Freeview picture and sound disturbance..not weather related tho

Hi..for about a month now we(Kapiti resident) have been experiencing significant picture distortion fade and sound distortion on our upstairs TV. TV is about 3-5 years old but works well and has a split Sky signal coming into it as well as Freeview(Strong box) (Signal comes in to downstairs TV).

We have had a freeview technicican up..and a mate of his.. and spent $135 so far to no avail. Box has been reset and re tuned but this didnt change anything. Comment was made that Strong is not an approved Freeview box but it has been working fine for last 2 years or so.

Sateliite dish feed was checked but seemingly okay.

Thoughts as to what problem could be and solution appreciated. Our first thought is buy a cheap new box, retune and go from there?

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Permalink Reply by Bill McMurray on October 18, 2013 at 21:02

Hi Trevor,

Okay, well at least we know it's not that either, so we are getting closer.

When you hook up another TV to a receiver, you don't have to tune anything!! Just take the A/V leads (red/white/yellow) out of one TV and plug them into the other TV, then put the TV on whatever socket you plugged them into - EG:- AV1 or AV2. The TV will immediately show the channel the receiver is currently on - Easy!

FTA is "Free To Air", like Freeview, as opposed to "Encrypted" or "Scrambled", like Sky where you have a card in the receiver to unscramble the channels, and pay to have the card turned on.

When we do a scan, the receiver asks if we want to scan for "FTA" channels, "Encrypted" channels or "ALL" -(meaning FTA AND Encrypted). If we say "ALL", we'll get 100+ Sky channels which we can't watch anyway, so we just have to delete them! - But you don't have to worry about any of that!

Keep going. Cheers, Bill.

Permalink Reply by Biggles on October 19, 2013 at 8:59

What is the model of your Strong STB and what make and model of TV? Do they have HDMI connections?

Permalink Reply by Trevor Knowles on October 19, 2013 at 10:20

Morning...Strong SRT 4300E..I have downloaded manul today. TV is Samsung PS42Q91H (42 inch Plasma)which I see came out in April 2007? so 6 plus years old now. www.retrov.com says "Ready to retire" LOL
No HDMI cable used.

Have tried kichen Samsung 32 inch this morning so swapped aerial and AV cords. Used AV from source. Very small picture breakup and small sound gaps..so may fit with theory around LNB. Will check again later in afternon and evening to see if worse. Definately less worse than main TV and pm evening viewing.
Biggles said:

What is the model of your Strong STB and what make and model of TV? Do they have HDMI connections?

Permalink Reply by Biggles on October 19, 2013 at 12:03

Thanks for that. Have been able to peruse the manuals now.

Was going to suggest using HDMI cable but the Strong doesn't have an HDMI out.

Try connecting the Component out to component in on TV and see if it improves. Definitely looking to me like a cable problem so new cables might be worth a try. However the sound hiccup is worrying and maybe the Strong STB itself is faulty? If it was a LNB aging problem it wouldn't be happening all the time but usually just when it gets hot. I would recommend using component connection anyway as picture quality would be better than composite. Also try with TV aerial unplugged. Obviously not a TV fault as problem still there on the other TV.

P.S. I see from the manual the Sansung PS42Q91HTV supposedly has a DVB-T tuner so try connecting a UHF antenna and tuning Freeview. I didn't think they were common back then.

Permalink Reply by Trevor Knowles on October 19, 2013 at 13:20

Tried component out to in..seemed worse? and no sound. Changing source etc to component. I used the green blue red from my HES to TV and did STB to small TV.

Used AV on STB to AV to TV on small TV with no aerial..some breakup so no better.

Used UHF aerial on small TV and noticebaly sharper..but I know that anyway cos that is small TV.

I dont think Im capable of tuning STB with UHF to big TV. If I couldnt get it all back wife would not be happy.

Component has 4 colours..yellow is video eh but on back of small TCV there is a green with yellow circle so take it it doubles up but that menat there was still one plug not connected. Not a major as that isnt the lounge TV.

As an aside so from HES to big TV the red green blue go to component and yellow was going to audio out as the AV yellow uses the video line. That seem right?

Im out for a couple of hours now..wife asleep ahead of shift.

Ta.

Biggles said:

Thanks for that. Have been able to peruse the manuals now.

Was going to suggest using HDMI cable but the Strong doesn't have an HDMI out.

Try connecting the Component out to component in on TV and see if it improves. Definitely looking to me like a cable problem so new cables might be worth a try. However the sound hiccup is worrying and maybe the Strong STB itself is faulty? If it was a LNB aging problem it wouldn't be happening all the time but usually just when it gets hot. I would recommend using component connection anyway as picture quality would be better than composite. Also try with TV aerial unplugged. Obviously not a TV fault as problem still there on the other TV.

P.S. I see from the manual the Sansung PS42Q91HTV supposedly has a DVB-T tuner so try connecting a UHF antenna and tuning Freeview. I didn't think they were common back then.

Permalink Reply by Biggles on October 19, 2013 at 15:02

What is your 'HES'?

I didn't mean to try tuning the STB with UHF antenna. It's a satellite box so it can't tune UHF.

Your Samsung 42 appears to have a digital tuner according to ther manual so just plug UHF antenna into it's antenna socket and see if you can tune freeview. The manual tells you how. If that works you can do away with the Strong box.

Manual found here

http://www.samsung.com/nz/support/model/PS42Q91HX/RAD-downloads

Component video only has three connections, red green blue. The yellow is composite video. You still need the red and white for sound so need 5 cables to connect component and audio but only 3 for composite A/V. If you connected r,g,b out on Strong to r,g,b on Tv and red white to red white you will get picture and sound. Page 7 of the manual shows how the 5 leads should be connected.

Trevor Knowles said:

Tried component out to in..seemed worse? and no sound. Changing source etc to component. I used the green blue red from my HES to TV and did STB to small TV.

Correct. You need to connect red and white as well for sound.

Used AV on STB to AV to TV on small TV with no aerial..some breakup so no better.

Used UHF aerial on small TV and noticebaly sharper..but I know that anyway cos that is small TV.

I dont think Im capable of tuning STB with UHF to big TV. If I couldnt get it all back wife would not be happy.

Permalink Reply by Trevor Knowles on October 19, 2013 at 16:14

Cheers..will try UHF action. Sori re my acronymn..HES is Home Entertainment System which uses component cable/plugs.

Tuning TV off UHF wouldnt work would it as it desnt have inbuilt freview?..excuse my ignorance.

Permalink Reply by Trevor Knowles on October 19, 2013 at 16:56

Hi again..plugged in UHF aerial and tried to tune as per manual but it doesnt recognise existence of aerial..it jumps past the satellite dish pic and doesnt seem to allow a UHF aerial tune.

Permalink Reply by Biggles on October 19, 2013 at 17:13

Regardless of what the manual says (inbuilt DVB-T tuner) it obviously doesnt want to tune NZ Freeview. I suspect because of the age of the TV it doesn't recognise our NZ Freeview system which is different from the rest of the world.
Back to square one.
Trevor Knowles said:

Hi again..plugged in UHF aerial and tried to tune as per manual but it doesnt recognise existence of aerial..it jumps past the satellite dish pic and doesnt seem to allow a UHF aerial tune.

Permalink Reply by Trevor Knowles on November 9, 2013 at 16:59

Update guys. Tried to contact Freeview twice but no luck so bought new UHF box($75), one 4 way spliyyer ($15) and 10m of cable($30) and tuned it all in..looks good !. Cheaper than the $130 on accredited suppliers.

Thanx for all your advice during troubleshooting.