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Pixelated recordings whilst on holiday!


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Old 08-04-2015, 14:14
Geoff_Spence
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Join Date: Dec 2013
Location: York, UK
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Hi guys,

I have a problem with recordings whilst we are away on holiday.
Most of the recordings have parts where they become pixelated with a loss of sound and then become unwatchable.
This only happens when we are on holiday for more than a couple of days!
Does the box recognise somehow that there have been no channel changes and go into some sort of "undocumented feature" activity?
Or, is this a recording fault or a sign that the HDD is failing?

It's an HDR 1000s about 3 years old and permanently powered up (never on standby).
All recordings done whilst we are at home are normal.

I'd be grateful for any/all suggestions.
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Old 08-04-2015, 14:54
REPASSAC
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Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Perchede, France
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I did not think that it has been on the market for 3 years.

I assume that you have disabled auto power saving. Humax PVR's are not designed to be left powered up as a number of checks are performed during the power up sequence. Leaving it powered up also costs you in excess of £30 p.a.

Pixilation implies a signal quality problem but it is very strange it only occurs when you are on holiday. What signal quality do you get on the channels concerned?
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Old 08-04-2015, 16:56
Geoff_Spence
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Join Date: Dec 2013
Location: York, UK
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We bought the box after I changed ISP from Sky probably nearer 2 than 3 years ago.

Signal strength is almost 100% with quality the same on both feeds!
All updates have been applied!

We used to think that the weather was the problem but, this time, York has had clear weather and, we had the rain & wind whilst we were in France.

I have now enabled the power off/on bits in setup. Initially I am trying off overnight. As you say, we should now the get daily checks performed on boot-up!

Thanks for your help.
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Old 08-04-2015, 21:17
Zenith
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This reminds me of a problem one of my mates had a few years ago. He used to record stuff during the day while he was at work. He noticed that on the same day of the week, every week, he would lose signal for a minute or 2 on his recordings.

When he was off work for a few days, he noticed that the signal loss was caused by his next door neighbour's window cleaner, climbing his ladder to clean the upstairs windows & blocking the signal to his dish!
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Old 08-04-2015, 22:11
-GONZO-
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Leaving the box powered up all the time means the timeshift buffer is always continually recording which probably isn't very good for the hard drive.
Whether or not that's the cause of the pixelation issues I don't know, but could explain why it only does it while on holliday as it's constantly left to record.
During normal operation the timeshift buffer starts again when a channel is changed.
Best advise is to always put the unit into standby when not in use.
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Old 09-04-2015, 11:10
Geoff_Spence
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Join Date: Dec 2013
Location: York, UK
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This is beginning to make sense to me now.
It seems it's always the later recordings that suffer. The earlier ones are always OK but it's always the later ones (after 4 or 5 days) that are problematic. For instance Sunday 29th, the day we left, recordings were OK but recordings made towards the end of the week were pixelated.

Thanks for your input guys, it has lead me to a better understanding!
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