Living just north of Bristol I am firmly in the Mendip transmitter region, just on the edge of Wenvoe and on occasions pickup Oxford. Loft mounted aerial (not my choice and another story) with booster and fully meter set up.
Basic Samsung smart TV and Humax HD recorder.
Dearly beloved read an article that a couple of old favourites are being shown on the Sony channel, Freeview 48. Check and sure enough they come up on the guide. Sadly they are broadcast when she is working, so I go to the Humax and the channel is not shown. Check and channel 48 is not shown for any of the three transmitters. Check which Mux it appears on the TV and try a manual tune on the Humax. Nothing found.
So I dig out an old Toshiba DVD player with HD recorder. It’s not been used for some time, I did a full reset and automatic tune. I have channel 48, and it records.
So the puzzle is that the aerial lead plugs into the Toshiba, then is daisy chained to the Humax and finally the TV. So in theory, they all get the same signal, any suggestion of either HD recorder boosting a weak signal seems to fail because the Toshiba is first off the aerial.
The only reason I want to know, the Toshiba was relegated to a spare room because the HD rumbles constantly and drives me nuts and I want to take it out again.
How old is your Humax? If old they don’t handle the new Freeview multiplexes very well in auto tune mode. You have to delete all the channels and manually retune. You can find a guide here: https://www.freeview.co.uk/help/manually-retune-tv
Is the aerial out a pass-thru, or a signal out for playback via the aerial into the tv if not using SCART etc. Some units did have this admittedly not very good option.
Also worth checking the fly lead from wall aerial point to device. The thin white cables with moulded connectors are famously crap with poor shielding and are prone to losing signal, even on short runs. It’s worth a trip to Wickes or similar to buy a bit of brown 75ohm co-ax and the connectors - they come in pairs in bubble packs and are easy to fit. Youtube will have a vid of some over-enthusiastic bloke showing how it’s done.
The TV and Humax are both over 5 years old. The Toshiba is over 10 years old. I have dug out another Humax which is over 10 years old.
The only one that auto tuned was the Toshiba. I have manually tuned the others. Neither Humax recognises Freeview channel 48.
Hence the puzzle is that two of four pieces of equipment somehow find and recognise a Freeview channel that does not exist on three transmitters.
The aerial was replaced when our neighbour had work done on the shared chimney stack and we were not told the workman had removed all aerials. That was less than two years ago. We have no wall plate so the cable is a single run from the booster through surface mounted channel direct to the first recorder. I’ve been in the roof, all connections are good and the cable is sound.
Similar issue here where a Sony, Toshiba and LG TVs all get different mixes of the Freeview channels.
Willy.
We live near Gloucester, which is Central. However, we feel more apart of the South West and Bristol than Birmingham when it comes to news. Failed attempts with aerials pointing at Wenvoe led to me buying a Humax with satellite capabilities. Works a treat and the sound is better (toslink from TV to nDAC) and the Humax Sat TV guide is much better than the Freeview on a 2 year old Panasonic.
Phil
Having followed this thread over the last few days whilst on holiday I thought I would retune my Humax. This I did but was dismayed to discover that the changes to my channel list - yes there were more channels but they were located all over the place. This upset my planned viewing / recording for the evening as the viewing guide was blank. However, after a couple of hours the viewing guide and recording schedule were back to normal.
Like @Filipe I have changed from aerial to satellite, and I prefer the South West and Wales set of channels.
Strange, the main change I saw was Pick moving from channel 11 to 34 on Mendip. There were recordings set for this and we still got them, looking at the underlying broadcast information they still showed channel 11.
I’m hoping not to have to get satellite equipment, there isn’t enough on the Sony Channel to make me want to. I’ve spoken to Humax support, nice people but as puzzled as I am.
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