Our TV's Freeview reception of ITV4 is fine but through the Humax the picture is freezing and the sound jumps. I've been trying to record the Tour de France but it is unwatchable

We still have Sky+ so I've had to record it on there - one of the reasons for getting ready to to ditch Sky+ is the freezing and jumping - it is marginally better than the Humax at the moment.

A few of the other channels around Ch 24 are freezing as well.

I'm not very technically minded but have tried running the default setting so far.....any ideas?

Well it's not the channels "around Ch 24" that are significant, but those in the same multiplex - the group of channels transmitted together. These include 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, so check these out.

Also go Menu->System->Signal Detection while tuned to one of these channels. The signal Strength should be 40% or more for good reception. If the Quality is much below 100%, or fluctuating wildly it means that you are getting electrical interference from a nearby appliance.

This is normal for some regions ITV and many other channels (Quest,Five) are on a weaker multiplex. I recently had this problem im in the Tacolneston region however it oddly fixed itself.

The lost likely explanation is that you are receiving from more than one transmitter and the TV is choosing the sensible alternative and the Humax is not. The way to fix this is to do a mnaul tune. The best instructions for doing this are provided by Big-les which I have copied below:

"The reason for doing a Manual Search is to target the six (five after DSO) multiplexes coming only from your preferred transmitter. The UHF channel numbers for your six/five multiplexes (digital channels) from your preferred transmitter can be obtained from the digitaluk web-site, enter your post code and also tick the "I am in the aerial installation trade" box. Your UHF channel numbers are in the grey columns in the Coverage prediction section. The compass bearing for the available transmitters at your address are also shown so you can check to see which transmitter your aerial is actually pointing at. You should only use the transmitter that your aerial is pointing at.

First you need to delete all existing channels.
Menu > Edit Channels > Edit Channel Lists > Password (0000) and delete all TV channels, note there is a Select All button. Go to Group, select Radio and delete all the radio channels. Press Exit on the remote control and when invited save all the changes.

You will now get a message saying No channels are available……, press OK. You should now be taken to the Installation menu, choose Manual Search. Select the first UHF channel number obtained from the digitaluk web-site for Channel (actually the order doesn’t matter) and press Search. When the search completes, Save. Select the next UHF channel number for Channel and press Search.....Save. Repeat this for all six/five UHF channel numbers and to finish press the Exit button. You will now find all your Freeview channels on their correct numbers with none in the 800 range. Good luck. "

The weather could also be a factor too. I usually find that if its been very sunny for some time then some chanels lose picture quality so get blips, bleeps and blocks or just cannot be viewed at all due to atmospheric interference.
After its rained and cleared the air alls returned to normal.

But we are told that the Freeview TV has good reception. Given that the Humax is generally regarded to have sensitive tuners then a mis tuning issue seems far more likely to me.

Make sure that the aerial lead into the Humax and from the wall socket is firmly plugged in. I had similar issues a while back and it turned out that I must have knocked the aerial lead a bit loose. If you have any other devices between the Humax and the wall socket then try removing them and see if the problem still exists.

We are told alot of things, it doesnt mean that its true and other things are not possible.
Just think back to when SKY first went digital with promoting than almost nothing could affect the picture quality then we find that in fact that almost nothing actual means when it rains you could have pixilation of even no picture at all.

Thanks for all the replies.


We use Larkstoke or Sutton Coldfield around here - we're 9kms from Larkstoke and 56 kms from SC - we were set up to use Larkstoke.

I've checked that the aerial is pushed in properly and have done the Manual Search. I've checked some of the channels in the group and they are still freezing - I had a very quick look at Ch 24 but the Tour de France is on live and I will watch recorded highlights later tonight. I've set it to record and will come back and let you know how it does.

I also checked signal strength and quality - they are the same now as they were before.....and they're not brilliant.
BBC1 = S 75% Q100%
Ch 21 and Ch24 = S 66% Q40% -70% - Quality is fluctuating. The only appliances nearby are the Sky+ box and the DVD player.

I'll see if I can find out which channels the TV Freeview is using.....anything else?

Oh.....and if it rains as forecast tomorrow the Sky box won't work but the Humax might?

No sorry that is brilliant; our signal strength is typically only about 55% and we can see the (low power) transmitter out of the window. What matters is the quality and that is a 100%.


OK that is the problem. The signal strength is adequate but the quality is poor. I would suggest a very careful examination of the cabling looking for poorly made joints, water ingress or other cable problems. For some reason that I don't understand the Humax is very sensitive to cable problems.

Ah! that will be the problem then - like most things in this house! Half of the work here was done by the people who had the house built, 5 years ago, no doubt the cabling is one of theirs

There is cabling for TV in all rooms.....but most of it didn't work. We had an aerials man to come and sort it out and he had quoted for the work when the house was being built but knew they were going to do it themselves. We're in a dip and he had told them the aerial needed a tall mast. We've had that done and he sorted out as many of the aerial points as he could. Without ripping it all out and starting again there probably won't be much we can do .

I've just had a quick look at the recorded TdeF and it doesn't appear to be freezing so the manual search may have done the trick.

Thanks for the help.

If the retune hasn't resolved the problem then a quick look at the fly lead connecting the box to the wall socket would still be worthwhile.

What Martin said! It's surprising what a difference can be made by using a good quality, shielded aerial fly lead from the wall socket to the Humax. Sony shops always used to be quite good on decent AV leads without charging quite the silly money that the likes of Currys and PC World were charging for the same lead, or, if you want to buy online, I'd look at CPC co uk - not the easiest of sites to navigate and you need to know what you're after but very good prices on quality leads.

Thank you - it is still freezing so we'll investigate the cable.