I've got a Humax Foxsat HDR and since I've upgraded to a HD TV and connected via HDMI I've noticed the sound drops out briefly when watching some recordings. It happens on both HD and SD recordings but doesn't appear to happen when watching live or when watching the TV Freeview or using the smart TV functions to watch over the internet.

The Humax is connected to the TV via HDMI, the audio out from the TV is via an optical cable to a cheapy box that converts digital to analogue before feeding into DVD home cinema system. My first thought that it was the D/A converter but the as far as I can tell the problem doesn't occur except when watching recordings. It never happened when everything connected via scart.

I've googled the problem and found the occasional hit but nothing very helpful.

I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced a similar problem and if anyone has any suggestions. I do wonder if it's a disk issue but there do not seem to be any options for carrying out a disk check. Firmware is up to date.

Ken

Do you get the issue if you use the TV as the audio source ?

I very rarely do this as even when watching live I like the option of live pause, I do sometime watch i-player and other internet sources using the TVs built in functions and it doesn't seem to happen then. I have tried watching some Freeview TV via the TVs built in tuner and it doesn't seem to happen. It's really difficult to be sure I watched several recorded programs last night and it happened on some and not others. I can see no connection to specific channels. Last night I had drop out on one BBC4 program but not another and on Sunday it happened on an ITV HD and a BBC1 HD program.

This problem is well discussed on other sites, have a -look at =

http://support-us.samsung.com/cyber/...name=LN-T4671F

Your post makes it sound like you are using the TV to output the audio to a seperate set of speakers rather than the built in speakers. If so trying to ascertain if the audio drop outs are related to this connection.

I used to have this drop-out problem on HD transmissions from the Metopera which were in AC3 audio. Ross suggested that my box was not handling the AC3 properly and to switch to Mpeg. This was not possible with that box but I now have a later model and the problem has disappeared.

The problem doesn't appear to occur when the source is anything but the HDR and doesn't appear to occur when I'm watching live on the HDR the output chain is always the same. I am wondering if there is maybe a heat build up. I watched several programs last night with no drop outs for the first few hours then occasional drop outs in the last two programs I watched. I'll now have to monitor to see if this is a trend.

Thanks for the link. I'll monitor for a bit but may have to try a new HDMI cable.

To put the record straight I watched using the TV speakers last night with no drop outs. Going to carry on like this for a couple of days to be sure but my guess is now that it's the DAC. I now suspect that the reason I only experienced drop outs when watching the Humax recordings is it's the only way I watch TV long enough.My next test will be to connect the Humax directly to the DAC although I suspect that will cause lip sync problems as it did when I connected the HUMAX analogue output and which the lip sync feature is just too course an adjustment to satisfactorily correct.

Just to complete the story. When I connected the Humax to the DAC it all worked perfectly apart from lip sync problems which were partially solved by setting the lip sync option on the Humax. Having as far as I could proceeded logically and eliminated components one by one I contacted Samsung who suggested maybe the audio cable was faulty I explained it works with another device but they still suggested trying a different cable. Somewhat skeptically I bought a new shorter cable and it all works fine. I know that optical cables can be faulty but I'm really surprised that a cable can work perfectly in one scenario and fail intermittently in another. I happy that it's all working fine now but really puzzled. Maybe someone with more knowledge of optical cables can explain this to me.

Sounds like the error correction on the DAC can cope better than that on the TV?

Hi Nagasaki. I've been experiencing exactly the same problem as you and recently changed my optical cable. This seemed to "solve" the problem for a while but the sound is now dipping again. I wondered if you have had any further problems since your last post.