My Humax Forum » Freeview HD » HDR FOX T2

Signal strength anomaly

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    m_milne

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    Joined: Jun '13
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    I've just bought an HDR Fox T2 to run alongside my old 9300T - mainly so that I have the option to record more than 2 programmes at once - and of course for the HD facility.

    I've noticed a difference in signal strength between the two machines. The 9300 registers the BBCA multiplex (for example) at 81% signal strength, while the Fox T2 registers 67% to 68%. Quality in both cases is 100%.

    These figures remain the same regardless of whether only one machine is connected to the RF feed, or both machines are daisy-chained, in either order.

    I'm using manual tuning, and incidentally I'm in direct line of sight to the Hannington transmitter 5 miles away - in fact I can see the mast's 3 red lights on top of Watership Down quite clearly from the living room!

    So I'm just curious as to why this might be. Perhaps the Fox has a different idea of what 100% signal strength should be - or could it be that there's a fault somewhere in the box that's attenuating the signal?

    | Sun 16 Jun 2013 16:22:26 #1 |
  2. grahamlthompson

    grahamlthompson

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    Joined: Feb '11
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    The strength metering you get on kit is really only indicative and varies considerably with different kit. The important figure is the quality which is a direct measure of the amount of error correction that is required to create the original 25 fps data stream after mpeg decoding.

    At 100% quality you have nothing to worry about unless you have picture break up.

    In fact this close to a main power transmitter you may be slightly overloading the HDR FOX T2 very sensitive front end. Believe it or not fitting a attenuator in this case will actually increase the indicated signal strength.

    Welcome to the forum.

    | Sun 16 Jun 2013 16:49:04 #2 |
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    m_milne

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    Many thanks for that!
    So I guess the signal strength is a more-or-less arbitrary value, whose main purpose is to compare the values from different transmitters? Anyway, I'm glad there's nothing to worry about - though I will try an attenuator just for curiosity's sake.

    | Sun 16 Jun 2013 21:52:06 #3 |

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