Hello
I've just bought an HDR-2000T from Argos last Thursday as a replacement for my six or seven year old Topfield 5800, which has become unreliable of late (I lost the last ten minutes of a couple of films I recorded over Christmas).
The antenna feed into the box is straight from the antenna downlead. The antenna is a passive wideband Yagi, no head amp, and the television repeater is approx. 2km away and is line of sight (apart from the roof tiles).
The Toppy worked reliably and reported high signal strengths and >90% quality. The Humax reports 30% signal strengths and >90% reliability.
The Humax, however, suffers from significant video/audio breakup. A direct swap back to the Toppy shows no problems. This is in spite of torrential rain - any rain fade is invisible on the Toppy and although it might lower the power into the Humax receiver's antenna port, I can't correlate picture breakup against rain. If the Humax is being overdriven, then rain fade would potentially help avoid degrading of the picture (although I admit that the levels might be all over the place and this is a hit-and-miss approach!).
I note from the Humax manual (now packed away ready to return to Argos) that a signal level >30% is recommended for reliable viewing, and I seem to be right on that threshold. I think the Humax dynamic range was quoted as something like -70 to -20dBm which, from memory, is comparable to the Toppy's receiver.
It is possible that I either have a bad unit (unlikely), or I am overloading the Humax (3/6/10dB pads needed) or the receiver chain is deaf - which could potentially get sorted out via a firmware update if there are adjustable gain stages.
I welcome any advice - I like the Humax in all other aspects (it was easy to set up, and repeatable, on my network and the picture quality when not breaking up was very good).
