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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, 26 May 2013
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jb3812:39 PM
Jill Rowan: If you are located in an area known for bad reception and you already have a dish installed? then purchasing a second hand Sky box is probably the best idea, but though be aware that if you purchase a Sky+ box you will NOT be able to use the recording side of the device without taking out a Sky subscription of £10.25 per month, as other wise the Sky+ box just acts like a normal box but consuming slightly more power.
By the way you don't really require a viewing card to receive free channels, as apart from the card enabling the odd free but encrypted channels to be viewed (e.g: Sony TV 157) its other purpose is to enable you to receive the correct local news, otherwise London is the default news service.
The other point to note being, that if you already have a Sky box and you purchase another then each box requires its own individual feed from the dish, Sky+ boxes "if" used for recording requiring two feeds.
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Steve P11:38 PM
Jill R if you hve the sat dish another option is to buy a Freesat Tuner - eg
Buy Bush Freesat Digital Set Top Box at Argos.co.uk - Your Online Shop for Set top boxes.
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Monday, 27 May 2013
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jb388:25 AM
.Jill Rowan: I would say that Steve P's suggestion of purchasing a Freesat box is by far a much better idea, as although a Sky box might well be able to receive a few odd programme channels not broadcast on Freesat but though by purchasing the latter you eliminate the distinct possibility of acquiring a second hand Sky box with an iffy power unit, as there are many around that suffer from this problem albeit with it being of a nature that does not always show up straight away.
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Floyd10:00 PM
jb38 Just saw your answer to my problem. I am Floyd and I wrote on May3 and you answered that same day. I don't quite understand your answer. Should the roof antenna have been repositioned to the Luton transmitter and should I make the landlord aware of that? I believe I could get the 2 stations you mentioned before the trouble started. I checked with some of the other tenants and since some of them have Sky and Virgin I could not get a clear picture from them. I called the company who installed the roof antenna and they said that the management here did not take out maintenance insurance. Should they have done so? If so, I can approach them on the basis that the antenna could have been corroded etc. Up to now they have refused to do anything about my problem. I even installed a new flylead without any improvement. Also, is it possible that there is a tuner problem and the TV itself is to blame? I hope to hear from you again. Thanks a lot. Floyd
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Tuesday, 28 May 2013
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jb389:38 AM
Floyd: Well as said in my original reply it all depends on what direction the communal aerial is facing, because on the somewhat dated Google earth view the aerial is seen to be mounted horizontally and appears to be facing Sandy (18 miles / 23 degrees) whereas if it was facing your local PSB only Luton transmitter (0.5mls / 204 degrees) then it would be vertically mounted, i.e: aerial elements pointing up and down.
Your area is known as not being particularly good for reception hence why the local Luton relay transmitter was built, as according to the terrain indicator the line-of-sight signal paths from both Sandy and Crystal Palace is seen to suffer from blockages at 5 & 7 miles respectively out from you, and so its not really surprising that you have problems with some of the commercial channels mentioned in one of your previous postings.
You should have a look up at the aerial and see if its still mounted horizontally, or whether in recent times its been altered to vertical mounting and turned to face the Luton transmitter, because if it has then you must be receiving the commercial channels from Sandy on the rear of the aerial.
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Adrian Simpson11:41 AM
When I turn on the television to watch the tennis, why is there at least half an hour of unwanted chat? (apart from keeping ex tennis players employed!) I put the TV on to watch tennis!!
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Adrian Simpson: This is a technical advice site and as such I suggest that you press the button with a loudspeaker and a 'X' through it, otherwise known as "mute". Another alternative is to switch on your TV after the first half hour of the broadcast has passed.
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Floyd2:16 PM
jb38. Thanks for your answer. You talk about commercial channels, but I have problems with ALL THE CHANNELS, INCLUDING BBC. At times, especially during the day NONE of the channels work and the programs all disappear from the channels. When it is working however all the programs reappear. So it must be more than interference. And as I said before, the problem is mostly during the day and usually after midnight things get better. Do you have an explanation to the above?
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H.J. Clarke10:17 PM
Carrying on from my post concerning an inability to tune in only the 650 Mhz from Bilsdale Com 4 SDN - As there is nothing else connected to the TV, could it be something about the TV tuner that now acts as an inducter to that frequency ??
John Clarke
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Wednesday, 29 May 2013
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jb3812:05 AM
H.J. Clarke: Have you as yet tried the a signal strength / quality check using the manual tuning method? that is after you entered the mux channel or frequency into the manual tuning box this action NOT being followed by pressing search or scan, because by not doing the signal strength of the channel / frequency entered is usually indicated.
In other words this procedure results in the tuner acting like a form of signal strength meter devoid of the threshold levels that come into play once that search is pressed, this being the reason why some people find that although having previously witnessed signal levels being indicated relating to the mux channel having been entered that the scan did not result in any channels having been found, this simply because they were under the level required by the tuner to resolve a picture.
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