All posts by MikeB
Below are all of MikeB's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.Mike: BBC channels are certainly 'public service', pretty much by definition. As for the commercial channels, ITV, C4 and C5 have a public service remit as part of their licence. Frankly, I'm not sure what that really means in terms of ITV, and I'm fairly bemused what it means for C5, but I suppose as long as they make the occasional documentary, have some local news (ITV) and don't have wall to wall adverts, then they just about stay within the terms of their licence. It would a good basis for an article by Brian.
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Richard Baguley : Tacolneston transmits to some 330,000 homes, so even if 99.9% of them get a perfect signal all the time, someone is still going to have a problem. The geography of the region can also be a problem - the north Norfolk coast has hills which make reception difficult, hence the light transmitters in the area.
They seemed to be doing engineering work earlier in the month as well, and strangely, that can cause problems as well, since it often used to be the case that after such work the signal strength went up, and overloaded some peoples tuners, especially if the are HD channels.
The biggest single problem, if you look back at peoples complaints, is failure of their system, not the transmitter.
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Will snell: Since Belmont has no reported problems, its probably your system. Check cables, etc - probably a connection has failed, etc.
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Michael Griffith: If its the TV, you can check easily what the TV is doing by bringing up the screen res - usually in the left hand corner of the TV screen, and should be something like 576/50hz, etc.
Have you tried varying the sources the TV uses? If the TV itself is auto-switching between screen res settings, you can normally switch that feature off and do them manually, but of course the source itself can also be varied. If you have a Blu Ray player, then that will of course output at 1080p as well, so try to see what combinations actually cause that 'picture jump'. If its on varying sources, is it the TV settings?
If not, then perhaps its a cabling problem. Narrowing it down takes some time, but its the only way.
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GEM: We need a postcode to know what your signal should normally be like, but weather shouldn't normally be a factor in the breakup of your TV signal.
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Alex : Whats your signal strength? If the remaining muxes are low, points to the obvious - you've got a problem with your system, and the whole thing is gradually going. Frayed cable, etc most likely reason. Start with the fly lead from the back of the TV - swapping it out is easy, cheap, and might cure it. If not, at least yo know its not that and then you can follow the signal path back.
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John Ward: We need to know about your location (postcode) and signal strength on the other muxes.
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Keith Davies: If the transmitter is fine, then its you. Classic answer - the aerial lead has fallen out. But it could be more serious than that - broken wire coming down from aerial, etc. Just because its only a cuple of years old does not mean that part of it cannot fail. Follow the signal path up and at some pint you'' see what the problem is.
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Janet Mytton: If you put your postcode into Digital Uk's website, it shows that you fine for part of the muxes, but some others are more problematic. Thats normally. But if you have a high pressure system, then the transmissions can be 'bent', which means that everything gets knocked out of kilter, which seems to be hitting a lot oof people at the moment.
In the long term, Freesat would be a better option for you - you just in the wrong place to get the full range of channels, and certainly to get them perfectly.
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Sunday 22 May 2016 9:17PM
Paulj: If it keeps happening around 9pm, thats often because something nearby is 'leaking' and giving out interference. A dodgy timer, etc is a classic. Search for 'single source interference' on this site.
Certainly check all the signal levels - if you've got breakup, its usually down to interference, or too much/too little signal strength, and then narrow it down. Certainly my HD channels are less tolerant of either low or high levels.