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All posts by MikeB

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


D Hawthornthwaite: You havn't given a postcode - so we dont know if your very close to the trasnmitter, and getting too high a signal, have a problem with your aerial, etc. It might be 4G, but generally, if you were going to have a problem, they would have sent you a filter.

One clue is they they have been doing engineering to the transmitter - when that happened last year, the signal strength generally went up and a lot of people complained about much the same thing as you are.

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john Martin: Given the choice, would you prefer to watch in SD or HD? HD. The changeover to DVB-T2 allows that to happen anyway, As for shopping channels, they help pay for Freeview, and amazingly, people seem to like them. I just avoid them, just like adverts, whenever I can. But TV hs to be paid for somehow.

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Winter Hill (Bolton, England) transmitter
Tuesday 2 December 2014 9:10PM

H J Hill: I'm not sure that there is evidence of a 'reception problem'.

You have a Humax and a Panasonic, and in the case of the Panasonic, you say that your getting 100% for both strength and signal quality. You then report a glitch on an HD channel. Since HD problems (including brief 'no signal' messages) are often a sign of too much signal strength (see 'too much of a good thing' on this site), and you report 100% strength, whereas perhaps 75-80% would be ideal, that would normally be a sound diagnosis. You have Humax and Panasonic, two brands known to have sensitive tuners, and I notice on the Digital Spy page you linked to, the complainents who said what their equipment was, tended to say Humax.

You havn't given us a postcode, so we have no idea where you are in relation to the transmitter, but its certainly possible, even though Com 7 is supposed to have low power, that your signal is simply too powerful for the tuners. Also remember that different tuners (even of the same brand) can react slightly differently - my father-in-law has both a Panasonic G10 LCD TV and a Panasonic 720 PVR. The TV has slight problems with too high a signal strength (they have a mast head amp which they can't switch off), but the PVR suffers far more.

Mike seems to have a similar problem, and again, 100% signal strength, the same kind of glitch, and at least one Humax.

Try getting an attentuator or two (you can put them in series). See if they work. They are really cheap, so its worth a try. I suspect that might cure the problem. As Mazbar points out, he hasn't noticed any problems, and since, as you've said, the transmitter serves some 7 million people, if there were serious faults, wouldn't complaints be more widespread?

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Winter Hill (Bolton, England) transmitter
Wednesday 3 December 2014 12:01AM

Mike: Fine, I'm just trying to diagnose a problem based on the evidence available. However, if there is a problem with Com 7 from that transmitter, what is it, and why is it only manifesting itself to some people?


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MikeP: Which model of Youview/Humax box are you using? As far as I'm aware, all versions of the Humax have loop-through capacity, apart from the latest 2000T, but they all have two sockets on the back, as you can see: http://cdn2.mos.techradar….jpg , & http://cdn4.mos.techradar….jpg



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michael: Sounds exactly the same problem as my father in law - the TV was just a little too sensitive, but its only had an occasional problem. The PVR certainly had a problem with signal stength. Since their masthead amp is an all or nothing affair (switch it off, everything is off), I advised them to buy some attenuators, and just kill the signal strength a bit on both, and the PVR more than a bit. I havn't heard anything since, so I assume everything is now alright!

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MikeP: I'd read something about them, but not actually heard very much detail. Be interesting to see who its made by, and slightly odd that it has no pass through capacity, but like you say, a splitter is an easy solution (in fact its how my PVR is set up as well). Whats it like to use?

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Connecting it all up | Installing
Thursday 4 December 2014 5:54PM

David Hobbs: To be fair, we all assumed your loop had red/white phone sockets as inputs (you said there were 2), rather than a single jack and mic input.

However, thats fine. If its a 3.5mm jack input, then just get a 3.5mm to 3.5mm cable (really cheap), and put one into the 3.5mm on the TV, and the other into the loop. Or if you cant be bothered to changed the red/white cable, just get one of those adapters that make phonos into 3.5mm
3.5mm Stereo Plug to 2 Phono Sockets Adapter | Maplin


Then take out the scart connection (you dont need it), and it should all work. Any info you need should be in the Sony manual, which is actually on the TV, if you press Imanual on the remote,

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Connecting it all up | Installing
Thursday 4 December 2014 8:22PM

David Hobbs: Your Samsung soundbar should be using the digital optical, not the 3.5mm jack - its a much better sound.

Now yes, it could use the HDMI is theory, but since you've only two HDMI's on the TV, one of which is used for your PVR, and the other is going to be used for a blu-ray, leave it as digital optical. And since the TV doesn't appear to have ARC anyway, I wouldn't really bother.

The Samsung soundbars manual should be HDMI from TV TO the soundbar - the soundbar is not a source in itself. Yes, its got an HDMI in and out, so you could take the blu-ray via that, but make life easy on yourself!

Stick the loop into the 3.5mm jack, setup the TV, and it should work.



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Charles Hobbs: There are no reported problems (click on the R & TI link), so its likely to be your system thats got the problem.

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