All posts by Piers
Below are all of Piers's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
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My high gain aerial can't get all the Freeview channels I eFriday 7 January 2011 2:23PM
Loughborough
Briantist: Interesting visit today from the Aerial man. He found water in the downline from the aerial. The connection with the aerial was badly put in. Also the aerial is the wrong type for the area we are in and we need a higher pole to clear tree growth across the road. He is coming again next Tuesday to replace the aerial, pole and downline. He's not sure about the splitter/amplifier until the new systems are in.
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My high gain aerial can't get all the Freeview channels I eWednesday 12 January 2011 12:17PM
Loughborough
Briantist: A new aerial was fitted yesterday by a local communications company. It is on a new 12ft pole to try to clear the trees over the road. The first test they did showed reception below 50 so I agreed to have an amplifier fitted.
The installer made an interesting comment. He said that when our local transmitter (Waltham) gets a power upgrade at the end of August, it may lead to reception loss again. Apparently you can have too much power! He told me that the amplifier would need adjusting to manage the new power levels. He also said that the government hasn't said who will pay the contractors for adjusting amplifiers. He hinted that we (the customers) would end up paying for it!
This is all news to me. Can anyone tell me if this is true? What's happened in places that have already had a power upgrade?
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My high gain aerial can't get all the Freeview channels I eThursday 13 January 2011 7:38AM
Loughborough
jb38: Interesting comment, thank you. We watched TV last night and we lost the BBC signal once during the whole evening. I noticed another channel (More4) break up slightly once too. Generally though, things are better than they were. We get 101 stations on a scan and we can watch them all with a reasonable picture. It's not perfect and it has cost us £330 to get to this stage but I suppose it's the best we're going to get for now.
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My high gain aerial can't get all the Freeview channels I eFriday 14 January 2011 12:37PM
Loughborough
jb38: Thank you for your comments. I appreciate the limitations of the system. It seems to work well enough - certainly a lot better than before all the new kit went in. The aerial supplier gave me a list of "signal levels" for the installation as amplified. His list refers to channels as D1 to D6 with the following results: 63.3, 62.1, 62.5, 59.6, 58.6 and 60.2.
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My high gain aerial can't get all the Freeview channels I eWednesday 19 January 2011 12:20PM
Loughborough
jb38: Thanks for this. How do I test the signal without special equipment?
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Sunday 2 January 2011 2:06PM
Loughborough
Briantist: Thank you for your advice. The system seems to be working OK for the time being but curiously, on Thursday and Friday, we lost the BBC channels but the rest were OK. Now they are all back, but I will get the guy back to check out the system as you suggest. I've noticed now that the system goes down when a motor bike goes by too. I suppose this is just old-fashioned interference but I always though digital was supposed to avoid all this.
Happy New Year,
Piers