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Old 06-03-2009, 14:47
Altone
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I have had the Humax HDR for a few months, and until a couple of weeks ago I never had a single problem with it. No missed recordings, no lockups, everything was working perfectly. The set was so good I even came on this forum to say how pleased I was with the box, and couldn't believe that some boxes were causing so much trouble. I even said that I wasn't bothered about any updates, I was perfectly happy with the box as it was.
Then, all hell broke loose. I started to have frequent lock-ups, I had missed recordings, the box wouldn't respond to the remote, I started to feel as some others have felt, and started to doubt the reliability of the Humax.
Last night it was a nightmare, I set the box to record Billy Connolly, and then started to watch a program on BBC HD. The damm box locked up!!! All I could do was watch Billy Connolly, nothing else would work. It was now getting past a joke so I switched the box off at the mains, waited a few minuits, then decided to do a factory reset. During the factory reset I noticed that the Humax was reporting that it had only one LNB Feed, as I had initially fitted a new quad lnb and new cables, I began to fear that either the new LNB or the Humax had developed a fault. I thought that the easiest way to start to diagnose the fault was to remove each dish lead in turn from the STB, when I went to remove a lead I noticed that one of the cables had pulled out of the 'F' plug, the wife had been doing her cleaning bit and must have caught the wire with the vacuum cleaner. I refitted the 'F' plug reconnected it, did a new factory reset, the box now reported twin aerial feeds, and everything is now back to perfect. No lock-ups, recordings perfect.
I wonder now if most, of the problems reported with the Humax are in fact LNB and/or cable problems. An intermittent LNB/Cable fault could cause all the same problems that I had been having.
I didn't suspect that I had only one feed, because when I went to Menu and Diagnose it was reporting both receivers at 90% power and 100% quality.
I wonder if my experience, perhaps, could help other users who are reporting lock-ups and various problems.
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Old 06-03-2009, 15:06
GaseousClay
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I didn't suspect that I had only one feed, because when I went to Menu and Diagnose it was reporting both receivers at 90% power and 100% quality.
This is not indicitive of a faulty signal feed!!!

If there is no connection through the LNB 2 in port the foxsat still reports the signal and quality values for tuner 1 and tuner 2. The only time there is no reading under diagnostics is when there is no feed to LNB1 in.
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Old 06-03-2009, 20:49
Caz42
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Thanks for letting us know Altone. Something I will keep in mind as I'm a bit of an obsessive cleaner and that would be easy done I guess.

Also might be useful for folks to know that hand tight isn't always sufficiant with F plugs and it's often better to use a wee spanner for a good tight fit.
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Old 06-03-2009, 20:57
grahamlthompson
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Thanks for letting us know Altone. Something I will keep in mind as I'm a bit of an obsessive cleaner and that would be easy done I guess.

Also might be useful for folks to know that hand tight isn't always sufficiant with F plugs and it's often better to use a wee spanner for a good tight fit.
Sadly the the f plug design of some means that a good tug can leave the screwed connector intact but the coax cable detached.
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Old 07-03-2009, 09:07
SWIZZ?
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Satcure offers 3 sizes of F plug, which are matched to 3 different cables. See
http://www.satcure.com/accs/page7.htm#fconn

The site also suggests that the differences in diameter is fractions of 1 mm !
Is this sometimes the cause of accidentally pulled out leads ?
When ever I remake/make a connection I wind enough of the outer copper braid to make it difficult to screw the aptly named F plug on.

Satcure also shows how to do it properly.
http://www.satcure.com/tech/fconn.htm

Worth looking at to make sure nothing is being missed. I found that I'd missed out silicone grease & was left wondering how many cables that I'd discarded had merely become wet, by lack of silicone grease.

(I'm not being paid for these Satcure "plugs")
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