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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
Saturday, 6 July 2013
Steve: There's nothing that can be done about the issue - the effect is an occupational hazard of using the airwaves.
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S
sam10:19 PM
Hi for the last week everytime i record something on my sky+ box my sky box loses signal and the recording fails and the only way we get the box to work is by switching the box of at the mains can you tell me what the problem could be.
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J
jb3811:29 PM
sam: This can happen on a box with a defective power supply and whose tuner is already struggling to hold a signal, the extra load imposed on the boxes power unit by the action of the of the hard drive running pulling the voltage down to the tuner thereby causing it to cut out.
However, you should carry out a signal strength / quality check by pressing "services - 4 - 6" (on white Sky+ box) the levels seen indicated being a minimum of around 50% for both strength and quality, if the quality is under the strength then the dish is slightly out of alignment making the power unit problem worse.
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Sunday, 7 July 2013
S
Steve P6:14 PM
David L - surely the hazard arises from the METHOD of using the airwaves forced upon us?
It is not innate. - eg with analogue.
Or different frequencies or modulation methods
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Monday, 8 July 2013
T
Terry3:26 PM
I live in Ramsgate and recently seem to have lost a batch of channels ch18 to ch27 no longer there also itv3 and Film4. We seem to have many more French and Belgian channels that seem to be broadcasting very strong signals, could they be the problem.
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MikeP
4:56 PM
4:56 PM
Steve P - and Terry:
In the analogue TV days we had co-channel interference due to troposheric lift and/or inversion layer effects quite often, especially in the summer months with high pressure systems dominating, as is happening currently. The modulation method has no bearing on the known atmospheric effects that give rise to the unwanted transmissions travelling further than normal and affecting normal reception. It has been known for someone living on the North Downs, in Surrey and Kent, to watch French TV programmes that normally are not receivable - except for the inversion effects. (As a TV service engineer in that area in the '60s and '70s we had to gently advise customers about it!) The effect has been well known in RF transmission spheres for many, many years and as it's a natural phenomenon there is nothing anyone can do about it (learn to live with nature and not work against it). It affects many RF transmissions, depending on frequency and the tropospheric conditions. Most large terrestrial TV transmitters are expected to cover not much more than 80 miles radius, but some more powerful sites cover more. But it is well known, in the 'right' conditions, for signals from a transmitter over 300 miles away to be received well enough to watch! The interference will seriously affect digital signals as well as analogue ones, resulting in either poor pictures and sound with pixelation or result in the signal not being decodable, so no picture/sound.
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Thursday, 11 July 2013
F
Floyd2:19 PM
Luton
jb38, I am totally exasperated and don't know where to go from here. I followed your advice and talked to several people here in the building who had also reception problems. I then contacted the management and they sent out 4 Seasons TV installation service who had originally installed the system. They looked at my TV and then proceeded to fix what was wrong. They something about the amplifier system but I don't know what they did. In any case my TV worked fine after that for about 2 weeks. I got all the channels back and I had almost no pixilation. Two days ago all the channels started to pixelate again to the point where I could not watch TV at all any more. I contacted the management again and this morning they sent out the same guy again. He looked at my TV and tried to reinstall all the channels by using a full channel scan. No channels were found. He then said immediately without rechecking his previous work, that my TV was faulty and I needed to buy a new TV. I told him I did not believe he was right, because it worked fine after he did the recent repair. I also believe he was wrong because when I later tried to reinstall the channels manually they all showed a high signal level, but in every case also a poor quality level. Would that not mean that there is still again something wrong with the antenna installation? From what I can see the mux Channels involved are numbers 24,27,48,50,51,52 and 59. all showing poor quality indication. Some of the channels reinstalled manually but the picture would only pixelate and no program could be seen. Do you have advice what I should do now?
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Floyd's: mapF's Freeview map terrainF's terrain plot wavesF's frequency data F's Freeview Detailed Coverage
J
jb386:38 PM
Floyd: Much as I really hate to say this, but I feel that the 4 Seasons installation service has rectified the fault on their equipment just in time for your reception to start suffering from the same problem that many others across the Midlands have been experiencing over the last couple of days, insomuch that their reception is being severely affected (or even wiped out) by the current wave of atmospheric conditions allowing distant transmitters (sometimes not even in UK) to be picked up and clashing with the channels used by local transmitters.
I do realise that during your original problem that on more than one occasion you had to check with others in your block for the purpose of determining if the fault was purely confined to yourself or not, and at least the installation team person who visited you did seem to grudgingly admit that it was their amplifier system at fault, as indeed I thought all along! but on this occasion even although nothing can be ruled out as far as their equipment having failed again is concerned, but though I strongly suspect that if you make a quick check with others in your block when your signal goes down that you could possibly discover that they might also be experiencing intermittent problems, the severity of dependant on their receiving equipment as some devices perform better than others under adverse conditions.
By the way all of these channels you listed are from the Sandy transmitter with the exception of two, as channels 50 & 59 are from your local Luton transmitter.
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K
KMJ,Derby6:41 PM
Floyd: With the current weather conditions the poor quality reception being experienced could be the result of interference due to signals being present from out of area transmitters. Have a look periodically over the next few days to see if the quality improves as conditions change. It would be quite normal for good reception to come and go ramdomly on the available frequencies until the conditions return to normal.
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