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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?
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Saturday, 7 September 2013
M
Mike8:30 AM
Hi I have just purchased a freesat box I have a sky dish and a roof aerial on the box it has two sockets I only have one cable from the sat dish so can I plug in the roof aerial if I convert the plug
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J
jb389:36 AM
Mike: You will have to remove the dishes LNB and replace it with a quad type then run a second cable from same to the box, quad LNB kits being obtainable from a number of e-bay suppliers for around £10.00 or so and are extremely easy to fit, caution being exercised that you do not move the dish!
This said on the assumption that your new Freesat box is a twin tuner PVR (recorder)? However you will presently be able to use it for viewing provided that the single lead is connected into the LNB1 input.
By the way, the roof aerial can only be used for a terrestrial based Freeview box, as Freesat and Freeview are not compatible with each other.
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F
Frances1:13 PM
I have a ree view box in my house in Italy I get some English channels but not itv or bbc .is it because I need a bigger dish that I can't pick them up
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V
Viv2:48 PM
Hook
Briantist. I seem to have a fix.
I had fitted the 800 filter in the wrong place: I have now put it between the aerial and the booster. The result is almost perfect TV with only slight pixilation on ITV3 (always my weakest channel).
So who is sending out rogue 800 Mc/s signals in my area? Can we be sure it is not some mutation or focusing of 4G ?
At Sony's recommendation I want to up my booster to 20 dB but am having a problem finding one, not helped by the fact that most of the makers are very coy about their dB figure.
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Viv's: mapV's Freeview map terrainV's terrain plot wavesV's frequency data V's Freeview Detailed Coverage
J
jb383:38 PM
Viv: You can purchase a suitable booster from Argos, an excellent variable type givig up to 20db gain made by SLX as seen on the their catalogue page 507, item number 107 / 1533 @ £11.99.
The other types seen Philex are also good quality devices but have a fixed output of a maximum of 18db, although this is reduced on the 2 - 3 - and 4 way types dependant on how many outputs are being used.
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Viv5:42 PM
Hook
jb38. Many thanks for your response. However I need a 3-way output.
I have found one via Amazon. Costs a bit more but will hopefully do the job.
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Viv's: mapV's Freeview map terrainV's terrain plot wavesV's frequency data V's Freeview Detailed Coverage
J
jb387:18 PM
Viv: No problem, as although I mentioned the types sold by Argos this was just really for the convenience of purchase angle rather than anything else.
Maybe though you could give an update on results once you have had a chance to evaluate the performance of your purchase, because provided that your problem is "not" one of the quality being seen to intermittently dive downwards, boosters not being of any assistance whatsoever in this type of situation, then your intended purchase should improve things by lifting the signal up to a reasonable level above the receivers cut off threshold, signals hovering around it always suffering from glitching.
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M
MikeB7:29 PM
Viv: Just a suggestion - your only 22km from Hannington, your line of sight is really good, so do you have the problem of too much signal? If Hannington has work/retuning recently, like a lot of other people, your signal strength has potentially shot up. BBC channels are normally the strongest, so they might be the worse affected.
Try your tv signal strength - it should be 75%, not 100% - then try bypassing the booster. It may just work.
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M
MikeB7:43 PM
Rex: As I just commented to Viv, your signal strength should be 75%, not 100%. However, Winchester is also a funny area, since a lot of it is in a bowl (I used to live there, so I'm aware of the sometimes iffy reception).
The strange thing is why reception is knocked out for 15min each evening. If it is the same time each day, then it sounds like electrical interference - perhaps a boiler switch, etc, but why its only 15 min goodness knows. Try some detective work, and see if there is something that comes on at that time, it might be the source of the problem.
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MikeP
11:12 PM
11:12 PM
Just a 'sanity check' question from someone who has been in the TV industry since the late fifties. We see a number of questions suggesting they have a 'booster' as part of the signal feed, but is it really an aerial amplifier or is it a powered splitter?
In the analogue days, very few people needed an aerial amplifier and it was always mounted as close to the aerial as possible. But many seem to be saying their 'booster' is in the loft! And some seem to be suggesting that it 'splits' the signal 2, 3 or more ways which suggests, to me at least, that it may actually be a splitter that has some built in amplification to overcome the inherent losses of dividing the incoming signal to feed several outputs.
As we all now know, having too strong a digital signal can be as bad as having too weak a signal, so are some people using an amplifier when it is not needed?
We could also ask about the '4G' perception, considering that the first three areas only went live in the 800 MHz band on August 29th (in parts of London, Leeds and Bradford I think) while the EE '4G' is in the 1800 MHz band so way out of band to cause DTV problems.
Food for thought?
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