OK. Nearly biting on buying this but amongst the negatives in reviews I see quite a lot of people complaining about the drop in signal strength with the subsequent impact on picture quality (i.e. break-up).
I know there's other issues with the AURA that other people have but I think I can live with them but not poor signal strength.
What's the general view from new owners? Issue or not?
boogersa - 39 mins ago »
OK. Nearly biting on buying this but amongst the negatives in reviews I see quite a lot of people complaining about the drop in signal strength with the subsequent impact on picture quality (i.e. break-up).
I know there's other issues with the AURA that other people have but I think I can live with them but not poor signal strength.
What's the general view from new owners? Issue or not?
Low signal strength has no effect on the quality of a digital TV signal. It's the quality that matters and it should be and is 100% on my box. Too high a signal can reduce the quality if the Tuners are sensitive. Clipping the carrier waveform in the tuner front end reduces the quality and can cause pixellation.
The quality is a measure how well the tuner can differentiate between zeros and ones and how much of the built in error correction required to provide a copy of the digital stream without bit errors.
UHF attenuators are dirt cheap anyway.
So provided quality is 100% it's not really an issue. If you have existing Freeviw-HD kit and the signal test shows 100% quality then the Aura should ber fine.
There is no agreed standard what 100% signal is. eg a sky -box always showed 60% strength on my lnb. A Freesat box shows 100% on the same transponder. Both worked fine.
Analogue TV given a good signal has a higher quality picture than digital because PAL is lossless. However as the strength falls the pictures deteriorates into noise.
Thanks for the info. I was using signal strength more in a generic sense. Reviewers have complained about picture drop outs. I have a 5000t with no picture quality issues but I’ve pulled the trigger now so I guess I’ll find out soon enough!
boogersa - 39 mins ago »
Thanks for the info. I was using signal strength more in a generic sense. Reviewers have complained about picture drop outs. I have a 5000t with no picture quality issues but I’ve pulled the trigger now so I guess I’ll find out soon enough!
Could easily be too high a signal strength. If so a signal attenuator should resolve it.
Interested to see what you think of the Aura HD picture compared to the 5000T.
Personally I think the 5000T has a small edge in quality.
You tell me now that the picture might not be as good as a 5000t ! 
I had significant signal issues with my 5000T and had to put a variable attenuator in to throttle it back, as a result I never had consistent signal quality on the lower power LOC and COM7 channels.
I was dreading sorting similar issues with the Aura but it was just plug an go and in nearly two weeks I've not seen the quality drop from 100% on LOC and COM7. Both the 5000T and Aura are on the same feed with a splitter, the attenuator sits between the splitter and the 5000T.
Comparing signal figures directly between the 5000T and Aura is a bit subjective as we don't know how the percentages are arrived at, it may differ between platforms.
The only signal related bug on the Aura I have found is the signal strength screen only shows Tuner 1 no matter how many are in use. I have reported this to Humax support as it should show all 3 like on the 5000T.
On the picture front I am still watching from both boxes on a 40" 4K TV and think they are at least comparable.
Overall I am very happy with the Aura, especially the speed and quality of the interface. I'm sure Humax will fix the niggles as its their flagship box, so hopefully usability should only improve.
Signal strength has nothing to do with the box, but everything to do with the aerial etc. and location.
Trev - 1 hour ago »
Signal strength has nothing to do with the box, but everything to do with the aerial etc. and location.
When signal strength is reported as a percentage then I think it is entirely possible that different makes and model of PVR will give different readings for the same signal.
I am getting the occasional picture breakup/pixelation but only for a second or two. It’s more flaky than the 5000t I have. Aura sIgnal strength is in the high 80% and quality is between 95-100%, sometimes reaching 100% I don’t know if this can be fixed by firmware updates. If it starts to annoy me it’s going back.
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