Problem with HDHR finding channels

I wanted to know if anyone else experiences this problem. I live in a high rise building in London, England and I am surrounded by other high rise buildings. There is a communal aerial on the roof which we all share. When plugging this directly into my TV or my Youview box I get the full range of OTA TV and radio channels every time.

With the HDHR, several of the HD channels seem to drop (BBC4 HD and Quest HD seem to be regular culprits). When this happens, the channel logos don’t seem to display on the Channels app, just plain text with the channels’ names.

I re-scan and usually get between 142 and 176 TV and radio channels found on the HDHR. When plugged straight into the TV or YouView I always get the whole lot.

Even worse, I am now recently plagued with many HD channels refusing to play on the Channels app as I am getting the “weak signal” message for channels that were playing fine the day before. My bugbear is that when this happens and I plug my aerial cable back into my TV or Youview box they are able to see and play all the channels that the HDHR couldn’t play seconds earlier because of “weak signal”.

This suggests to me that I either have a defective HDHR unit or that for some reason all HDHRs are simply inferior at being able to find channels and consistently manage to display channels compared to plugging the aerial cable into other devices.

This is a shame as it is spoiling my DVR experience. Channels app would be the PERFECT solution to my live TV needs if I didn’t need to worry about why signal strength is not consistently dependable through the HDHR, nor HD channels stable.

I have a UK version of the HDHR Connect (one of the older style ones).

Does anyone else encounter this issue? Any potential solutions? I’m seriously considering going back to YouView if I can’t sort this out, but I love the idea of just having my Apple TV control all my viewing needs.

Any feedback would be gratefully appreciated.

Which model HDHR?

This sounds like a hardware issue so I would recommend emailing [email protected] or posting on their forums. If you enable diagnostics via my.hdhomerun.com and then tell them your HDHR device id they will be able to see what's going on.

In general the HDHR tuners are known to be more sensitive than tuners on most TVs, and can benefit from amps or bypass filters in some cases. The folks at SD know a lot more about that stuff as we generally focus more on the software side.

HDHomeRun CONNECT devices are, if anything, better than most tuners in finding channels, as they're known for having sensitive front-ends. Too sensitive, sometimes. This leads to front-end overload and disrupted data.

The displaying of channel logos and the like is a function of your Internet connection.

For the problematical channels: When you are seeing them on the HDHR, check their signal strength, signal quality and symbol quality either via my.hdhomerun.com -> HDHomeRun CONNECT -> Tuner Status -> Tuner 1-..., via the HDHomeRun Config GUI, or via one of the mobile device apps.

If the stations in quesiton are "pegged" at 100% signal strength, there's a good chance it's signal overload. An RF pad, or attenuator, similar to this: In-Line Attenuator 3 dB at Amazon might solve your problems.

Lastly: As tmm1 noted: Silicon Dust's forums would be a much better place for discussions of this nature.

Thank you both for this helpful feedback. I will ask at the HDHR community forum.