Strong 5490 Signal Question

[Noddy5]

I have a slightly odd problem (possibly) with my 5490. It appears that the two tuners are showing different signal strength ... but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Occasionally I record a Timeteam on ABCHD that is completely unwatchable with breaking up. And often other programs will have momentary breakups (jeapordising WAF). I had thought it might be disk related, but now have another possibility. My observations from a couple of repeatable sessions are:

1. Watching a channel, everything is fine and the "!" button shows "signal strength" close to 100% (lowest is ABC with 93%).

2. Set that channel recording. Everything is still fine.

3. Change to and record another channel also.

4. Changing back to the first channel (hence also changing tuners I assume) I get a "signal strength" much lower than before (ABC is down to 70% or so).

5. Changing to the second recorded channel it is still at full strength.

Repeating this with the order of the two channels swapped gives the same results - the first channel to be recorded shows a drop of "signal strength" (I put that in quotes as it could mean anything).

Appreciate any thoughts, or any other 5490 owners who feel like checking their unit.

Noddy

[Guest mistered]

Yes, i've always noticed the second tuner signal is weaker.

I had pondered splitting the antenna signal externally and feeding it to each tuner, and removing the loopback cable. But I bought a Betonwiz instead

(the 5490 is on bedroom duty now)

mistered

[davidl1503559772]

Yes, i've always noticed the second tuner signal is weaker.

I had pondered splitting the antenna signal externally and feeding it to each tuner, and removing the loopback cable. But I bought a Betonwiz instead

(the 5490 is on bedroom duty now)

mistered

Greetings gents

I've not had any signal break up problems (apart from 9 RL Grand Final minor problems, switched to NBN, no more problems). I have an F-Connector splitter feeding an amplified signal to both a 5490 (using the loopback cable) and a Homecast HT8000 and pretty much all works well apart from the well documented sound dropouts on the 5490. On some occasions I've had all 4 tuners recording (though not in HD) and all has been fine.

I've never bothered to check the signal strengths as it always worked fine, will do some investigating and report back.

Cheers

[Noddy5]

Hmm, interesting results from a play on Saturday afternoon. Firstly, the "TV Ant In" connector feeds the tuner that you see when you watch TV the first time. "Loop In" feeds the tuner that records the first program.

Swapping input to feed the LoopIn first and output from that to TVAntIn gave similar results to initial tests (loss of signal on the looped back feed).

Feeding the wall straight to a single tuner and looking at only that:

Just TVAntIn: sbs 96% or 77%, abc1 96%, seven 96%, nine 100%, ten 100%

(don't understand why sbs was oscillating between the two figures).

Just LoopIn (after starting the other tuner to force "watching TV" onto that tuner):

ABC1 96%, sbs 96%, seven 96%, nine 100%, ten 100%

So summary is:

Normal: Wall ---> TV Ant In ---> Loop Out ---> Loop In ---> RF Out ---> TV

TVAntIn indicating good signal ("watching TV" and second recording), LoopIn indicating average signal (tuner that records first).

Alternate: Wall ---> Loop In ---> RF Out ---> TV Ant In ---> Loop Out ---> TV

LoopIn indicating good signal (tuner that records first), TVAntIn indicating average signal ("watching TV" and second recording)

So signal direct into either tuner gives high signal on that tuner, but the output from that (regardless of which tuner) seems down when fed into the other tuner. I know that some loss is inevitable (damn physics) but I'm not sure how much. Now to decide on if there is a next step to try an external splitter or splitter/amplifier. I guess a $8 splitter from tricky dicky is an easy step.

Noddy

Edited October 14, 2008 by Noddy5