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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
Sunday, 22 April 2012
J
jb388:17 PM
sparky: Thanks for that interesting update giving the results of your findings, and yes! I am sure that you would find the changes suggested to your aerial system to be beneficial all round.
If though you wanted to further experiment with your multi-element aerial to make it have a wider pick up acceptance angle and thereby less critical, is to choose a day that the signal is reasonable stable and note the strength / quality level being seen on ITV3 (mux Ch25) then start removing the directors on the aerial from the end coming inwards towards the active element, and if you remove about half of them that should have just about the desired result by making the aerial less critical in the respect that I had mentioned in my last posting.
You will also probably find the the signal level will not have changed that terribly much either, because the specs / gain curves etc published for aerials are from tests carried out under a strict set of conditions that bear no resemblance to what happens in real life.
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J
jb388:40 PM
Andrew: Press "services" then 4 - 4 and that will take you into the screen where you manually enter the channel you want, so enter 11.623Ghz polarisation "H" - 27.5 - 2/3 and press find channels, then on the box that comes on you will see PCNE amongst some other programmes, select it and store it by pressing the yellow button finishing by pressing select and then backing out of the menu.
In operation press "services" then select 7 and the menu will come on where you will see PCNE, select it by scrolling down and press the select button to view.
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J
jb388:44 PM
Andrew: Meant also to add that a Sky box cannot be made to operate as though a subscription was in force, Sky has ensured that doesn't happen! you can of course use it without a card to view all non subscription channels except Pick TV.
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Monday, 23 April 2012
D
DAVID SNOWDEN12:06 AM
My standard Sky box on my multi room feed only gets 101,102,103,104 but not 105 or any Sky channels. These just say 'no signal or technical fault'. (Main HD Box is working fine, getting all channels)
I have tried the 3 reset methods but no luck. The reset No3 does not react as your guidelines. When I hold the back-up button on the skybox while switching the power back on, nothing happens on my screen. It does not show the expected resetting warnings etc. Does this indicate that the skybox cannot be reset?
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Tuesday, 24 April 2012
A
ALAN PEACHEY9:38 AM
A quick question for someone. Now that ITV is owned by one company(except STV and UTV). Why don't they put all the ITV regions on the main FREESAT EPG like the BBC do? Thanks.
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Not sure if this is the right place for this query but unable to find where it should go.
My tv at home, when being tuned, shows a tuning scale up to 68.
However my caravan tv set only shows 48.
I have only just noticed this but last year when in the caravan site below the Crystal Palace transmitter I tuned in and got the Freeview channels but then they went blank and I could only get the analogue channels.
I only need the BBC and ITV main channels in the caravan so what I would like to know is there any region of the UK where I would not recieve these channels assuming that they are above the 48 tuning point.
I am on Belmont at home and am not sure if any channels from there are above the 48 tuning point to test the set out.
Any advice welcome. Thanks
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John's: mapJ's Freeview map terrainJ's terrain plot wavesJ's frequency data J's Freeview Detailed Coverage
John F: Yes, Belmont ArqA is on C53 and ArqB is on C60.
See "After switchover configuration" here for the programme channels carried on these multiplexes:
Freeview multiplexes | ukfree.tv - independent free digital TV advice
As for your problem when you were at Crystal Palace, your receiver was probably being overloaded with signal. I suggest that you carry a variable attenuator around with you. See here for an explanation:
Freeview signals: too much of a good thing is bad for you | ukfree.tv - independent free digital TV advice
Of course, caravan aerials by their nature are lower down than aerials on the top of houses, so you will be less likely to suffer from overloading, except perhaps in extreme cases when you are very near to such a high power transmitter. That said, if you're using a high-gain antenna you are more likely to suffer overloading when in strong signal areas.
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J
jb381:09 PM
John F: Just out of curiosity what type of TV are you using in the caravan? its not a Nextbase by any chance?
Regarding the signal strength, as Dave Lindsay has mentioned its very likely that at the location mentioned you will be suffering from severe signal overloading, and possibly with it being of a magnitude that I doubt would be sufficiently reduced by the use of a normal attenuator, but one never knows!
Another point is, if your caravan is of more recent manufacture then check if it has an aerial amplifier sited in one of the cupboards as most do, and if it has then switch it off and link the input and output plugs together.
The next time you are at the site you should see what like the reception is with a short (about 12") piece of wire inserted into the TV's aerial socket.
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J
jb381:30 PM
DAVID SNOWDEN: All Sky boxes can be reset, are you sure that you are leaving it long enough for the Sky box to activate when you you powered (inserted main plug) it back up again with your finger on the boxes back button, the point to remember being that your finger has to stay firmly on the back button until all the front panel LEDs light up before releasing it, and there is often a time lag in this happening.
If the box had been OK before then a complete reset of the nature you tried should not really have been necessary, as although what you have complained of could be a box fault its more likely to be caused by either a bad (partially shorted) connection in the "F" plug or possibly the "F" connector on the dishes LNB.
However, to verify if the box is OK or not you should temporarily couple it into the dish feed thats used by the main box.
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Wednesday, 25 April 2012
G
Gratts9:17 AM
Hi, I have freeview at the moment and do not have a satellite dish. I am considering buying a PVR to record films and TV series but was wondering if instead I could use a secondhand sky box purely as a PVR? Is this possible to do without freesat and purely as a component to my existing set-up?
Many thanks!
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