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All posts by Richard Sutton

Below are all of Richard Sutton's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.


Briantist:

Many thanks Brian. That shows that something significant appears to have happened to C29 on Ridge Hill but I can't understand what.

If you read my posts you will see that the Freeview technical person says that C29 is still broadcasting the same channels as C25 i.e. ITV, Ch4, Ch5 etc but I think they are wrong and they have switched off everything except ITV on C29 and have someone re-directed or de-powered C25 so that my reception is now poorer on C25 but I can't use the improved C29 other than for ITV.

There must be someone senior within Freeview who can actually give me the truth about this. Do you have an email address or phone number by any chance?

If my analysis is correct I will revert back to Sutton Coldfield after 4 or 5 years on Ridge Hill.

Richard

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Richard Sutton:

OK - after the long delay for Christmas and New Year I've finally pinned this issue down, I think, as follows.

The key was my Son bringing his Toshiba portable back from Uni for the holidays. He has the TV in his room with the aerial pointing towards Ridge Hill, the same as my roof aerial.

With my Son's TV C25 is clearly a stronger signal than C29 which is exactly how my roof-aerial connected TVs used to be. I am therefore wondering if my aerial has moved slightly on its mountings and is now slightly mis-aligned.

The question is ...... if an aerial is mis-aligned slightly is it possible for the relative signal strengths of the different muxes to switch around so that C25 which was stronger than C29 when the aerial was correctly aligned becomes weaker than C29 once the aerial is moved slightly. Any advice about this would be much appreciated.

The second issue concerned the stations actually being broadcast on C29. Even my Son's TV with the set-top aerial still only picks up one TV station on C29 which is ITV. So that rules out any issue with my coax cabling or signal booster.

Either C29 now only transmits ITV and the Freeview technical person is not aware of this, or ITV on Mux 29 is somehow being geographically directed differently to the other channels supposedly being broadcast on C29 so that we can only pick up the one channel. Once again, I've no idea whether idividual channels on a Mux can be directed in different directions or even given individual signal strengths but at least I know my roof-top aerial cabling and booster are not the problem.

I don't think that there is much more I can do other than ask Mark the aerial guy to come back when the weather improves and perhaps compare Ridge Hill with Sutton Coldfield or Lark Stoke.

Richard

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jb38: However that said, can you confirm the following. That on the previous occasion when you carried out a reset on your TV or Humax box prior to manually scanning C29, that the ITV regional news service was the only programme channel received, and that nothing was listed anywhere else including the 800 channel range?

Many thanks JB38. I may be getting the terms wrong here but can I just clarify that the ITV station being broadcast on Ridge Hill C29 is not just the regional news but all ITV programmes.

Before my recent problems with reception on C25, tuning the Sony TV was easy on auto because at some point during the tuning process it asks whether you are in the reception area "Midlands" or "Gloucestershire" (or something similar to those terms). I used to enter "Midlands" and I then knew that C25 would be selected rather than C29. This was how I knew that the reception problems had started a few months ago because the picture on ITV , Ch4 and Ch5 on C25 started breaking up. I get around this now by manually tuning to ITV on C29 but Ch4 and Ch5 still have to remain on C25 as they are not being broadcast on C29 so these two stations have poor picture quality.

We didn't have the Humax back then but a Windows Vista Media Centre which I built about 8 years ago. This has always struggled with the Ridge Hill transmitter although it was fine in the early days with Sutton Coldfield. The Media Centre on Ridge Hill would make a complete mess on auto-tune and there was not manual tune facility which always annoyed me. The MC would first find C25 and detect the Midlands transmission but it would then move to C29 and re-discover them so would over-write the C25 versions and leave me with it tuned in to the weaker mux. I used to avoid this by disconnecting the booster to degrade the C29 signal so it would not detect C29. When C29 became "stronger" signal earlier this year I had real problems getting a good set of stations but then Microsoft withdrew the Vista Guide Service in October so I gave up with the Media Centre and bought the Humax.

I would be interested on your opinion on whether a roof-top aerial which is slightly mis-aligned can receive the muxes in a different order of signal strength/quality to an aerial which is correctly aligned ..... or do all muxes degrade equally as the aerial is moved off-target. Bear in mind that the aerial is not actually line of sight but there is a low hill in the way if this makes any difference.

Many thanks

Richard

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jb38: I think I've confused matters! What I mean is that the only channel being broadcast on C29 is ITV ..... but it's not just the news on ITV, it's all the content on ITV, news, drama, comedy etc.

I'm not sure how to read your link as it doesn't seem to give the mux C numbers but if Mux RHW2 means the same as mux C29 then it finally confirms what I have suspected - that only ITV is now being broadcast on C29. It's a pity the technical help people at Freeview aren't aware of this. Presumably the Ridge Hill transmitter mux listing above also needs to be updated.

Thank you for also clarifying the mux reception question. I clearly need to either re-establish a good signal for Ridge Hill C25 as C29 is no good for me as it only carries ITV ...... or try a different transmitter altogether.

Anyway, than you for your help with this.

Richard

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