All posts by MikeB
Below are all of MikeB's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
john kirby: Looking at the digitaluk page, your doing everything right. 22km is not that far, and Crystal Palace is lower in the scan than the relay station. A Fox T2 has a very sensitive tuner, so you'd expect a great signal - if anything, far too strong, yet your only getting 30% on an HD mux. Yes, its jumping up and down in quality, which is what you'd expect, but its not like your certainly getting too strong a signal. And the Finchley transmitter is very close, and the bearing should be close enough to pick it up, yet nothing.
I think this is JB38's/David Lindsay's area, but I do have a suggestion. You've changed the coax, but have you thought of just getting an indoor aerial, just to check? Just borrow one, and see if its works. The other thing to check is the SD signal level - if its OK but low, then the HD channels are going to suffer more.
Be interested to see what the problem is, because that is just strange!
| link to this comment |
michael warner: You've just posted your name, address and home telephone number to everyone on the internet, which is very unwise.
And of course this website has nothing at all to do with Pick TV anyway! If you want to contact them, you could use this thing called Google, which will direct you to the parent company,which is......Sky.
| link to this comment |
Wendy: We have no idea of your location, so we cant say what the problem might be.
| link to this comment |
Brianist: That sound pretty horrible - good luck. My wife has just broken her wrist, and hates her cast (and the restrictions) already. Get better soon.
If you do have time on your hands, then a series about Charter Renewal would be great. It would be so useful to have a clearly laid out set of facts, to avoid certain people constantly coming up with the same old rubbish (thanks to Paul Krugman's column, I've just found out this is called derping - which is a lovely word).
The tube website looks great - the tube that never was or is no longer is also one of my interests, so its great to see such a great website about it.
If you do get a chance to add some more pages to UKFree.TV, a section on 4K would be very useful. I'm now selling a fair number of 4K sets, but its not something really covered on the website. A comparison with the resolution of HD, etc would be useful, as would the sort of services available and how to get them.
And possibly something about connecting up sound bars, etc to a TV - now that sound bars are an everyday thing, it would be useful to have some sort of information as to what they are, and how to connect them.
However, lets hope the op goes well, and that you make a full recovery as soon as possible. Hope its goes as well as it can.
| link to this comment |
The News Channel is quite handy, since you might want to catch up on whats happening at a time when there isn't a bulletin on BBC1. They also do other programming as well, such as Talking Business, Click (which also goes out on the World Service), Our World, Film Review, a TV version of 'from Our Own Correspondent', the Travel Show, a show which asks foreign correspondents in the UK about their take on the week, a monthly programme about the weather (much more interesting than it sounds!) and occasional documentaries, such as the current one about Waterloo.
As Brianist points out, all those journalists and other staff need to produce the news anyway, so cutting the News Channel saves very little, and it can be very useful at times. I have found the International World New version to be very good - when your in the States and want to discover whats going on in the world which does not have an American involved, then the BBC World News on PBS is wonderful.
Having watched the first part of Jonathan Dimbleby's BBC at War, I was surprised to find that the BBC really had very few journalists before the war. They could only report stuff that came to them via AP etc, and were not allowed to report things until the newspapers had published it first!
Obviously this made little sense even before the war, and certainly none during it, but its worth pointing out that the papers objected to the BBC covering events in exactly the same way that Sky, etc argue that the BBC are crowding out their commercial rivals on the net, etc. In reality, did people buy any fewer papers because of the BBC News?
Today, the BBC is by far the most trusted single news source in the UK, which perhaps the problem for some of its rivals!
| link to this comment |
Edward : We are going to need a bit more information than you've given in order to help you. Firstly, the make and model - each TV is slightly different, so we need to know what you have. A postcode would be handy if you want to know what channels you should get for tuning it the TV.
Next - what exactly is the problem? Settings can mean a lot of different things. Is it setting up/tuning the TV, or is it the settings on the panel itself - the brightness, contrast or the mode (dynamic, cinema, etc)?
| link to this comment |
Edward : That really doesn't help much. I'm guessing its a recent Sony TV, probably a W7 or 8, but it would nice to actually know the model.
What would really help is what you mean by 'picture setting'. Is it too bright, on the demo setting (and thus too bright, too much contrast, etc), or what. Tell us what you want to do or what you cannot do, or else we really cannot help.
| link to this comment |
Edward : I'm not sure what you mean by cloudy and white, but there are several possibilities.
Firstly, do you actually get a picture on the TV? By that, I mean a proper picture, but perhaps just very pale, etc. If your just getting 'static' (which certainly is cloudy and white), you need to follow the steps in your manual, because almost certainly you've set up the TV to only use the analogue tuner, which is going to pick up nothing.
If the TV has a very rubbish picture, then check the manual and reset it to factory setting/first time install (or what ever the phrase Sony uses). This will take the TV back to the first time you turned in on, so go through the setup procedure carefully - plug in the aerial, etc.
If you've done that and the picture is still awful, then you might have a duff panel (it happens), you should just take it back to the people you bought it from (who was it?), and get them to test it. The W7 series is a very decent TV, and the panel gives a good picture, so you might have just been very unlucky. At least go back to the shop, perhaps having taken a photo on a phone, etc of the screen, so that they can see what its like, and make suggestions.
If your not sure how to set it up, etc, then get a professional to do it. Obviously people who deal with aerials etc can do it, but its probably easiest to get the people who sold you the TV to do the setup/install. EXpect to pay fifty to sexity pounds. This sounds a lot, but its easier than stressing and no being able to use the TV you've purchased, and I know that at the place where I work, they will wire it up, tune it in , and show you how to use it.
| link to this comment |
Wednesday 24 June 2015 11:14PM
Carol: It would be nice to have the make and model of the 'freeview box', but I suspect that its a PVR with a freeview tuner, so at least you can record, and possibly watch another channel at the same time (depending on the type). Thats fine - your lumpy TV (like mine) is now basically a large screen with boxes attached to allow you to watch things. And you can simply disconnect that box and attach it to a new one, and play your recordings, although look at the box and see what connections its has .
As far as replacing your TV, if you know the size, then I can estimate the size of the new one to replace it (remember that a modern TV is very flat, whereas a CRT TV is very deep, so the screen will go back a fair way, which will add to the viewing distance. I wrote some of the basics of buying a new TV here: Freeview reception - all about aerials on the 13th June.