All posts by MikeB
Below are all of MikeB's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
dave sexton: If there was high pressure with no problem, are you sure the problem is with co-channel interference..?
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Briantist: Indeed! I thought 32 years was good, but...
I notice that its cost in 1936 was equal to about half the annual average wage, and that the owner was unable to get a picture in his area for a decade - puts our reception problems in context.
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Katy: Thats a very nice TV, and certain has an HD tuner - follow Michael advice and bypass the DVD recorder. In fact to be perfectly honest, the DVD recorder is pretty useless for anything other than a DVD player, so dont bother putting it anywhere near the aerial lead.
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Stewart: Your only 6km from your transmitter, which is very close, and You View boxes are made by Humax, which are known for sensitive tuners. HD channels tend to break up first when you've too high a signal strength, which is your problem.
The reason why your fine in the summer is that there are probably some trees between you and the transmitter, and in summer, they have leaves on them, which degrades the signal just enough for everything to be fine, but they fall in winter, and the signal strength just rises a little too much.
Google 'too much of a good thing' on this site', and buy an attenuator - I got a 6db (which will take about 10% off the signal stength) from Amazon for £1.86 the other day.
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Bharat: If you look on the Terrain plot and tradeview from your postcode, your only about 27km from Midhurst, with a clear line of sight - so you should have a really decent signal without any need for the booster at all.
If you getting 68 channels of rubbish, then the first thing to do is to do what David suggested - check all your connections, to make sure there isn't a loose connection, etc somewhere, because your signal strength should be much higher. As David said, see if you can check with another tuner as well, to make sure the TV isn't duff.
The second question is - are you tuned to Midhurst? Midhurst is on channel 55, on a bearing of 28 degress. If you are trying to pick up anything else, its all very ropey. I notice that Rowbridge/Hannington in not far off the same bearing for Midhurst, but is on Channel 24/45. If your TV is picking up Rowbridge, etc first, then no wonder your not getting anything.
It could be more than one factor thats causing your problem, so check everything and find out what transmitter your actually using.
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trevorjharris: Ignoring the drop in bitrate on DAB and HD TV, which is something we know you have strong feelings about (although relatively few average BBC consumers are even aware of such things, and probably care less), what basis to you have for your concerns?
Anyone who thinks the BBC is perfect is deluded - the BBC has always been attacked for being too close to officialdom, too far from the views of the day, too arrogant, too supine, spending too much or too little money, etc. Yet, I cannot think of an organisation which which gives me more for my money (apart from the NHS, perhaps).
Far from the licence fee being outmoded, can you think of a more efficent way of collecting revenue? Sky spends a lot more on collection of revenue because its a subscription service, with the extra costs that must follow. If the BBC did the same, costs would rise. Yes, you can avoid the licence fee, but in economics, this is seen as freeloading, which unfair and destructive.
Please look at the facts, rather than follow the lead of the 'Very Serious People' (in Paul Krugman's phrase) who constantly decry the BBC - remember that they often have an axe to grind and a colunm to fill.
BH's refurb was over budget, but that hardly unusual in the private or public sector, and there were payoffs that went well beyond contractual agreements - I've no problem investigating them, but it needs to be put into context.
I suspect that most people have little interest in the BBC Trust, and have no idea what it does. The only people who think that the BBC is out of control are its rivals and those who get paid to write about it - the rest of us are fairly OK with it.
Has content been dumbed down? Can you dumb down sport? And is there little public service content? I suspect that a quick look at BBC4 would reassure you.
Most people like the BBC, and like what it does, especially since it costs them only about 40p a day. They like Strictly, Eastenders, Blue Peter, MasterChef, Last Tango in Halifax, Holby, Wizards V Aliens, The Paradise, Sherlock, Line of Duty (they are making a second series!), Deadly 60, Horrible Histories, ,Gavin and Stacey, Tudor Monastery Farm and even some stuff on BBC3! They also like the radio channels, the Proms, Glasto, and the World Service.
If you want to watch and pay for Sky, thats fine - but in reality the BBC does deliver, and for most people, it works. I just want it to be better.
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Brian Wright: 'I agree but displaying an 1080 source would not please me If I was the manufacturer of the set. '
Your quite right! We generally show the 4K's abilities via their demo disks/files (a very nice set of scenes from the US, in the case of Samsung). However, they do get turned over to other sources sometimes, occasionally when customers find the secret remote stashed behind it and start to play (I had to vanish one remote quickly the other day for just this reason).
To be fair, since nobody is broadcasting in 4K (and there is no sign that Sony is going to ship their preloaded server to the UK, for instance), if your buying one, your going to be watching in HD, so we might as well show what it will look like!
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Richard Baguley: I'm not sure that Trevor Harris has been treated shabbly on this thread - he has a different viewpoint from most , but in fact I do agree with him that the licence fee negotiations were a disaster for the BBC (in Washington, this is known as a 'Christmas Tree' bill - everyone hangs something on it), that bit rates for radio could be higher, and I too hate it when the BBC wastes money.
Its true that the licence fee is collected as a tax (although a ring-fenced one), but as Brian has pointed out, this actually reduced costs, as its the most efficent way of collecting review.
I think you may be suffering from cognitive dissonance if you think that you can scrap the BBC , but expect a service similar to the one you get from 'BBC2 & 4 plus parts of R2, 3, 4 and WS'. The whole point of the BBC is that we all get something from it, and it works best as part of a whole - there is no way that the WS, Radio 4 or 3 would be commercially viable, so how would they be supported? And how would you collect revenue?
There is a tendency for many people to come up with the idea of scrapping the BBC, or large parts of it, but leaving the bits they like, while ignoring how such services would be funded, or if they are suggested, in a way that makes sense.
And while you complain about the lack of sport (which, as we've pointed out, is mainly the result of sports rights being bought up by Sky, etc), is there any actual basis for the idea that the BBC programming has declined? Have a look at what people actually watch and listen to, and you find that BBC programming scores very highly. Look at the graphics that Brianist used - the BBC is actually used more by people than it used to be, so it must be doing something right, especially in this multi-channel world.
Please put aside the idea that somehow the BBC is full of left wingers broadcasting nothing but propaganda - Labour actually objected to coverage, and although much of the Today Programme wants to make me shout at the radio with its coverage of economics, science, climate change and overseas politics (The WS does things far better), its far better overall than its US equivalents. People are prone to comfirmation bias - if you think the BBC is biased, then you'll see that bias. Of course the same will go for someone else, even if they think that bias is the opposite of the one you think it is.
Overall, the current model works, or is at least (to paraphrase Churchill),' the worst, apart from all the rest'. Again, I cant think of another single broadcaster that gives a wider range of programming, of such overall quality, for so little money from the individual user.
Its not perfect, but no organisation is, especially one which produces so much material for public consumption. But if you look at the alternatives, its difficult to see how we would be better off if it disappeared.
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Monday 9 December 2013 5:02PM
Patrick M: The box updates itself at least once a day, and there has been a bit of shuffling around with new and old channels recently.
Since I have one, I can say that its OK when it works properly, but user friendly it is not. The manual is minimalist, so I have no idea if you can turn these messages off - flick through the setup menu, but I doubt it.
Ultimately, the problem is your using a basic digibox to provide a signal to an analogue recorder. Its a bit like plate balancing. The best thing I can suggest is to find out when it does its update, and then kill the message as fast as possible, or even better, get a HDD recorder