Hi,
I have a 9150T which until recently performed perfectly. In the last few weeks the picture has been breaking up, sometimes to the point of being unwatchable. It started about a month ago and has been especially bad this week. I am in the Kent area.

Initially I thought it might be weather-related, but the main TV tuner is working fine.

I have retuned several times, and the machine is always on standby overnight so I'm pretty sure I have had all the necessary updates. Is there anything else I can try? I have a lot of unwatched recordings, so I'm reluctant to start doing reformats or factory resets etc unless absolutely necessary.

ITV seems to be particularly bad. I do have some duplicated channels in the 800s (as well as the main ones) which I understand might be a clue....but having said that, I have the 800 channels on the main TV tuner too, and that doesn't seem to cause any problems there. Anyone able to advise?

Many thanks if anyone can help.

You are receiving from more than one transmitter and to fix this you need to do a manual tune. These are the instructions courtesy of Big-les:

"Here's my Manual Search instructions just in case you decide to have a go.

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. "

Thank you so much Martin (and Big-les). Your name is very familiar...I have a feeling you came to my rescue once before when my rewind live TV function stopped working! I'm really grateful to you for responding so quickly.

I'll give the above a go tonight and report back afterwards.

Again, many thanks. I really appreciate it.

Channels in the 800s may be the wanted channels from your local transmitter, if this is the case you will find that reception on the 800s channel is better than the channels on the correct number. However receiving from more than one transmitter degrades the Accurate Recording and Series Link performance of the 9150 so must be avoided by following my instructions reproduced by Martin. Your TV doesn't respond to the Accurate Recording and Series Link data so won't be affected in the same way as the 9150.

Hi Big-les, thanks for responding. I followed your instructions last night to do the Manual Retune, and it did remove all the 800 channels...but the picture freezing and juddering remained as bad as before.

Now that you mention it, we have been noticing problems with Accurate Recording recently (the last couple of minutes being chopped off recordings), and also some Series Links disappearing. I hadn't connected this with the picture freezing before, but it has been happening for around the same time period (i.e. the last few weeks).

Is it possible that the recent picture freezing problem might be weather-related, and therefore a separate problem from the Accurate Recording issues?

The picture freezing is by far the biggest problem, as it's making the TV unwatchable via the Humax.

It sounds like you are now tuned to a single transmitter but are you sure you are tuned to the transmitter with the best signal, check if you telly is tuned to the same transmitter channels that you used when tuning the Hummy. Check the signal strength and quality in the Hummy System menu, the strength is less important but quality should be 100%.

Thanks. I'm trying to find out which transmitter channels the TV is tuned to (Sony KDL-32EX503) but I'm having trouble finding it! I'll search the manual and experiment a bit more and report back.

Assuming I do manage to find which transmitter channels the TV's tuned to, am I right in thinking that replicating those channels on the Humax should get rid of the freezing problem?

Well if your TV is working ok then checking the TV channels and tuning the Hummy to them if different is a good course to take but I can't give a guarantee.

If the TV channels are different to the ones you used for the Hummy then follow my instructions fully again using the same channels as the TV. On the digitalUK web-site you'll find a compass bearing to the transmitters available in your aera, does your aerial point to the transmitter you're tuning to.

Will check the compass bearing. I've now found the frequencies on the TV: Mux1 is 505.834MHz which I believe is Crystal Palace. Looks like the TV channels are all tuned to Crystal Palace, while the Humax is Bluebell Hill. So, I'm going to try tuning the Humax to the Crystal Palace channels and see if that works.

Will give it a try later today and report back. Thanks again Big-les, I really appreciate your help.

Yes that looks like Crystal Palace channel 25. It looks to me like Crystal Palace is using 6 multiplexes plus the HD multiplex which you can ignore. The 6 standard definition channel numbers are 25, 22, 28, 32, 34 and 29. Maybe someone using Crystal Palace can correct me if this is wrong.

Hi again. Unfortunately the picture is still freezing and juddering, in fact it's got worse today, and is affecting more channels (BBC 1 is particularly bad now). As before, the reception through the TV is perfect, so it's definitely the Humax that is the problem. Is it time to give up, or is there anything else we could try?

Just out of interest, I tried an Automatic tune on the Humax to see which transmitter it would choose. All the channels ended up as Crystal Palace numbers except one (the group of channels including ITV3).

One thing that hasn't been asked so far. How are your Humax and telly connected to the aerial? Do you feed the aerial into the Humax then link it on to the TV from the Humax's RF out?

Or do you have a splitter or distribution amplifier providing separate feeds to both units?

That might help track down if the problem is the Humax or something external. If you daisy chain the two devices any fault with the aerial or cabling ought to affect both Humax and TV. If you split the feeds then it could be the splitter or the cable from splitter to Humax.

Hi Chris, thanks for replying. The aerial cable is plugged directly into the Humax, which is connected to the TV and DVD recorder via Scarts and RF cables. Both the TV and DVD recorder tuners are working fine.

In that case there are only a few possible reasons for the picture breakup.

The Humax is broken
There is too little signal
There is too much signal

A broken Humax is the initially most obvious reason since you have two other devices on the same aerial that work perfectly.

Too little signal should also affect the other devices, unless they both have substantially more sensitive tuners than the Humax. Though when I have had problems with reception I've found my 9150 keeps working longer than my telly, which suggests that the Humax has a more sensitive tuner than my LG TV at least.

Too much signal can also be a problem. If the signal is too high it can overload the front end stages of the tuner. This can generate interference leading to picture breakup. This is especially true in places still receiving analogue. Although the digital tuner doesn't use those signals they are still present on the feed going into the tuner.

Since the analogue signals are much higher level than the digital signals they are more likely to cause overload and generate interference on the digital signal.

You can get some idea if it is a signal problem by going into the menu on the Humax and selecting System (bottom icon on the left) then Signal Detection. If the Strength reading is up at 100% but the Quality reading is low it might be you have too high a signal and are suffering overload. If the Strength is below 50% then you have a weak signal.

Though as I said signal problems are as likely to affect the DVD and TV as well as the Humax so I'm not convinced it is entirely a signal issue and is probably a faulty Humax.

Thank you, that's very helpful. I just looked at the signal, and the Quality is at 100% on all the channels, with Strength around 75. So yes, it does sound as if the Humax is to blame, especially as it worked fine until recently.

Well those figures sound OK. Have you checked them when you are actually experiencing problems with reception on the Humax?

Yesterday there was a lot of jumping around between 10 to 80 percent, but today it's stable at 100 and...you won't believe this...suddenly the juddering has stopped! I'm crossing my fingers that it's somehow fixed itself (we've done a lot of messing about with it today, and it suddenly seemed to settle down dramatically after the last hard reboot. So let's hope all's well that ends well. But I'll be ready the next time it starts juddering and I'll see what the percentage is then.

Thanks again for the advice....fingers crossed it carries on behaving itself!

Oops! I shouldn't have tempted Fate like that. It's just started juddering again, (currently Channel 4 + 1) albeit nowhere near as badly as before, and the main channels have seemed OK so far. The signal is still showing at 100%, even while the picture's freezing, interestingly. Anyway, I'll give it a bit more time and see how it goes.

That looks like electrical interference from something, though I've no idea why it doesn't affect your TV tuner, unless the Humax is faulty...

A quick update! We checked the compass bearing of the aerial in the loft, and it exactly matches the Crystal Palace bearings, which makes sense.

The juddering continued to get worse over several days, making the picture completely unwatchable, (although the TV and DVD recorder tuners both continued to get perfect reception). I rang Humax and confirmed that I had already done the things they suggested on the phone (returning it to Default Settings, tuning manually to the Crystal Palace multiplex numbers etc). (By this stage, I'd also emptied and reformatted the hard drive too, with no improvement.) The Humax guy said if the above steps hadn't worked, it must be faulty and told me to return it.

Rather bizarrely, it's suddenly started working fine today! But I don't trust it to last; the same thing happened for a few hours at the weekend, only for the juddering to start up again later the same day, even worse than before. So I think I've got to the stage now where I no longer have faith in it even when it has one of its behaving-itself phases (like today).

....So I guess 'lI take it back to Tesco. I'll have to get a refund as they no longer sell this model...so I'm wondering whether to get the same model again from somewhere else, or buy a different model instead? The 9150T did work brilliantly for the first few months....but I'm always reluctant to buy the same model again in a situation like this, when the first one has gone pear-shaped within the first year.

Apologies for the long post...and thanks again for all the advice.

PS All this faffing about did have one happy outcome: we discovered we can get Freeview HD on our TV! We had always assumed we were on the Bluebell Hill transmitter, which doesn't get HD until 2012, so when we bought our new TV at Christmas (Sony KDL-32EX503), we had no idea we could already get Freeview HD. But now we've realised we're on the Crystal Palace transmitter, (duh!) we've discovered we already have the four Freeview HD channels at 1080p on the TV. So, at least some good has come out of this (albeit unrelated to the PVR issue)!

I think you have had the proverbial Friday afternoon box My 9150 has not had any problems remotely approaching what you've had. Just a couple of times when it's locked up and needed a mains on-off reset.

If you are on the Crystal Palace transmitter I would be half tempted to get the Humax HDR Fox T2 instead. Bit more expensive than a 9150 but will let you record the HD channels.

I think you're right! I'll take a look at the T2.

If the GUI on the 9150 is anything like the 9300 (I assume it would be), then the one on the HDR is much nicer. You also get the much sought-after TV Portal, as well as lots of other nice features.