I've battled with the HD reception on this box from december (when I got the box) until January. We've got a loft aerial but in a pretty strong reception area. I was initially getting quite a few broken up recordings until I got the best position for the aerial and then it was only the odd one.

Brilliantly though in January the box auto updated and gave me 100% strength on all HD channels and no failed recordings at all.

However, I disconnected the box completely yesterday to accommodate a new carpet fitting and the reconnected it again today and the signal strength has gone back to about 80% ish and the HD channels break up occasionally when watched live.

The aerial is in the same position and I've retuned twice to try to get back to how it was but no joy. Even some of the sd channels aren't 100% (they always had been). I've checked for any software updates but none are available.

Any ideas how to get it back to 100%?

Do you mean 100% signal strength? What is the quality reading for the HD channels? 100% signal strength may overload the tuners and generally speaking 80% strength ought to be plenty. As to why the strength has dropped, I would start by looking very carefully at the aerial cabling and particularly any poorly made joints or kinks.

I would doubt that an update would change the signal strength as that is determined by the signal hitting the aerial, the cabling between aerial and socket on the receiver and the hardware in the front end of the tuner section. All a software update could do that I can see is change the signal level that represents 100% on the signal meter.

In any case it is largely irrelevant whether it reads 100% or 80%. If the signal quality reading is 100% then I wouldn't worry too much. If the signal strength had dropped to below 40% that would be more of a concern.

You say you unplugged the box and plugged it all back up again later. I would think it is far more likely that this is the reason why the signal strength has changed.

The cables might have been slightly damaged, even the sockets can be damaged if you are too ham-fisted removing and re-plugging cables Also the layout of the cables can have an effect. Simply moving the cables about can affect the signal, especially if you use cheap and nasty poorly screened cables that act like aerials themselves. HDMI cables running close to or wrapped up with aerial cables can cause problems (again more likely with poor quality cables) so keeping the aerial leads as physically separate from other cables can be helpful.

It is possible that the break up you are seeing is caused by interference rather than the 20% drop in signal. In that case keeping the aerial leads as far away as possible from other leads might help. If the aerial lands on a wall plate and you use a short lead from the plate to the Humax then changing that cable for a better quality one with better screening might also help.

Thanks for the replies. I changed some of the cabling from the aerial tothe box but, I'm a little embarrassed to say, my wife let me know she'd knocked the aerial when putting some stuff away sunday night. A slight reposition and the new cabling didn't improve matters initially but another retune brought back perfect reception! It appears that the different aerial position may have tuned into a different transmitter perhaps?

If you really are receiving two different transmitters then at that sort of signal level you should be getting both all the time. Unless the direction to each is very different and the aerial was swung round 90 degrees or more!

If the aerial was only nudged a few degrees off beam then you would be getting both sets of transmissions all the time and have two lots of every channel, one lot on the normal channel numbers and another lot up above 800.

And you would see two different UHF channel numbers for each version not to mention possibly different versions of local news on BBC1 and ITV.

More likely is the nudging of the aerial was enough to drop the signal level and simply repositioning it was enough to restore the signal. Though you shouldn't have had to retune to get the signal level back up, simply watched the strength indicator as you move the aerial.