All posts by MikeB
Below are all of MikeB's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Fiona: You havn't given a postcode, so we dont know how close you are to the transmitter, but if your signal strength is 100%, then it might be too high. It could be one explaination for your problem. and there is more about it here: Freeview signals: too much of a good thing is bad for you
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AlanG: Unfortunately it doesn't - because it depends what you mean by 'expert' - are they actual experts. or they self described or media created 'experts'. The media loves to portray 'both sides' of an argument, and it appears like a sound Socratic method. However, there are many instances where there are not two sides of a debate, and so it leads people to be misinformed.
Put it this way. If a Professor of Epidemiolgy (who has years of experience and has to publish in peer reviewed journals) is asked a question about epidemiology, then he's probably an expert. If a retired Professor of Physics wades in on the subject (although never having published anything on the subject), he might know what he's talking about, or he might have got 'emeritus disease' and just be a kook. If he is just a bloke on the internet, who works by day selling vacuum cleaners and has no qualifications in the subject, then probably not.
The media is more than happy to churn out opinion dressed up as fact, slightly edit press releases or print man bites dog stories. And if you say your an expert, who is to disagree? The bloke on Fox News who said that there were 'no go' areas of London & Paris was billed as a terrorism expert - and I'm sure there are people out there who still think he is. If you want to be really depressed, just look at any science article in most national newspapers. In fact Martin Robbins in his Lay Scientist colunm parodied such articles five years ago This is a news website article about a scientific finding | Martin Robbins | Science | The Guardian
The general view? Its funny because its true. But also tragic because its true.
Wiki is not infalliable - its written by people, and people who can edit or change entries, and who dont have to adhere to a particular 'standard'. None of use are perfect, and there are times on this site where we will get factual things wrong. All we can do is do our best to give the best answer we can, based on our experience and knowledge.
Put it this way - would you prefer to be operated on by a heart specialist with years of training, a long record of publishing in journals and a good reputation, or some 'bloke down the pub' whose medical experience is watching Casualty regularly and reading a bit on Wiki?
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tannya: Whats the model of the TV? As David points out, your TV may well have an F fitting for a Freesat tuner. In fact thats not unlikely if your Panasonic is about 5-6 years old, a lot of them did.
Your TV should have a Freeview tuner in as well, so you have no need of an extra digibox, unless you want it to get a Freeview HD signal, which it might not be equiped to do.
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Trevor Dobie: If you put your postcode in the site, you see the problem for yourself - Digital UK says your great for Marlborough (!), but not really any other transmitter. I'm sure one of the reception guru's can take you through it further. but , on Freeview, your basically stuck with what you've got.
Marlborough is a light transmitter, so it not going to get any better. Best suggestion is Freesat. Your TV might even have a sat. tuner built in, but I'm afraid that the BT box will need to be replaced by a Humax one. Around £170-199 for a PVR, and you'll need a dish. About £100 for a twin LNB one, but a quad would be more cost effective. See the Satcure website for more information.
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Michael Walker: I wouldn't worry too much. Freetime Play is basically much the same as Freetime, which has been on Humax Freesat PVR's for a while. And thats pretty much the functional equivalent of You View (which was assured of funding for the next 5 years in 2014). Panasonic TV';s had Freetime from 2014, and Sony will have Youview from 2015.
If you bought a TV in the last year or two, provided you bought one of the four big (and decent) brands, the likelihood is that your TV is HD, has Freeview HD, has wifi and is smart. You'll have Iplayer and Channel 5 at least, and if Samsung, all four channels via an app. I have no idea what LG is doing, but hopefully they will offer the other two channels as well - just to make my life easier!
Even if you dont have a smart TV, you can upgrade it. Blu Ray players, streamers (so something as cheap as Now TV, or perhaps Apple TV, etc), PVR's or simple HD receivers will get you at least Iplayer. And Freeview Player will be included in many PVR's, blu rays etc. Since you'll tend to upgrade such boxes every so often anyway (and they are often pretty cheap), you'll be fine.
Put it this way, I have a decade old CRT TV which I would prefer not to replace at the moment (school shoes, etc to buy). Thanks to the kids Xbox and the cheap Now TV box (which is the only thing these days which as an analogue output), our TV is smart, with all four channels on demand, etc. At some point, if we replace one of the boxes underneath the TV or the TV itself, I suspect Freetime or something similar will be included.
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john martin: To be fair, most people are not technical, and simply use the technology in their home, without having to understand how it all works. Thats fine - I dont understand all of it either. As long as it works, who cares? I also have to say that the number of times people have had to retune are actually pretty small, and most equipment does it automatically anyway - I suspect its something of a strawman.
Nobody is telling you that something is obsolete, and that you 'must' have something. If your phone works, and its works for you, then thats OK. Its true that phones are consatntly being upgraded, but you only need to buy something if you want it. The same goes for laptops (they come out on a three monthly cycle).
You dont need HD, but the reality is that 70% or more of the TV's in the UK are now HD Ready or HD, and most for the last 4 years have had an HD tuner in them. You havn't been able to buy an non HD Ready TV in the UK for about 9 years, but TV manufacturers still include analogue connections on the back of TV's, even though most will never be used. Thinking about it, technology for most proceeds like a convoy - not perhaps at the speed of the slowest, but certainly towards the slower end of the scale.
My old CRT TV could still be used in a decade time, providing that I get a DVT-T2 tuner equiped with a scart - which is about 40 quid. I would love to sell you 4K, but you might not need that level of technology, and even if you did, you get to choose when to buy it.
Its easy to read all about the latest thing, and there are plenty of journalists, marketers and advertisers wanting to tell you all about it. Sometimes its worth buying, and sometimes its hype. However, for the most part, actual experts will tell you that you can use your older equipment for a fair while before you have to change, but that new equipment might well be cheaper, better and more useful than before. Ultimately, its up to the market.
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mikchael: You have to actually switch on the camera/microphone for anyone to hear/see you, and its highly unlikely that anyone actually wants to listen in/watch what your doing anyway. Despite the news coverage, the chances of anyone actually being spied on is very very low. And of course if your looking at this on a laptop, there is a camera/microphone ready to go, and there is evidence of people switching them remotely.
The upgrade is probably just..an upgrade. You might get a new version of an existing app, etc. I suspect that if you look on the net, you might be able to find out what it does.
Interesting article about the use of white space and devolved networks. It mirrors to some extent the growth of mobile technology in Africa, which has greatly lowered costs in rural areas compared with a relatively expensive fixed system. And have a look at the ways in which Google Earth has been used a standard mapping tool in humanitarian relief efforts - a single standard map, with the capacity to add data, plus a devolved and accessable network adds up to some powerful tools after a disaster. Google Earth Application to Support Disaster Emergency Response | Juniawan Priyono - Academia.edu
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AlanG: Someone on PocketLint has pointed out that with Humax bringing out Freeview Play, but already using (and seemingly commited to) Youview, they are in essence competing against themselves. Someone did then point out that BT and Talk Talk has supported Youview, whereas Freeview Play is supported by other parts of the industry.
I suspect that the average viewer would see little functional difference between the two systems. Of course that now means yet something else to explain to customers...
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Rob: Its because some of the Humax boxes auto tune, but dont have a manual tuning option. Its a pain (my cheap Goodmans box does the same thing), but for most people, its fine. They will just get the optimum transmitter, etc. However, if your signal could come from more than one transmitter, then things get a little more difficult.
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Tuesday 24 February 2015 8:27AM
David Nash : why replace it?
You don't seem to need the aerial, so an unpowered splitter might be fine. It would be cheaper and have little that could go wrong, and 4g is certainly not much of a worry.