Hi everyone. A very new ‘newbee’ to your forum .
I need some advice on a problem (or several) that I’m having with my Humax Foxsat PVR receiver. It’s probably about 5+ years old but has never given me problems until the last month or so. I cannot find any model number on back or underside.
It’s 500GB hard drive and is the model with 3 sat cable connections on the back. I use a single cable from the LNB to the box and it’s connected to ‘LNB 1 IN’. In order to watch or record another channel at the same time, I have a loop cable from LNB 1 OUT to LNB 2 IN and it works fine with that setup.
I have included a picture of the diagnostics, so you can see the Software and Loader version. It has about 100% quality and 85 % strength – (which actually fluctuates between 85 and 90 %), which is not bad as I’m in Germany.
Today, being bright and sunny, everything was on 100%.
So, to my first problem. On my quite new Sony Bravia smart TV, when I turn the TV on, or switch channels, there is a black bar that appears at the top of the screen, and which shows the HDMI connection and sound setting, then it disappears after a few seconds.
Lately however, for no apparent reason, while watching television programmes, the bar keeps appearing every few minutes or every few seconds (in extreme cases). The sound goes for that few seconds each time and then comes back. If the interruption is long enough, I get the dreaded black screen with a message about no signal. If it’s really bad, I turn the Humax off, then immediately on again and it seems to fix the problem maybe for a few hours, maybe days or even longer. My first reaction each time is to turn around as look to see if it’s raining - which it is not.
I know it’s not my television because it works faultlessly with German cable tv.
Sometimes it can go weeks without playing up, other times it’s daily.
This last few days it’s got much worse. One minute we are watching a perfect picture, then the black bar starts appearing (cutting the sound out for a second or two) then more frequently, then the picture goes crazy, flickering about, then a snowstorm appears ( I’ve attached a couple of pictures of that, incidentally, the diagnostic picture was also taken during one of these sessions where the black bar was constantly appearing but before the ‘on-screen snowstorm.
Turning the Humax off and then back on does not seem to solve it. The only thing that seemed to work, is turning it off for about 10 minutes, then back on. Sometimes it behaves for the rest of the evening and sometimes not. While the picture is going nuts, I cannot even get into the diagnostic screen because ‘diagnostics’ is greyed out.
My second problem. I’ve also had periodic problems during this last month or so, when the picture starts to pixelate, not complete screen coverage, just random areas but there is no wind, no rain and nothing in front of the dish, then after a minute or so, it’s back to normal. The dish and LMB are only a year old and I’ve checked the connections. When I check signal strength and quality in the diagnostics, they are really quite good.
I sent this same email to Humax a few days ago, only to receive a reply stating “the problem is most likely caused by the HDMI connection. I would suggest trying a new HDMI cable”
I found this answer a bit strange, as I would have thought , that as I normally had to switch the unit off and then back on, in order to rectify the problem short-term, that it was probably something to do with all the electronic stuff inside the box, maybe overheating or something like that. So I replied to the email to restate the symptoms, only to now have received a reply “that it could be a fault in the unit, the tv or as we said, the HDMI cable”
Before I go and buy another Humax from the UK and have it sent over here, I wondered if you guys have any ideas.
Many thanks for your help
Expat46
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