Yesterday I discovered I'd lost BBC1HD and BBC HD on my Humax (I didn't know about the changes that were being made and only read about it later) so the first thing I checked was the diagnostics menu and saw that the two feeds were showing 0% signal strength and quality, (although I still had all the SD channels) Thinking that this was why I'd lost the BBC HD channels, I tried swapping the cables around and got the signal back on LNB2 but still nothing on LNB1.

I also have a Sky+ box in the same room so tried using its cables in the Humax. No matter what permutation of cables I tried LNB1 still showed nothing, whereas LNB2 sometimes had normal signal and sometimes nothing. Any of the 4 cables inserted into the Sky+ box produced high signal strength and quality, so it seems there was nothing wrong with the cables or the dish, and the problem lay in the Humax itself.

I decided to try a factory reset to see if it would fix the problem - big mistake! I didn't realise this would involve the box rescanning for channels, and since it seems to look to the LNB1 input during the scan, it can't find anything and I have to exit back to the menu, which I now can't get out of. Every time I switch it on I'm now stuck with nothing but the option to scan for channels which of course it can't do. So I have no EPG and everything recorded on the hard drive is inaccessible. Incidentally, both inputs are now showing 0% signal no matter which cables I use.

Any ideas? Is the tuner completely &%$£ed and is it difficult/expensive to get it fixed? If the worst comes to the worst and I have to buy a new box would I be able to take the HDD from the old box, put it in a casing and connect to the new box via USB? It's 97% full, with a lot of stuff I want to keep!

Any help gratefully appreciated!

I would guess faulty connection to the LNB - Check both ends of cable - look for any sign of water getting in and shorting it out. You had one good connection before - make sure this is on LNB1 and you should be able to get something.

I to lost bbc1 hd and bbc hd channels, I could see that I had all the sd channels so I assumed at first they were not broadcasting ,ie no signal .
I then did a rescan of the channels and then chose bbc hd no picture or sound appeared for about 5 seconds but then it came on .
I suspect either the new firmware is to blame or something had changed it the frequency range. ?

I just reread your post again - I missed the point re the sky box being O.K.. The signal levels you were getting on your HDR are for the channel you are tuned to. If this was one of the changed BBC channels this may be misleading you. However you should be able to receive the freesat transponder as you will not get very far without it. I would try a bit more swapping of cables and if that does not work I would call Humax support.

The BBC changed the HD transmission stardard from DVB-S to DVB-S2. Did you not spot all the posts about it? If your box was in standy overnight then it should of picked up the change automatically.

On the Humax when swapping cables it is easy to screw the cable on the wrong connection.

The two cables need to be on the outside LNB connections with the middle one empty.

Automan

Yeah I've avoided the 'LNB1 out' in the middle.


Can't seem to get anything at all. I also have an old, single input Sky box in the bedroom which is working fine. I brought the Humax upstairs to try that cable in it but again, nothing.

Try booting the box without any lnb's connected. You should get the no signal message but still be able to get to your recordings to play them back. If it won't do this the hdd may have failed. If it's not under warranty disconnect the hdd and try booting without it.

Thanks, I just tried rebooting without any LNBs but I'm afraid it didn't make any difference. The problem is that when I boot it up I get an on-screen message saying "There are no channels currently available. Press <OK> to scan for channels" which takes me into the menus. Scanning for channels obviously doesn't get anything so if I exit out of there I'm just taken back to "There are no channels currently available..." message. There doesn't seem to be any way out of it to get back to accessing the media files.

As an act of desperation. You could try re-flashing the firmware from the Humax downloadable 1.00.15 file via a USB stick. As the flashing process starts before a full boot is completed it may just get you out of the current boot up loop you are in. Worth a try !!

Tried it but couldn't get it to read the USB stick. I think it might not have been compatible as the instructions here say they recommend USB sticks of less than 1gb whereas mine is 4gb.

Does anyone know if my original idea of removing the HD, putting it in an enclosure and connecting it to a new Humax (if it comes to that) via USB will work? I already have an external HD which thankfully I'd backed up some of the recordings on, but I'd like to know if this can be done with the original Humax drive without any hassle.

Yes that would work, except for any of the encrypted HD recordings which would not be playable on another Humax unfortunately. I have my original drive in a caddy after I upgraded the internal drive, and I can access recordings fine off the original drive.

Thanks, glad to know I at least have that option. Presumably if I put the old drive inside the new box then even the encrypted recordings would play?

Sadly not - the recordings are encrypted according to a unique identifier in each box, so can only be played on the box that originally made them.

Ack! Oh well I should be okay for most of the stuff on there.