All posts by MikeB
Below are all of MikeB's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.Mike: Just to add that the tuner on a Humax are known to be pretty sensitive,other tuners may be different.
My Sony recorder is not quite so sensitive as my digibox,for instance, but I generally have no problem with reception with the Sony (rock solid). The digibox is a slightly better picture, but is slightly more twitchy.
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Mariya : sorry for the delay, but I've only just seen your question.
I'm very very surprised you do not have Cbeebies, since its a PSB station (so you get it even if your signal is from a relay), and if your missing it, your going to be missing BBC3/4 as well. If you type your postcode (IG8?) into the reception predictor, you'll see what you should be getting. BBC signals are particularly strong, so I'd expect you to get something, and putting an IG8 postcode brought up no problems for signals from Crystal Palace.
Do you have a TV and a recorder? Check to see if its on one, and not the other, and perhaps see what transmitter they are both tuned into, and what other channels are missing.
The only other answer I can think of is that TV's and PVR's can be set up to remove certain channels from the EPG (the adult ones, for instance) - it could be that your TV has been set up in this way (probably by accident), and just needs to be reset.
As a stay-at-home dad I know that Cbeebies was a godsend when my kids were younger (CBBC does much the same thing now), so I know how valuable it is.
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Cheryl: A Humax is an excellent choice, and with your current dish (which I assume only has one wire coming from it), you can get a Humax Freesat receiver in exactly the same way as your old Sky box.
However, to record and watch at the same time on Freesat, you will need to have two wires coming from it, or rather those wires should be connected to a twin LNB on the end of the dishes arm. You may actually have a twin on there already, with the second LNB not connected, or you can upgrade it. Since the 'second wire' will often be conncted via a type of double coax lead often called 'shotgun' , you'll still only really have one wire, but you will be able to record.
Recording will make a huge difference, and remember that a Freesat PVR has two receivers in it (so you can watch and record on two different channels), plus a large hard-drive and now will allow you to access Iplayer, etc - so the price is pretty reasonable.
You cannot use a splitter! Whoever told you that was, hopefully, confused and thought you said Freeview... See this page I have split the signal from my satellite dish and now nothing works. | ukfree.tv - 10 years of independent, free digital TV advice - and yes, I know Maplin sell them, but its almost as cheap to upgrade the LNB's with fewer downsides.
If you try to put two receivers to one LNB at the same time, it will cause problems - and possibly expensive ones - you can get switches to allow you to use the same dish for Sky and an TV's internal Freesat tuner seperatly, but thats rather different.
If you were a customer, I would advise the following: buy the recorder (it will be very useful and will certainly justify the larger price), then have your dish upgraded to have twin LNB's (or even a quad if you want, the cost is not much more to buy, and gives you more flexibility for the future), and put a twin cable rather than the single you have now (or even better, just put a twin next to the existing cable, so you can use the existing cable for another box in another room).
Yes, you will have to spend some money, both on the box, and the upgrade to the dish/cable, but you cannot split the signal from a single LNB to two receivers at the same time (you could watch only what you were recording - at best), so even buying a new recorder would not be a great investment by itself. Buy once, buy right.
Have a look at A.T.V (Aerials And Television) FM DAB TV Aerial, plus poles and brackets and Satcure.co.uk, and find someone who can do the work for you properly.
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Angie: It sounds like something of a bodge job, so check all the connections, etc - it could be they are loose, or have been bodged as well!
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Cheryl: You will need a second cable/LNB if you want to watch something other than what your recording at the same time. However, you can just use the box to watch or record as you want for the meantime, in much the same way as you do now.
ATV actually do a quad LNB for £16, and the cable is about 65p a metre - so its not very expensive to upgrade your system, but it will mean you can use the Humax's full capacity to do more than thing at once.
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alex blackburn: Looking on the net, there seems to be some confusion as to whats in 5.1, and what will be BBC regional HD not carrying Dolby Digital? - Freesat - Digital Spy Forums
One of the Welsh contributors did contact BBC Wales, and the answer was ' 5.1 is not yet available but it is being provisioned in the "very near future". ' - which might be your answer!
BTW - I've always been told that its best to output the TV's optical, rather than the box, to avoid any mismatches between picture and sound. If you've tried both, is there actually a difference?
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M
Pontop Pike (County Durham, England) Full Freeview transmitter Tuesday 28 May 2013 12:43PM
Peterborough
Alex : I'm pleased to hear that the syncing is fine, but as amatter of interest could you tell me which model of Panasonic you have? Every Panasonic I've seen for the last 5 years has an optical output, so I'm curious to find out which one does not, if only because I know that someone is going to tell me the same thing about their TV when I'm working, and I like to be forewarned!
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M
Hollington Park (East Sussex, England) Freeview Light transmittTuesday 28 May 2013 1:41PM
Peterborough
PeterP: I could not tell you why you might have reception problems (including a postcode will help the gurus on this site), but set-top/portable aerials are generally pretty rubbish compared with a roof top aerial - so its not surprising that one TV might have a poor signal.
Its certainly not 4G - the test areas are tiny at present, and it seems to be blamed for everything.
If you include your postcode/transmitter on another post, perhaps someone might be able to figure out the problem.
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M
Can I use an existing sky dish with a freeview box? and if so cTuesday 28 May 2013 1:45PM
Peterborough
Cheryl: What type of TV do you have? Is it a deep or flat screen TV? If its a flatscreen, you will have HDMI's, which the Humax will connect with much better than scart (the cable came in the box). 4-way scart spitters often don't work very well, and there may be a more elgant way of connecting everything up.
If you can tell us what the model number of the TV is, and what else you have connected to it, perhaps there might be a better way.
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Thursday 2 May 2013 10:39PM
Peterborough
conor: since Ultra HD TV's have only just come out, basically start at 60in screens, its only films (and no means all of them) that are being made in Ultra HD, and our broadband network simply will not have the speed for quite some time to stream such huge volumes of data, Ultra HD is not something any of us should be immediately worried about.
Its likely that OLED 4k screen will become much cheaper, but it will take a while for them to filter through to the market, and of course people will ultimately only buy them for the 4K if there is something to watch on them!
KMJ had it right - most people watch TV using a perfectly decent set, using technology which is reasonably well priced and well proven. And they tend at present to watch free to view most of the time.