi.

The Blu-ray is connected by WiFi.

boogersa – 40 mins ago  » 

ChemicalRob – 58 mins ago  » 

ChemicalRob – 1 day ago  » 

I started the signal or software thread, and was going to post an update on there, but it fits in better on this thread.

My problem was 100% signal, 0% quality on The HD channels on channel 55, com 7. This resulted in no picture on those channels. An attenuator made things worse, but a booster gave me a picture with quality fluctuating between 0-35%.

Since then, I have now achieved a quality of 100% with the same setup. Spookily I achieved this the same way as mentioned above. That is, I did have the Aura sat on top of a Sky box, below a Blu-ray player sat on the shelf above. When I swapped the Aura to the top shelf on its own, the signal quality shot up, but was still fluctuating somewhat, I then found that if I pull the Aura forwards on the shelf the signal quality went to 100% and it was/is rock solid. It has been solid for a week.

If I slide the Aura back on the shelf, the quality goes down and it fluctuates again. Pull it forwards, and the signal quality stabilises again.

I have tried pushing the Aura back, and pulling on the cables to try to simulate the effect, but I can’t. I have no idea what’s going on, but it sounded so similar to what Boogersa is seeing I thought I would mention it here in this thread.

Switching the Sky box and Blu-ray off makes absolutely no difference.

I have just had another look at my system, and have made another change which “so far, about 2 hours” has made a huge difference again.

As I described above pulling the Aura out (away from the wall socket) improves the signal quality to 100%, whilst using it in towards the wall socket sent the signal quality to 0%. I have just realized that I have a TP-Link powerline connecting my sky box the internet right next to where the Aura is, so when I push it back it moves towards the powerline, and when I pull forward it moves away.

Anyway, it currently looks like it is either the powerline, or the lan cable connecting the powerline to the Sky Box, as when I took them both away, I no longer have the problem.

I should add, it didn’t solve fix the signal quality completely untill I also removed the master powerline box (connected to my router) on the other side of the wall. I would say the slave powerline improved the signal about 90% and the master about another 10%

I bought the Aura to replace Sky, so no longer need the powerline.

The Aura is connected by WiFi.

The Blu-ray is connected by WiFi.

I too have powerline and moved it but made no difference. SD channels still have fluctuating signal quality.

All SD channels or just ARQA and B and SDN muxes?

They are listed here:

https://www.freeview.co.uk/corporate/platform-management/channel-listings-industry-professionals

Missing the point. The issue apparently is with a box above the aura but on a seperate shelf, not one underneath. Did not have a single glitch yesterday evening.

Paul Bton – 28 mins ago  » 

No I am not missing the point! I hate to spoil people’s fun: but why are people obsessing about positioning of the Aura on a shelf or on top of another box? The POINT is that some Auras DO NOT WORK CORRECTLY. This may be to some lack of internal shielding as I suggested. But any PVR should work in a busy household tech environment. However I think that it is up to Humax to fix these problems. When they get enough returned Auras and test them they should know why.

Nobody disputes that it is up to Humax to fix any problems but sometimes they can be fixed quicker if users can come up with suggestions as to causes of the problem that might not be seen in a test lab environment.

Mars – 6 hours ago  » 

boogersa – 13 hours ago  » 

Ok. I’ve tried a selection of channels covering ARQA/B, SDN and D 3&4 and all gave breakup.

I get occasional periods of varying signal quality on those muxes (except D3&4), but with fewer visible glitches than you might expect given the way the signal quality bounces up and down.

So this is considered, by some, as normal SD signal quality behaviour? And my aura works fine as long as it gets a really good quality signal (e.g. 100% or as close as)? The Aura in general has sensitive tuners?