Will do, but I will probably give it 30 mins to make sure.

Also I think I remember that the failed recording problem does not care if the program is on series record or not.

A full epg refresh from a factory reset takes a lot less than 15 minutes, no harm in using longer if you prefer. Interesting to see if it resolves the problem.

When on Channel 407, in the signal test page I see
Freesat box connected with 2 cable.
Signal Quality = 100% (off the scale).
Signal Strength = around 85% (not varying, I just can not work it out exactly).

My cables are long, nearly 15 meters.
My Zone 2 dish does have a downside.
The bigger the dish, the more directional it is.
So it rejects nearby Satellites more, which is bad news for the non Astra satellite, since it's not in the exact same place in the sky (just very slightly off).
I did use the normal cheap analogue meter to align the dish.

That's fine, the lower figures are expected, the satellite outputs it's rf over a wider area it's bound to be weaker. You would have to be using a very big dish not to be able to get a 0.3 deg seperation. Mines a zone 2 dish as well.

Ah Ok. . Well I rebooted the box and it seems to have gotten over its problem now! Thanks for the advice!

I have sent the Humax to switch on a 6:00am and off at 6:30am.

I have also asked it to record a program at 19:30 on BBC1 HD tomorrow (Friday) on series record (episode 1 of 2).

I will not use the Humax until after 19:30 tomorrow to see if the fault happens or not.

Will keep you updated as soon as I'm on the internet after then.

It's worked, it's recording ok

100% Quality on the freesat transponder is excellent, mine in about 60-70% but I am a bit further afield. My strength is 100% however but it is quality that matters

I'm near Peterborough.
I did not even adjust the LNB Skew.
I just tried to make the MK4 LNB inbuilt spirit level as level as possible (it sets the horizontal level).
I always meant to adjust it, but it was mid February at the time and it was very close to freezing!
There is a downside to having 100% or off the scale quality,
you can not fine tune the LNB Skew to improve it even more.
(I do not believe 100% quality really is 100%, just Humax saying it is more than good enough).

I did also check H and V transponders and at loads of different frequency's (in the High and Low bands).

Just in case anyone's interested, a Zone 2 dish brings in 40% more signal than the Zone 1 dish according to Raven who make both (some other manufactures make dishes as well).

Zone 1 Sky dish = that is the normal size you see in England and has been around since the start of Sky Digital.
Zone 2 Sky dish is often called the Scotland dish since they need them due to weaker satellite signal (Wales may need them as well?).

Brand new Zone 2 dish with quad LNB are really cheap on Amazon or Ebay, I think around £25 including delivery.
Just make sure you use some good cable Webro WF100 seems to be everyone's favorite.

Here is the best news, a novice can easily fit one.
You do not even need a drill if you already have a Zone 1 Sky dish. Since the holes in the wall for the brackets are in the same place!
I had a very old rusty (1998) Zone 1 dish and replaced it with a Zone 2.
Get a cheap analogue satellite meter off ebay for a very few pounds and away you go.
Of course you need a spanner and a few other very basic DIY tools to tighten nuts of course.
Alignment is incredibly easy.
Use a spirit level to get the dish vertical from the front.
Then point the dish a lot further to the east than normal.
Then slowly swing it to the south until you get a signal,
the very first signal you get is our UK Satellites.
When you have set the horizontal, you can also adjust the vertical to get the strongest signal.
That is assuming you are in the UK.

And wait until there is very little wind, no rain and not cold!
And do not forget to pull the inbuilt plastic rain cover down to protect the cable connections in the LNB (else water will get in).

And if you really hate the size of a Zone 2, paint it.
The black paint on a Zone 1 or 2 is in fact a base coat.
They are meant to have a top coat of any colour sprayed on them (just make sure it is matt not gloss type).
Use a colour that is identical to the brick of your house (head to your local DIY paint mixing department).

I have a zone 2 (West Midlands), also self installed Raven. I have very similar readings to you, Repassac is somewhat at a disadvantage , he lives in the South Of France.

I followed the excellent diy advice here

http://www.satelliteforcaravans.co.uk/

I could not believe how easy it was to install the dish.
I had never installed or scene anyone install a dish before.
And nearly 2 years later, it is still working and no glitching in high wind or rain.
And to prove it was not luck, I installed my relatives Zone 2 in August.

The Humax failing to record bug.
I hope you can get the message through to Humax.
Since I can see a lot of people having failed recordings over Christmas.
Add to that no CH4 or CH5 ondemand service launching as promised by end of 2012,
could result in people returning the boxes for a refund.

Like you I'm a guinea pig with the new Humax box.
We all knew we would be the bug testers.
I personally bought it for the much better Picture quality (you can try reversing the lead that goes in to the power supply block to improve or make it worse).
And the sound through the Optical output is so much better (not tried HDMI or Analogue).
All compared to my old Humax Freesat Recorder.
But must admit, if I did not have a big high quality TV and Home Cinema sound system, I much prefer my old Humax!

Well yes I like the PQ but reversing the power lead makes no sense at all.

Indeed it makes zero sense, the first process in modern switch mode power supplies is to convert the ac into smooth DC entirely independently from supply ac voltage and frequency, they produce the same DC output voltage across a massive range of source voltages and frequencies,

Power supplies like this work in any country in the world.

Another example of the power of snake oil advertising and consumer lack of understanding.

So many examples

Digital Aerials - no such thing

HD Digital Aerials - see above, just more snake oil

This £100.00 hdmi cable will improve your picture - cobblers using a 1M poundland cable will give an identical result.

Getting contreversial now

A HDMI cable will always give you a better picture, wrong analogue delivery of video (component) in HD may well give superior pictures even for full-hd content, For SD content RGB scart may well give a better picture.

Digital gives better pictures than analogue - false a perfect SD analogue signal will deliver more picture information than a digitally compressed signal can. The digital signal though produces the same quality across a wide range of signal levels before it collapses to zilch (the digital cliff). Analogue by comparison declines gradually into noise (normally described as Snow)

Ever heard of placebo?
There is also the opposite placebo effect.
If you really believe something will not work,
your brain will tell you it did not work even if it did!

Doctors and Scientists have been dealing with both all the time.

The solution is simple.
Get say 3 people.
Do not tell them what you are doing.
Ask them to look at the picture.
Then try reversing the lead, but do not tell them or let them see what you are doing.
Then ask them if the picture is the same or different.
Then try not reversing the lead and see if they can tell a difference.

You will be surprised what happens.
There is a scientific explanation why the lead would be better one way round compared to the other.
But it would be way to hard to explain to you unless you were scientifically trained in that field of research.

But let me give you a couple of easy to get the average persons head around common mistakes.

Very common myth.
HDMI cable quality makes no difference to the picture quality.
It ether works or does not.
The Gadget Show on Channel 5 even claimed this.
Even when they compared a really expensive quality lead to a very cheap one.

They and loads of other normal people.
Claim digital ether works 100% or not, you get no errors since it is digital.

This mind set comes from the computer world.
If I write a letter in a text document, it is digital.
There is no loss, every bit of text is kept perfectly when I hit save and when I load it up again, every character etc.. are all there.

But what loads of people do not realize is HDMI does not have a 100% loss less system, unlike computer text documents which have loads of error checking going on (and any lost data is resent when the device receiving asks for the missing bit).
This means data is lost when it gets to the TV, the quality of the lead effects how much data loss you see on the TV.

A even simpler thing most normal people can not understand is that a cable will allow electricity / voltage / current or if you want the proper word electrons through one way better than the other.

This has lead to loads of people claiming your are nuts if you expect me to believe that a lead will perform better in one direction than another.

But it's very basic physics and has been proved again and again.
They first discovered it with very long telegraph wires (Morse code). The cable has more resistance in one direction than the other.
Back then they could not understand why, but new it was a very big problem on very long leads.

The science is simple, electrons flow down the cable.
But when the wire is manufactured, it is rougher in one direction than the other for the electrons to flow.

This law of physics applies to all metal wire passing any form of electricity, voltage, current, signal or what ever else you call it.

So it does not matter if we are talking about Satellite Cable, Hi-Fi leads (signal or speaker), HDMI, Scart etc.. The law still applies.

The question is, is the difference big enough for a human to notice or care?

The answer is simple, it all depends on the human and also the situation the lead is being used.
So my message to everyone is try it.
But watch out for the reverse placebo effect as well as the placebo effect. And get some volunteers and do not tell them what you are actually doing.

You might have guessed, I come from the Hi-Fi world.
And the real enthusiasts know all of this.
That is why our best leads have a direction marked on them.
On cheaper cables we have to test the direction to find which is best.
When you have several leads in a system (mains, signal etc,,) it all adds up to make a large difference.

If you think it will not effect the average person, think again.
Ok so most people have a low quality sound system.
But loads of people now have really good HD Televisions.
As long as you have good eye sight, a decent size TV and are not sat a long distance away from it, you will see a substantial difference.

The power brick for the HDR-1000s outputs DC, what possible reason can reversing the mains plug have on the output. All it does is shift the current direction by half a cycle which ever way round you connect it the current flows by convention from live to neutral for the positive half cycle and the reverse for the negative half cycle. Turning it over merely reverses the current flow in the power supply. In any case you can only do this with a two pin power connector, to do this with a 3 pin connector or directly wired lead you would have to reverse the live and neutral connections in the plug (impossible with a moulded plug).

Leads with a direction arrow carry alternating current/voltage at much higher frequencies than 50Hz not pure DC or more likely are wired to reverse the pin connections to connect an output at one dend to an input at the other.


Is completely wrong, electrons flow in both ways in a cable carrying alternating current, the direction reversing as the voltage varies. The phase of the current in respect of the voltage varies from 90 degrees leading to 90 degrees lagging depending on the load impedance. Only a pure resistive load gives a current in phase with the voltage.

What does rougher mean, it's just nonsense.

Actually electrons don't really flow down cables, an atom in a conductor will gain an electron from a neighbour and then instantly eject another. A good conductor allows this exchange of electrons with little resistance a super conductor will exchange electrons with almost no resistance.

I agree "rougher in one direction" is just nonsense and not based on any science, not even very basic science.

Read this and also the comment at the bottom of it
http://www.russandrews.com/article-T...ctionality.htm

If you want to open a can of worms google wire directionality

In the overall scheme of things, cable directionality effects must be slight, because if there was a marked improvement using cables in one particular direction they'd be a lot more made about it in the cable advertising blurb.

In my experience, good shielding plays a big part in things, be it mains, analogue of digital cables, and I do try and pay attention to that.

You could carry on the debate about copper verses silver cabling, cable diameters and so on. I'm sure that there are some benefits to be had, but they're gonna be pretty slight, but that's what the likes of Russ Andrews and other companies trade on. If you can genuinely hear or see a difference between cables that's fine. In the digital domain, I've yet to see any differences when comparing cheapie HDMI cables and those that cost an arm and a leg. If there's a real improvement to be had, I'd like to see it. I'm always happy to be proved wrong, but thus far my Amazon Basics HDMI cables seem to work just fine.


Clem

Agreed but the electron transfer takes place in both directions not unidirectional unless of course the driving voltage is not alternating. .

It's a myth, there is no scientific explanation. Like I said Snake Oil. The poster is hardly a poster without an ulterior motive. I can point you at loads of ads proclaiming the merits of a digital aerial for Freeview, also complete rubbish merely designed to sell aerials to the gullible. Yes I have a good sound system 5 x 170W Denon amp with a 200W subwoofer. If I reversed the speaker cables or the mains lead would it make any difference, of course it wouldn't. There are good and perfectly sound reasons (pun intended ) for speaker cables to make a difference to the sound. Direction isn't one of them. The amplifier, the connections and the loudspeaker are a dynamic system. The speaker cone overshoot is controlled by the amplifier absorbing the voltage created by the speaker magnet overshooting, the speaker in effect acts as as a microphone. The less impedance there is between amp and speaker the less the speaker cone overshoots as the unwanted energy is dissipated more quickly. Result less distortion.

Well some people with more money then sense will believe anything.

Also from your linked website..............

£3156.00 for a 1m mains cable ! £4882.00 for a 2m cable.

So only £1726.00 for the extra metre then

http://www.russandrews.com/product.a...KREGKVGSHSLVSG

Bit like gold plating the plugs on a toslink lead

For those people really interested, have a read of everything in the link below.
They only briefly mention lead directionality at the bottom of page 10.
http://www.audioquest.com/pdfs/aq_cable_theory.pdf

And that company is the biggest or one of the biggest Hi-Fi lead manufacturers in the world.
USA company.

Started off by the premise that reversing the connection of a ac power lead in the case of the hdr-1000s could make a difference, it's pure bunkum.

Already acknowledged that speaker cables need to be as low an impedance as possible. Cabling carrying direct current do not induce voltages in each other nor suffer skin effect. At low frequencies skin effect is relatively minor it's not an effect that is improved by using different materials other than the fact that a lower resistance material (silver is best) will be less affected purely by virtue of it's improved conductivity. Again reversing the conductor will make zero difference.


One reason for the use of bundled conductors on high voltage overhead lines (twin or quad) is that skin effect is reduced, additionally corona discharge energy losses are much reduced.

It's no good quouting from anyone with a vested interest in selling expensive kit.

If you want to waste your money go ahead it's your money.

I thought I would see what the Monstercable website has to say on the subject of cable directionality, they do tend to like any BS that gives them an excuse to up the price.
But surprisingly their current cables are "directional for shielding purposes only", which is fair enough.


"Monster Cable - Home AV and Monster Central


Will I notice a difference if I hook up my cables in the wrong direction?

You probably will not, but if you think that you are experiencing noise problems, check that they are. Cables are directional for shielding purposes only. Should you not see these arrows, remember that the signal flow should go in the same direction of the print on the cable jacket, reading left to right away from the source (source to destination)


Why do the cables have directional arrows?

This is done for shielding purposes only, a design where we do not solder the shield on the signal's destination. This ensures that any noise picked up by the shield will not be transmitted into your signal path."