Your suggestions (and my corrections) for 2014 please
Always happy to hear your suggestions. Photograph: Shutterstock
Firstly, here is a list of some of the "backend" changes I have made to UK Free TV.
Special transmitter details
Caldbeck (Cumbria, England) transmitter now shows the ITV Border England and ITV Border Scotland services.
Ridge Hill (County of Herefordshire, England) transmitter: I have merged together two entries for Ridge Hill (a legacy of the analogue ITV-1 service, back in 2006 - ITV West extended to North Gloucestershire) and the ITV West service is now shown on the same page as all the rest.
Rowridge (Isle Of Wight, England) transmitter : Thanks to serling work from Sean we now have notification from Arqiva about the correct transmission details for com7 and com8 from that mast.
Transmitter Meta Tags
If you search on Google and get information up about transmitters from UK Free TV, the "meta" information now shows the correct number of multiplexes and all of their channels and powers.
Interfaces with Twitter and Facebook
I have obtained better icons for the sites listed in the Zeitgeist section. So, if you look at a "Read This" page, you see a better look, for example Read this: London Live reveals its bright lights for the big city - Media - theguardian.com now looks like
When such a page is posted on Facebook, it now keeps the correct large icon:
And pages posted on Twitter now get the full format for the extended tweet:
http://t.co/KAbovDRm8o MikeB has posted Mike Dimmick Hopefully certain parties might read your summing up of the BBC 039 s benefits put
— Brian Butterworth (@Briantist) January 15, 2014Over to you
One in 20 people from the UK visited UK free TV last year. I would love to be able to extend the site to make it useful to more people.
I would love you to tell me how the site could be made even better so we can help even more people enjoy Freeview, Freesat, Sky (No Card) and online TV viewing.
Help with Freeview, aerials?
Thursday, 16 January 2014
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Bob Huckin9:08 PM
Nottingham
I think the site is pretty much spot on as it is.
As a Freeview + HD viewer, it's invaluable in letting me know when additional channels are imminent and when to retune the box.
Continued good luck with it all.
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Bob's: mapB's Freeview map terrainB's terrain plot wavesB's frequency data B's Freeview Detailed Coverage
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MikeB10:21 PM
Briantist: The site is incrediably useful, and I've learnt a great deal from it in a relatively short time. There was some discussion a little while ago of how to alert people to FAQ's and what sort of information those asking a question should include, so perhaps something along those lines might be useful.
The thing I do notice which does need an upgrade is the 'Connecting it all up' page Connecting it all up | Installing | ukfree.tv - 11 years of independent, free digital TV advice . It dates back to 2006, and even in the last 3/4 year, a lot has changed on the back of a TV.
HDMI is now the main connection, and for a 32in and above 3 is average (4 or 2 sometimes, depending on the brand/cost). On all 3D TV's (and many 2D ones as well), one of the is Audio Return Channel (ARC), which allows a 1.4 HDMI cable to communicate with a home cinema system or soundbar bi-directionally. Some high level TV's will also have a HDMI 2.0 input for 4K, etc.
There is just one scart now, and on certain brands, it is highly likely to be a kind of plugin system, with the wires hanging down. You will still have RGB inputs , but the yellow RCA (Composite) phono input has gone this year, although the Red/White ones remain for use with the RGB.
VGA/DVI has long gone (modern laptops have HDMI outputs and wifi/DLNA has made this less useful anyway), but you will instead often find at least one USB (often 3 on a higher level set).
Digital opitical (SPDIF) still remains, as does the 3.5mm headphone socket (apart from HDMI, now the only ways to get an audio signal out of a set), as does the UHF socket (!), and there are often F connections (for Freesat or generic sat. tuners).
In a similar vein, pretty much no blu-ray player has analogue outputs, and very few Freeview HD boxes (Humax, Philips and Segam do). HDMI is now the standard.
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MikeB: Thanks very much for that.
I appreciate your feedback on that page.
Google says there are "About 139,000 results" for ukfree.tv - so it is sometimes hard for me to remember to go back and look at pages.
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Friday, 17 January 2014
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Tim11:06 AM
1) Don't muck it up by going all Yahoo! It's nice to have a page that is mostly useful content.
2) Remove the big picture background and stock photos. I sometimes use this site over VNC and images are slow.
3) If you want to grow revenue I would expand into Europe
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Tony Hill1:08 PM
I like the information you provide but am still not clear how I get at it! I receive your emails on certain topics and sometimes (like now) post a comment but afterwards I can't see a way to access these topics (and my comments). I the way is there, it can't be obvious or, surely, I would have found it. I would also like to see a list of all the topics I have commented on and hence see all my posts.
Also, occasionally, I make a post and when that topic comes up in your email, the post is not there.
So, what I am saying is that I (personally) would like to have the access to the topics/posts more clearly shown so that I can keep track of the items that I am interested in.
Thanks
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Tony Hill: To see what you've ever posted - click on "37 posts" next to your name to see your posts: All posts by Tony Hill | ukfree.tv - 11 years of independent, free digital TV advice
Or... at the top right you will see "Site settings".
This should show the first link as "Tony Hill's comments". You can access your posts from there.
Perhaps this needs better signposting?
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Tim: If you make the browser window less wide, then the background picture will disappear entirely.
I'm not intending to make the site like Yahoo, that I can confirm.
Can you explain a bit more what you mean by "expand into Europe"?
Thanks
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Sunday, 19 January 2014
Tony Hill: I've been thinking about your comments and I have made the following changes.
First, I have made the format of the setting box clearer. Your picture will appear at full 60x60 size, and I have changed the wording of the "flat blue links" to, I hope, make it clearer what they do, and who for.
The second example here is of how the same blue links appear by a poster's message. To assist with the understanding of what the "9 posts" link does, I have changed the wording to make it clear that it links to "Username's 9 posts"
As these are cached by the server's file system, you might find it takes a few hours for them to regenerate in the new format.
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Monday, 20 January 2014
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Tony Hill10:53 AM
Dorchester
Briantist: Very useful update. Thanks
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Tony's: mapT's Freeview map terrainT's terrain plot wavesT's frequency data T's Freeview Detailed Coverage
Tony Hill: Thanks. Let me know if you have any additional thoughts.
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