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Brian Butterworth published on UK Free TV For the last six years, I have answered many thousands of personal emails that you have sent to UK Free TV.
Sadly, I am unable to offer this personal service at the moment.
Until I can restore this service, please can you leave any questions you have on an appropriate page, where they will be answered as soon as possible, or below, if you can't figure out where to ask.
I look forward to your questions!
Help with TV/radio stations?
In this section
Friday, 6 April 2012
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jb3812:52 PM
sparky: Just a little point of clarification regarding my reply, insomuch that when I had stated - "that its not uncommon to find reception being difficult from the low powered commercials in areas where the BBC is on full power and has to be attenuated to alleviate overload problems" - this was said in relation to the latter part of your 12.59 pm posting where you had queried - "if I use an attenuator I may lose the other channels"- which of course is quite possible! but I wasn't necessarily advocating that an attenuator would cure the particular problem you are complaining about with your recorder.
That said though, I do suspect that your signal is very likely to be excessive or you wouldn't be able to use a set top aerial and not notice any appreciable difference, and so an attenuator would help in this respect when being used in conjunction with your normal aerial, as when an RF signal being received is on the verges of being excessively high it can cause the tuner to suffer from mild levels of instability, and this can result in a variety of odd (and sometimes baffling) problems being experienced, and I suspect an element of this is applying in your own case as when a recorder starts to record should not really have any effect on signals being received unless the recorder is generating interference from its recording circuitry.
Maybe you could indicate the model of recorder in question, and when you say "that when it starts recording the signal starts to break up", is this what's seen on the TV you are viewing at the same time as you started the recorder? finally have you tested recording ITV yet?
I agree with your comment regarding analogue and indications on a meter telling the truth, as basically in most instances that was the case, although an excessively high level of RF could also cause problems with analogue reception, but in this case with the warning of this state starting to occur always being seen on the screen in the form of herring bone patterns etc developing over the picture, or the screen turning white'ish with what looked like a super fine mesh over the picture, should it still be there!
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Aaron3:32 PM
Bromley
I cant get BBC1, BBC2, BBC3 OR CBBC channels since the 4th April, they worked absolutely fine on my freeview before....and before anyone tells to see reset to factory default or rescan i already have so im not understanding why i am not picking up these channels...i have a grundig lcd integrated digital television...
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Aaron's: mapA's Freeview map terrainA's terrain plot wavesA's frequency data A's Freeview Detailed Coverage
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Mark Fletcher4:16 PM
Halifax
Aaron,Bromley.What is the model of your Grundig integrated LCD digital TV.Sounds like to me your TV does not support the 8k mode at switchover and come Wednesday 18 April 2012 at DSO2 the rest of the lower powered pre-digital switched multiplexes once switched off and replaced by higher powered post DSO multiplexes in its place will also not be received by your Grundig IDTV.If that is the case then you will either have to buy a new integrated digital TV that does support the 8k mode,or a set-top box (also 8k mode supported) or make do with no TV whatsoever.
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Mark's: mapM's Freeview map terrainM's terrain plot wavesM's frequency data M's Freeview Detailed Coverage
Aaron: There are two main possibilities I can think of here:
1. Some older receivers cannot resolve the mode of the post-switchover signals, of which the BBC channels are broadcast in now. The mode used by them is known as 8k mode and before switchover transmission use 2k mode.
What's the model number?
2. At 3 miles away from the transmitter, your receiver could be suffering from signal overload due to the strength of the signals. BBC channels are now on their post-switchover high power, the rest will follow likewise on 18th April.
For more information and an explanation, see Freeview signals: too much of a good thing is bad for you | ukfree.tv - independent free digital TV advice
If this turns out to be the problem, then get yourself an attenuator for a few pounds.
I would rule out number 1 first and then assume number 2. Try manually tuning to UHF channel 23 if your set allows manual tuning.
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Rosy Martin5:13 PM
Help - I have been trying to get my services back. I live in London and there is a new arial - installed by council landlord on my roof, said to be for this switch over. However I no longer get any ITV, channel 4, 5, more 4 etc. channels. I have tried multiple different way of re-tuning my TV, which has a freeview tuner built-in. It certainly hunts for channels, and I have done a factory start set up, and tried the remove arial trick - still no change - still missing a whole section of TV channels
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Mark Fletcher5:43 PM
Halifax
Rosy Martin.London.If you give a full postcode im sure the true pros on here will give more valuable information as such,similar to a patient describing their symptoms to a doctor who provides medicine for treatment.
By the way you just stated that the council landlord has installed a new aerial on your roof,is it polarised horizontally and directed at Crystal Palace transmitter,and most importantly is it coloured red at the tips which denotes a group A aerial or is it coloured black at its tips which denotes a group W wideband aerial and the wrong aerial erected if you reside in a poor/marginal signal area within all group A Crystal Palace mast.
If what you implied misses the channels you mentioned multiplex 2 on frequency 22 then the chances are the new aerial which could be a group W wideband inferior quality contract aerial often on the lowest frequencies will fail in rare cases to pick up that particular frequency itself.
But then again i would wait until after DSO2 is completed come Wednesday 18 April 2012 as the new post-DSO higher powered 200 kw multiplexes come on air,multiplex D3+4 on frequency 26 after DSO2 will be 10 times more powerful than the present 20 kw multiplex 2 on frequency 22.
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Mark's: mapM's Freeview map terrainM's terrain plot wavesM's frequency data M's Freeview Detailed Coverage
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Richard Crook6:26 PM
I note that the Pioneer set top box DBR-TF100 is not in the list of boxes which do not work after digital switchover. It should be in the list as it does not operate satisfactorily with the 8K carrier mode. Frequent picture breakup is the symptom.
This is discussed in the forums and acknowledged by Pioneer. They claim to have a fix which entails sending the box to their service centre, £25.00 plus P&P both ways. They discourage returning the box and will not publish details of the modification.
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jb386:39 PM
Aaron: If you have access to a set top aerial plug that in and carry out a manual tune of Ch23 "if" your device allows manual tuning, other wise its an auto tune, this being necessary as the BBC mux channel will NOT be stored in the TV's memory and you have no way of picking it up unless it is.
The reason for the set top aerial being suggested, or even a piece of copper wire about 8 inches long pushed into the inner part of the aerial socket, is that by you being located at only 3 miles away from Crystal Palaces 200Kw BBC transmitter its a wonder that you can receive anything, and so the possibility always exists that the excessively high level of signal from the BBC mux is being blocked in the tuner, and this is something that has to be eliminated, that is as well as taking the other valid points into account as raised by Mark Fletcher and Dave Lindsay respectively.
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SPARKY11:36 PM
sparky:
Hi jb38,/Dave
When viewing bbc1 or any other BBC channel on c23 the picture is perfect,no noise,no banding or cross hatching(it's a old sony CRT which I am quite partial to)!
When I try to record say BBC1 whilst watching BBC1 the picture freezes then blanks or pixalates ,the actual recording is the same,also all the other BBC channels freeze and pixalate at the same time,except those on epg 802 and 803.BBC radio stations on 700 are also degraded,those on 800 are not affected.
When I record itv1 it records normally, picture unaffected ,recording perfect.
The PVR is a digihome 160 PVR twin tuner(I only found this out today-it's written on the front!) never had any trouble with it at all until this changeover.
at the back it has two aerial Sockets in and two out,one of the out sockets is strapped to the in socket of the other tuner,I tried removing this strap and tried two aerials,it does not respond to the second aerial which reports no signal.
I have tried an experiment with the set top aerial,stood it behind the aluminium blind (closed) and partially covered it with baking foil,this brought the BBC signal to the point of breaking up so I removed some of the foil until the picture stabilised then tried recording..still the same problem.
I have ordered an attenuator which I should be able to pick up tomorrow.
Thanks
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Saturday, 7 April 2012
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gabby12:32 AM
Getting No signal msg & have done lnb, planner rebuild, upgrade & reset - not in that order but done! Called sky & the only extra advice was to swap rhw dish input cables around? Oh & to then book an engineer at a cost of 65 min. Yet to physically check the dish but have now swapped our sky+ box with my sister who never had any probs & is a newer model but still No signal msg appears! Would this definitely mean a dish rather than box problem? Any suggestions apprecitated
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