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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!
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Sunday, 21 July 2013
V
Victoria2:40 PM
Truro
Has anyone else been able to do that? I've just tried retuning back from France to UK and not had any success with programmes or EPG so gone back to France again.
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Victoria's: mapV's Freeview map terrainV's terrain plot wavesV's frequency data V's Freeview Detailed Coverage
V
Victoria2:49 PM
Truro
Ignore that!! I am back on UK now and back to my EPG. I did have to go into Basic and change my EGG Guide type to Digital - it was automatically set to Guide Plus - if that helps anyone xx
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Victoria's: mapV's Freeview map terrainV's terrain plot wavesV's frequency data V's Freeview Detailed Coverage
E
Emma6:52 PM
Just tried the retune recommended and success! Back in the land of EPG!
Colours a bit strong but working, not crashing and able to set.
Retune now to UK!
CountrySelector - Sony
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J
jb386:57 PM
Jane: Pleased to see that the situation has been rectified, at least for the time being anyway, but as far as Sony is concerned they haven't actually done anything recently that they would require to be ready to alter, as the update message seen on Sony boxes is something that the box does automatically every few hours during a period of 24 hours for the purpose of updating channel info etc but came against a sticky wicket when trying to update COM5 (Pick TV / Sky news etc) due to a problem with the signal from that multiplex.
The fact that your box is now operational again is not connected with anything that Sony has done.
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C
Cafe Racer9:50 PM
Yep, problem seems to have been resolved :-) I've re-tuned channels to 'UK' and also changed EPG option, all seems OK!
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V
Victoria10:11 PM
Truro
Sony has admitted a 'major technical problem' with its line of DVD recorders after a firmware update caused thousands of users to lose access to Freeview service.
The firmware 1.70 update, sent to Sony's HDX boxes on Friday, seems to be the culprit with users writing to the BBC and taking to Sony's online forums to complain.
Amid moans regarding the lack of an official response, Sony used its official Twitter page to acknowledge it was doing everything possible to find a fix.
"A major technical issue has been flagged to our dedicated team. We will update you asap," the company replied to users of the social network.
Blame Arqiva
Sony also acknowledged the fault on its official support forums, seemingly blaming Freeview owner and provider Arqiva for the problem, while offering workarounds for affected users.
A member of the support team wrote: "It appears something has changed in the way that these devices are receiving EPG data from Arqiva, the people who own and operate the Freeview standard for the UK.
"So we are already trying to understand what has happened and how this can be rectified, realising that a large number of people have been affected."
In an update on Sunday morning, Sony also claimed the problem has been resolved for some users.
"Many users are reporting that the issue has been resolved and their devices are now able to correctly re-tune and received correct EPG date. Please post back if you are still experiencing problems," the company wrote.
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Victoria's: mapV's Freeview map terrainV's terrain plot wavesV's frequency data V's Freeview Detailed Coverage
M
MikeB10:22 PM
Peterborough
jb38: I've been mulling over what you said earlier in reply to Jane about Sony and its unavailablity over the weekend.
Having given the tech support people at work a heads up about the Sony situation yesterday as I was passing, we had four reported examples of the problem, three of which I dealt with. However, if I hadn't either had a problem with my own machine (or been reading about it on the net), I won't have heard about it at all.
I think this a wakeup call to Sony and other TV manufacturers - what they call 'a teachable moment'. In the old days, you bouigh a TV. It stopped working, so you'd call the shop you bought it from, or a repair person, and they'd replace a part, etc.
Now, TV's, blu-rays, PVR's. streamers, etc are all 'smart' to some extent, even if they don't go on the net. There are software updates every so often, and as we've seen, they don't always work. Considering the complexity of modern machines, its amazing there are not more problems like this, and I'm sure we can all think of examples from our own line of work where even if you get it right 99.9% of the time, the smallest problem can have large consequences.
As we've seen, we all rely on our machines a lot more than we might realise. Ironically, when those machines fail, we now have the chance to complain about it instantly, not just by phone/email, but via Twitter, Facebook, etc. Sony's offical twitter feed has twenty replies to questions about the PVR problem on the 20/7 alone.
Hardware and software are no longer seperate, and that means that Sony and others can no longer put the phone off the hook on Friday, and pick it up Monday. There would be outrage if Microsoft didn't reply to a serious problem about Windows 7 immediately, and even the most basic Blu-Ray player runs on software - that makes Sony a software company.
What all manufacturers have to realise is that a problem can hit at any time, so they need to answer peoples questions, calm them, and manage the media.
If Sony had a proper response plan, they would have annouced that there was a problem as quickly as possible on their website, Twitter,etc, reassuring people that it was a problem that was beyond their immediate control, and was nothing to do with any user.
They would have said they were getting to the root of it, and they would update everyone as soon as possible. They would have also contacted all major vendors to tell of this problem, and explain what the problem was, including their own stores (which in one case ended up with someone just saying the first thing that came into their head).
The one thing any major brand has is its reputation. We all know things go wrong, but its how problems are dealt with which helps mantain that reputation.
In a crowded market, with a product which only just starting to get its mojo back, and a company which has had huge losses, Sony needs to get on top of this.
And other companies need to learn the lesson that a quick reponse, even if it can tell you little more than we understand your frustration, we know there's a problem, and we going to find a solution as quickly as possible goes a long way towards keeping customers.
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MikeB's: mapM's Freeview map terrainM's terrain plot wavesM's frequency data M's Freeview Detailed Coverage
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MikeB11:00 PM
Peterborough
OK - told by Sony (in a reply to a tweet to Sony by my wife) that everything is good to go, by using basic setup. It works, well at least so far. Will wait in hope...
However, try and find anything on the actual Sony website about it - again, you can find out if you can tweet, etc, but basic info on their website is hard to find.
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MikeB's: mapM's Freeview map terrainM's terrain plot wavesM's frequency data M's Freeview Detailed Coverage
Monday, 22 July 2013
J
Jules11:42 PM
London
Does anyone know, is there a list anywhere of the APIDs and VPIDs of the component streams of the various Freeview channels? The powers that be seem to be changing things around the country on the mux with ITV, C4 and Five - but not at every transmitter. So far I've had customers with equipment that has needed retuning in Bristol, Birmingham, London, Newcastle and Southampton... but there's nothing about this being advertised, and no warning of which transmitters are next to be affected. Any clues from someone out there who is "in the know" would be gratefully appreciated...
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Jules's: mapJ's Freeview map terrainJ's terrain plot wavesJ's frequency data J's Freeview Detailed Coverage
Tuesday, 23 July 2013
R
Robert7:07 PM
I house is surrounded by trees, so I can't get a tv picture with my aerial. I have had a sat dish installed. Can I plug my digital set top box into it to receive tv?
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