Humax has pledged to fix faulty Freeview boxes effected by the recent retune, as long as they’re within their two year warranty and can’t be brought back to life by their own telephone support staff.
Speaking to us after we reported faults which were still occurring a month after the retune, Humax said customers with boxes that aren’t working should contact them for guidance.
In a statement, a Humax spokesperson told us, “Humax will repair or replace any faulty products if they are within the warranty period. We’re not aware of any problems relating to retuning, but if that was the issue we would repair the product at no charge. However, if a hardware failure occurs and the box is outside of the warranty then any repairs will be rechargeable.”
Freeview retune: one month on, problems persist
The spokesperson went on to say that the Freeview retune should not be impacting on the performance of its set top boxes. However, they also said that users should get in touch with them if there are faults, so they can work out whether problems are down to signal issues.
It means that if you live in a post code area that Freeview says should work with your retuned box and the Humax guys can’t fix it, you’ve got a chance to return it and get a new one. Be sure to check your coverage through Freeview’s postcode checker first.
We’ve had myriad complaints about Humax boxes. David said, “My 9300t tunes itv/chanel4 [sic] and 5 to weak signals, and puts the main chanels [sic] in 800 range. Have done all sorts of retunes as recomended [sic] by Humax to no avail. Sent me a new one today that has done exactly the same.”
However, Gary said, “My humax pvr would not re tune to all channels despite auto and manual retune and after speaking with customer services the box was exchanged for a new one, now works fine.”
The announcement by Humax is great news and a victory for those struggling o fix their Freeview boxes.
Out now | £varies | Humax
I had a similar problem with my Humax yesterday (4th November 2009), it tuned to a weak BBC1 and BBC2 (actually BBC1 Wales and BBC2 Wales). I tracked this down to the way the humax does an automatic retune. It scans channels from low number to high number and when it finds a station e.g. BBC1 it selects that one as the ‘prime’ BBC1 station (as number 1). In my case it found a weak BBC1 Wales on Channel 45 which came from a transmitter some distance from me and not my main transmitter (Winter Hill). When it finally found the Winter Hill BBC1 it allocated it to number 800, BBC2 to 801, BBC3 to 802 AND 803 etc.
I solved this by deleteing all stations and then manually retuning only the channels that come from Winter Hill currently 56, 62, 63, 66, 67 and 68. I suspect these will change again in December but I found the original ones by checking each channel and finding the ones with a strong signal (in my case 89%), channel 45 (the problem one) had a strength of 30%. I will do the same again when the next change occurs
When phoning Humax Tech people, they told me the Engineers were working on a FIX that would be sent as an OTA Up-date, in a week or so.
I too am in the Winter Hill area for reception, and the 9300 was Selecting BBC Wales,
then I had to do a Manual Tune to correct this ‘problem’ !!!
My other 9200 keeps FREEZING-up ! Have to switch off for a few seconds to start again.
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I live in Cumbria, in the NW region of England, and we were digitalised in September. My Humax 9300T, which I bought in October 2008 froze off and on and dumped EPG set pre-recordings well before the switch over. Humax replaced the machine in August 2009, and the ‘new’ machine started freezing just after delivery. Many e-mails to and from Humax, which stopped in October 2009 with a promise to reply asap. The local TV man told me some weeks’ ago that Humax is aware of the problem, which it blames on the digitalisation, and told him that they are liaising with the digital people to sort it out. My machine is still freezing, and dumping recordings scheduled via EPG, yet Humax has gone silent. Have sent yet another e-mail to them today, giving them fourteen days to do something about their not-fit-for-purpose machine! Wish I had gone for Sky+!