All posts by Nicholas Willmott
Below are all of Nicholas Willmott's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
re: Dave Lindsay: if Tony or anyone else in Findon currently using the Findon Relay, is able to get good strong reception of the PSB muxes from Findon Relay with a standard 10-element aerial, up against marginal / borderline reception (works most of the time with the fairly occasional drop outs) of all 6 muxes from Rowridge VP with an extra high gain aerial, how about this? Put up an extra high gain aerial VP towards Rowridge for the COM muxes, and keep the existing standard aerial on Findon for superior reception of its PSB muxes? Surely you could combine the two together with a signal standard Y-shape signal splitter-combiner. Or the little masthead box I've seen some people with two aerials have - exactly what are they and how do they work?
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Could they not transmit a local service for Bath on a spare UHF frequency from the Bath relay?
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Rod Darling: The UHF band runs from channel 21 to channel 68 (it always has done). Freeview TVs, boxes, etc therefore scan the UHF band from channel 21 to channel 68, therefore your receiver is working correctly in starting at 21 and ending at 68.
Good luck getting the ITV1/ITV1+1/ITV2/C4/E4/More 4/C5, (plus HD channels if you have a HD receiver) on 21 March, and more channels (ITV3, Pick TV, Yesterday etc) on 18 April. N.B. The commercial muxes (channel bundles) will be stronger in vertical polarisation than horizontal, therefore for best reception of all channels you may want to get your aerial remounted vertical after 18 April.
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Thanks for the list Briantist. At first sight there seems no logic to the order of the relay names, but by looking at individual ones I can see they are arranged in the order of homes served, largest number to smallest number.
Earlier I spotted that Selkirk (a main transmitter) serves 24,000 homes, and has all 6 muxes. Therefore it's only right that Bath relay which serves a much smaller land area but just as many homes, 24,000, deserves 6 muxes too.
At the very least Ofcom should have insisted on SDN and Arqiva putting COM4, COM5 and COM6 on the first twenty relays on the list, as they each serve more homes than certain 6-mux main transmitters! After some trawling around UK Free TV and Wikipedia, I've found that Bressay (main transmitter for the Shetland Islands) serves just 5,300 homes! Nonetheless it still carries all 6 muxes. Even Bacup, the last relay listed above, covers 5,500 homes, which is more than Bressay, yet it's only got 3 PSB muxes. Where's the fairness in that?
Ideally all those said 120 relays should have got the full Freeview service.
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(continuation of my previous post) Or to put it another way, why didn't Ofcom insist that SDN and Arqiva put the COM muxes on every then analogue-only transmitter / relay serving 10,000+ homes at the applicable DSO date?
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I notice that in Wales mux PSB2 (D3&4) carries S4C instead of E4. That displaces E4 on to a commercial mux which the 3-mux relays don't carry.
In Wales, why not put E4 on PSB2 (D3&4) and dispense with Channel 4+1? Fairs fair, I say; if they want an extra Welsh-only channel S4C, which the rest of the UK doesn't have, put it in place of Channel 4+1 which the people forced to use 3-mux relays can manage without.
Throughout Wales, put Channel 4+1 (South ads) on the Wales variant of the SDN mux.
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Your reference to Rowridge should also include east Dorset. Rowridge extends as far west as Dorchester, and even a bit further west of that. Winterbourne Steepleton relay is actually west of Dorchester.
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When do the COM muxes at Rowridge go from being A (64 QAM 2K), C (16QAM 2K) and D (16QAM 2K) to COM4 (64 QAM 8K), COM5 (64 QAM 8K) and COM6 (64 QAM 8K)? Will it be tonight, or will it be when they adopt their final powers and UHF channels on 18 April 2012?
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The long and the short of it is, I think Sky really want you to subscribe monthly to one of their channel packages. If you are currently a subscriber and give up your subscription, and get an alternative free-to-air service (Freesat or Freeview) Sky will bombard you with personally addressed mail begging you to come back to Sky; they'll even do offers to coax you back. Someone I know has been through that after giving up subscribing to Sky after several years and switching to Freesat. I guess the same would happen if you give up subscribing to Sky to get a Freesat from Sky card.
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Tuesday 6 March 2012 11:48AM
re jb38: thanks for your info about the COM muxes at Mendip. If SDN (UHF 48) is currently running on 70.7Kw at Mendip, that's still considerably higher than its much lower power on UHF 62 prior to 28 Sep 2011.
I've been led to believe that SDN (UHF 48), Arq A and Arq B will all be 100 KW at Mendip from 28 Mar 2012. It'll be interesting to see if my Panasonic DVD recorder can tune into any / all of those with borderline / adequate signal strength with the aerial setup where I live in Bath as of 28 March 2012.