Is the Humax Foxsat HDR really good quality?

[jabirugpa]

I upgraded (?) my Humax Freesat tuner to the Foxsat HDR, but I've found the SD picture quality is worse on the new box. The picture looks as though it has been heavily compressed. Oddly, playback from an SD recording looks better than the original which must say something about the way the picture signal is routed.

I note that contributor DenP has observed the same anomaly.

Before I throw the box back to the supplier, has anyone else noticed this and found a fix?

 

[oldleodensian]

jabirugpa:

I upgraded (?) my Humax Freesat tuner to the Foxsat HDR, but I've found the SD picture quality is worse on the new box. The picture looks as though it has been heavily compressed. Oddly, playback from an SD recording looks better than the original which must say something about the way the picture signal is routed.

SD viewing from the Humax is very good on my Panasonic PX80 Plasma, easily comparable to that from a Sky HD box. Some channels have inferior picture quality, but in general not noticed anything untoward.

 

[jabirugpa]

Thanks for the reply, Oldleodensian, I appreciate your comments. As I said, I thought the original FoxSat was very good and hoped that the PVR would be at least as good but that hasn't proven to be so in my case. I am very disappointed.

If anyone else has any comments, they would be appreciated.

 

[Anonymous]

I think the general opinion is that the SD picture from the Humax HDR is a little on the soft side, but the difference between it and my previous box is only marginal, and certainly not enough to disappoint me when taking into account the benefits of the HDR. When watching Channel 5, however, the picture is quite stunning, and doesn't appear soft at all, so some of it may be down to the broadcast signal.

One thing I found on initial installation was that the signal strength and quality were down a little, and this appeared to be cured by giving the connections a bit of a clean.

Now that I've been using it for more than 6 months I don't notice any softness at all, and am very pleased with the quality of picture on my Sony 40".

 

[jabirugpa]

Thanks, Gents, for your comments on the Humax HDR. I did contact Humax tech support asking if maybe my setup could be improved or tweaked but they were not overmuch helpful:

"Unfortunately there are no system settings to change the picture, to get better quality.

"If you would like any information about the picture on the HDR than you would need to call freesat and they will be able to give you more information"

Not a lot of help! However, I found that the V-Format was set to Auto (default?) and changing it to suit the individual inputs seemed to improve improve the picture quite a lot, and although I still think the straight FoxSat box gave a better picture I've decided to keep the HDR until something better comes along.

I suppose I should have mentioned that my display is a 60" Kuro and although the picture quality generally is superb, it can be merciless with a rubbishy input!

 

[PJPro]

I find the picture quality to be OK. Sometimes it's rubbish but others it's truely fantastic (Dr Who at xmas). It's certainly no worse (picture wise) than my old Humax 9200T. TV: Kuro 4280.