Humax Freesat Box Losing Signal from both inputs

We’ve got a Humax HDR-1100S box with two cables connected from the dish.

Over the last week or so we’ve noticed that the signal has started to drop out (live tv goes off, comes back on, goes off again etc). It actually appears to have gotten worse over the last day or so.

I’ve checked to make sure that the cables are securely connected in to the back of the box, which they were, and the cables going in to the dish appear to be fine from what I can tell.

On the signal info page, when the problems occur it shows NO SIGNAL for both tuners for strength and quality (see image below). It then goes back to full strength when the live tv comes back on.

I was wondering if anyone had seen this before and what might be causing the problem.

Thanks in advance

Check the cable first for loose connections, most likely the dish end with the weather we've had recently. It's not unknown for the outer jacket on budget Sat/TV coax to be slack enough that the inner core slides back and you get a complete or partial loss of connection.

Also check the condition of the outer jacket all the way along the cable run. You're looking for cracks, splits and abrasions that might let in water. This is a bit more of a longer shot, but while you're outside you might as well dot the I's as well as crossing the T's.

Where both LNB signals drop at the same time I'd be looking at something global such as a loss of power to the LNB. They get power from the Humax box. It goes up the satellite cable and, a bit like a battery connection to a lamp bulb, there have to be two connections to carry the power. In coax cable it's the centre core and the braid shield. Now you'd think these would be pretty robust, but if you have the typical budget Sat cable where the braid is aluminium wire over a plastic Mylar foil then any water in the cable will see that corrode to aluminium oxide dust as fast as within 6-12 months. The presence of power in the cable speeds up the process.

LNBs have a common ground connection as does the Humax box's sat connections. That mean one of the sat cable braids can be completely eaten through but as long as the other still has a connection then both receiving LNBs will still get power. It's only when the second cable braid finally gives out that the signal is lost. What you could be seeing then is an early warning sign.

Once you've eliminated the simple then next port of call is a failing LNB or the power supply within the Humax that powers the LNB has issues. Where you have a Quad LNB fitted (four output sockets) you could try swapping across to the other two outputs.

Thanks. It's a weird one as it doesn't seem to affect all channels - for instance BBC One appears to be affected quite badly and shows no signal frequently, whereas other channels work absolutely fine.

That is odd then.

Satellite signals use a bundling method called multiplexing to send a whole bunch of channels in a single data stream. If you can receive one channel from the multiplex then the rest should be okay too. Likewise then, if one is getting screwed up then I'd expect to see the same sort of issues on the other channels in that multiplex as well.

If it was a cable or LNB fault then all the multiplexes received would be compromised.