All posts by MikeB
Below are all of MikeB's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Christine Green: If you looked at this website, the best information was that the transmitter was working normally, and I suspect that 'Freeview' had exactly the same info, so their suggestion was reasonable (I gave the same advice). Transmitters seldom have many problems, but serve a wide area. Even if 99.9% of viewers are getting a perfect service, that leaves a surprising number of people who have a problem. Except that problem is normally their aerial, not the transmitter.
Its only when lots of people note the same problem that its clear that there is a common problem, and by the looks of it, there problem lasted from the early evening until the next lunchtime. These things happen, and it would be interesting to know what the problem was, but its not the end of the world.
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M
My Freeview box has no EPG, is blank on FIVE, ITV3, ITV4, ITV2+Friday 21 August 2015 8:49PM
Macclesfield
margaret Turner: Might do, but the easiest, quickest and possibly cheapest way to go is Freesat. have a look at Satcure's website for tips if you want to do it yourself, and your TV might already have a tuner in place.
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M
Which 29 stars wrote Prime Minister Cameron to ask him to proteSaturday 22 August 2015 9:21PM
Macclesfield
Nick: No, I dont working for the BBC (wish I did), nor do I know anyone who does.
As for those pesky figures and facts, thats comes from 'reading' and 'research'. As Steven Colbert put it, 'facts have a liberal bias' - sorry about that.
Is watching a TV audacious? I thought it was a normal activity, but one which does does need to be paid for in some way. I'm sure some would say that putting on illegal Sky content in a pub was audacious, but Sky will get you for it, fine you a lot of money, and possibly seek to have the landlords licences (and livelihood) taken away Glasgow pub fined over £70,000 for illegally showing Sky Sports (From Evening Times) (goggle Sky Sports illegal pubs - thats the tip of the iceberg) . The BBC only take you to court of you've been very silly, and you have to be truely stupid to end up in prison.
If its propaganda, its very popular propaganda. BTW - is Mary Berry part of the effort? Shaun the Sheep? The judges of Strictly? I think we should be told...
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a hemingway: OK, you need to tell us were you are (postcode) plus what equipment your using (aerial in roof, etc), other wise we have no idea if its your location, a fault with your equipment, mistuned TV, etc. If you need Freesat, then thats fine, but at the moment we have no idea.
No, you cannot claim any discount. The pensioner deal to get you digital TV was just for switchover, and just to get you digital viewing, no more than that. After that its up to you. I have no idea if benifits do allow you anything, but I doubt it.
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M
2 days left of analogue television - goodbye teletext | SwitchoSunday 23 August 2015 1:04PM
Macclesfield
Nick Cripps: Reception of radio, TV, mobile, etc are all to do with physics.
The area around Keswick has lots of hills. Radio waves dont go through hills well. As far as TV is concerned, your best off using Freesat, and if you can listen to radio online or via satellite, that would help. As far as mobile reception is concerned, its a lottery. I was right in the north west of Scotland recently, and outside the pretty isolated cottage got full strength on my mobile, whereas I generally get a 20% signal strength at home, in the middle of a town. On the other hand, my wife (whose with a different network), got zilch.
There are more mobile base stations to help with coverage, and PBS channels are available on local light transmitters (left to the market, you'd have nothing at all), and DAB coverage is being extended to more difficult areas (and check your location with the sites postcode system - you might get more than you think). However, its the price you pay for living in a wonderful part of the world, with lots of hills. So sorry, you dont get a rebate.
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M
Which 29 stars wrote Prime Minister Cameron to ask him to proteSunday 23 August 2015 1:49PM
Macclesfield
MikeP: When it comes to bias, remember that the SNP were very unhappy with BBC coverage over the referendum (as Nick Robinson has detailed), and Labour certainly were very angry at the BBC's obsession with any deal that labour might or might not do with the SNP, coverage which arguably may have lost them many possible seats in England. In other words, perception is everything. I've long thought that the BBC has bee playing it safe for some years, and largely following the news agenda of the newspapers (try listening to the World Serice after the Today programme - a totally different agenda and running order). Since the bulk of daily newspapers in the UK are Conservative papers, its easy to see how the news agenda can be skewed in one way or another.
I'm sorry, but have to totally disagree about the BBC's coverage of climate change. In reality, its coverage of such an important and multi faceted subject is generally woeful, certainly in its news coverage, but even in features its made just one programme (for BBC4) explicitly about it in the past two years. At best it covers it only when it has to, and despite having been warned in two reports about about 'false balance', it still continues to portray basic climate science as something over which there is still scientific 'debate'.
In reality, the percentage of actual climate scientists who agree that man is warming the climate runs around 97% or more, and every sciencetific institution in the world holds to that position. Since the basis of climate change comes largely from the effect that CO2 has on IR radiation, something discovered by Tyndall in 1864, thats not 'controversial' (as that idiot Letts argued the other week on his programme about the Met Office), thats just physics. If you want an example of what would happen if the BBC had the correct 'weighting' of scientists talking about climate change, then look at a piece John Oliver did on HBO earlier this year, which rightly went viral -
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Climate Change Debate (HBO) - YouTube
Fortunately, the BBC does not allow anti-vaxx people, homeopaths or faith healers to take part in serious medical discussions, so why would they allow people on who either dont understand the science, or dont want to? People can believe what they like, but as Neil deGrasse Tyson says, 'The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.'
There are actually loads of excellent websites with authorative and peer reviewed links. The Royal Society has a lot of excellent material, produced in part with the US Academy of Science. There is of course the Met Office, NASA, etc.There is What We Know , from the AAAS, and Realclimate has for years had real climate scientists debating and answering questions. SkepticalScience.com has long been a go to site, not only for its mythbusting explainations, but also for news and the history of climate science. The Carbon Brief is very useful as well, and there are many others, such as Tamino's blog.
Foe those wanting a lovely screen saver, and want to see just how complex the earths climate system is, I'd recommend earth :: a global map of wind, weather, and ocean conditions - 'a visualization of global weather conditions forecast by supercomputers updated every three hours'. NOAA also now have one called Weatherview, which is great, but does take a little longer to load : A New NOAA Weather Model Shows Animated Storms and City Lights - CityLab
Both highly recommended.
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Brianist: Thats a tough list, and I dont envy the people taking the final decisons. The BBC does things nobody else does (who else is going to do Big Blue Live and Worlds Busiest Railway over a week?), and we need to remember that this shortfall isn't the fault of the BBC, but rather the government for having frozen the licence fee for the past five years, plus heaped lots of extra costs on them. That money is not far off one sixth of the total BBC income, and comes on top of lots of other cuts over the past number of years.
The notion that large amounts can be saved by getting rid of an extra newsreader, paying onscreen talent less (the BBC already pays rather less than the market rate) or sacking some managers isn't supported by the facts. In fact a recent report by a City accountancy firm reckoned the BBC was very well run when judged against the rest of the public sector.
Nor should we engage in 'I dont use it'ism. We all pay the licence fee, and there is no reason why a 55 year old man who listens to Radio 2 and 5 Live, watches Question of Sport, F1 and that programme about classic cars on BBC4 should get what he wants, yet a 26 year old Asian female who listens to the Asian network and Radio 1Xtra, enjoys BBC3 and likes Strictly should lose out.
Chris Bryant has complained about the sort of language used on the DCMS blog on consulatation about the BBC's future (subtle its not). The BBC can point to a lot of the smaller and more niche things its does as proof that its not just aping the market, but does stuff that the market never touches. The problem is that these are small enough to be in the firing line, or are services like local radio, which is expensive but isn't listened to by a vast number of people, yet will be vocally defended, and denounced by the (self serving) press.
OK, some things are no brainers. The broadband rollout was always a disgrace, since central governemnt should have picked up the tab. Thats £150m. I've long argued that S4C makes no sense. Its most popuar programme (Y SIOE 2015) in the last week in July got just 62,000 viewers, with a repeat getting just 22,000. And a fair number of the programmes in that 20 are made by BBC Wales. Thats £107m.
To that digital roll out costs (its been 3 years, whats left to do?) and the £2.9m for Local TV, which was a stupid vanity project by Jeremy Hunt, and should be left to sink or swim. Thats a total of £260.3m, which leaves £354m to find! You havn't mentioned LW, but in 2011 it had just 90,000 listeners, and I seem to remember that the cost then was £5m a year. That cost per listner will have gone up since then, so it has to go, even if the equipment is still hanging on. Thats £349m.
And then its gets really hard. The bulk of the niche channels and radio stations dont actually cost that much, and are exactly the sort of thing the BBC should be doing. Like petit fours, you need a lot of them to make a difference. Radio Cymru and nan Gaidheal are hard to justify, considering their small number of listeners (is there even one for the latter?), but I understand their role, just as Alba provides a service. Can these service be helped out by the national governments, thus laying off some of the costs? Perhaps the same for Radio Scotland. BBC Local Radio is going to be radically slimmed down, plus the regional programming - I know the local TV is costly, and the regions dont quite make sense - too big to be local, and too expensive to make truely local. I think you suggested a figure of £700m odd for the TV regions, so slashing £300 from both the radio and TV could be done. Perhaps then Radio 1 and Radio 5 Xtra to make the total. Or just Radio 3, which is costly and with a tiny audience. Or perhaps all 3.
But its going to be brutal. Everyone is going to depend the service they love, and there will be fallout. The nats are going to hate all the cuts to their natiional programming, and the press are going to make hay. Politcians and commentators are going to denounce every cut, whilst insisting the BBC saves money. Its the same with NHS hospital closures - effectiveness and cost savings mean that every MP knows some places have to close in principle, but when its comes to their local A & E (no matter how woeful it has become), they will fight tooth and nail to save it.
Of course that shortfall depends on whether there is a realterms rise in income from an increased licence fee, and whether the over 75's costs can be controlled. For instance, people should have to apply for exemption, rather than it being automatic. That might put off some people who frankly dont need it.
Personally, the best thing they could do is threaten to close BBC Parliament. No MP is going to want the only channel all about them to close!
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M
Householder guide to satellite dishes | Free satellite - generSunday 23 August 2015 10:47PM
Macclesfield
James L: Get a quad LNB, and a decent PVR (Humax). Have a look at the Satcure website for advice, and I'm sure there will be lots here. Remember that sat is less flexible than Freeview - each programme your watching/recording needs a tuner/LNB, etc. And that included TV's in other rooms, although some TV's have them fitted.
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patricia mayall: No TV will have 'Sky', its just a service delivered by a sperate box, and you can normally just connect such a box up to any TV. I dont know if you have an aerial or not, in addition to your dish, but if you do, then you can just use that if you want.
If you were a customer of mine, then this is the advice I would give regarding a new TV. Size is everything, but if you are about 7-8 feet from your TV, then a 32in would probably be fine. Around 10 feet away and a 40-42in TV would be fine. It should have Freeview HD and Full HD would be nice. I'd like at least 2 HDMI sockets, but more would be better. And since you are on the interenet, a smart TV would be useful. An good choice for you would be the Samsung 32J5500 - Buy Samsung UE32J5500 LED HD 1080p Smart TV, 32" with Freeview HD and Built-In Wi-Fi | John Lewis . At £269 its a very good deal, although if you spent more money you'd get a better screen, and therefore a slightly better picture. They do a 4500 model in a 22in and 32in, which would work very well as bedroom TV's.
The only downside for you if you want to carry on using your Sky box is that the set has no scart socket, which you might need. In that case, the excellent Sony 705 would be a good alternative http://www.johnlewis.com/…9520 , although more expensive. In fact that TV also has a tuner you can attach to your dish, so you might not need the old Sky box.
I would advise you to go to a proper shop with some information as to the sizes of the room, and how you get a signal for your TV (aerial, dish, etc), and ask questions. Be realistic in terms of price, stick to Sony, LG or Samsung (I can't recommend a Panasonic HD TV this year), and dont go to a catalogue shop or a supermarket - most TV's there are not very good, and you will often end up paying more money than you need.
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Thursday 20 August 2015 7:39PM
Macclesfield
david: See the above advice