All posts by Keith
Below are all of Keith's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Thanks for the advice so far...
J: The aerial guy did measure the signal before and after them amp/splitter, and said it was working. I believe him as that was my first suspect, and I bought a new one, which made no difference, so I took it back.
Mike: Indeed the TVs are tuned to channel 53 (oxford), I don't think I could pick up Sandy as there is a large hill (part of the chilterns) in the way. My neighbour opposite and next door both have TV aerials and seem to get reception OK.
I'm wondering if it could be the cable from the location of the old aerial into the garage, as the signal strength is poor at the point the cable plugs into the splitter/amp there. There is no access to this cable but a new one could be re-routed down the eaves (this is a chalet-style bungalow) and then straight into the garage.
I'm pretty sure the problem started when they did the re-tune at Oxford on 29th May, if that helps?
The aerial is a DY14WB from ATV aerials. Why did he move it? Well he claimed the poor signal was due to a (very large - about twice the height of houses round here) cypress tree that was 'in the way'.
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Just noticed that the nearby mobile phone mast (1.2km south of me) has EE, which as I understand it runs 4G at 800MHz. Not sure when that started operating but it must be fairly recent.
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jb38: I have asked the aerial guy to return and run a new cable down temporarily into the garage to see if it is indeed a cable problem.
One worrying thing is on the Sony menu setup there is an advanced menu which shows signal strength and some numbers to do with the viterbi decoder. The signal strength reads zero!
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jb38: Guess what.
We routed the aerial down straight into the Sony TV. Perfect picture.
Then connected it via the splitter/amp. Broken picture...
New amp and everything is working fine, signal strength indicator on the sony is high.
Not sure why he didn't figure out the amp was the problem first time round, however it all works now, thanks.
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jb38: I wonder if it's possible to damage an amplifier/splitter by e.g. shorting its output. Since at some time it did work, and changing it made no difference (this was about 3 years ago).
Like you I am a bit mystified as to why he didn't identify the problem as being with the splitter. He claimed to me originally that the signal strength was weak but the booster was doing its job. It was after that he decided to move the aerial and made matters worse.
Still it works now and I can go and watch the tennis!
- Keith
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jb38: I ripped open the old amplifier. No real info on it but "Electro-replacement Ltd Model SIG 4". The input is capacitively coupled to a 2 stage transistor amp whose output appears to be inductively coupled to the 4 outputs. No masthead amp.
One point - the 'old download cable' you mention is still in place. I wonder if there was just a faulty connection (he did undo the coax connectors to check them).
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jb38: On his first visit, the aerial man definitely tested the signal with some handheld instrument - I did not get a good look at it but it showed several vertical bars on a LCD screen. He told me that the signal strength was weak at the TV, weak at the output of the booster, weaker at the input of the booster and then got his ladder out to measure it at the aerial itself. It was then he claimed it was weak there and the aerial needed repositioning. After that he told me the signal strength was 'good' at the TV, although it could not get any picture! This was when he claimed the TV might be at fault...
Something doesn't add up but I guess I'll never know what, unless the problem reappears.
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Saturday 29 June 2013 4:12PM
Chinnor
Hi,
I am at my wits end with digital TV reception. A bit of background info: my location is OX39 4DT, so Oxford is the nearest transmitter. I have a high gain aerial (or so I am led to believe) suitable for the Oxford frequencies. For the last few years it's worked fine with my Sony Bravia KDL-40W2000 TV of 2007 vintage with built in freeview and also a Sony RDR-HXD560 DVD/HDD recorder. There was occasional breakup on some of the ITV channels, but nothing serious. The antenna has a cable down to the garage where there is a splitter/amplifier that feeds sockets in the living room, two bedrooms and a family room. In one of the bedrooms I have a Technica TV - bought last year from Tesco.
About 4 weeks ago the reception became very bad on the Sony TV, and a bit patchy on the Technica one. It deteriorated to the point where I could only get BBC1 and 2 reliably on the Sony.
So I called in a local TV aerial guy and asked him to sort it out. He said the signal strength at the amplifier was poor, so he went to the aerial which is is on a 1m or so mast at the top of the eaves of the house. He claimed that the problem was that there was a tree in the way - indeed my opposite neighbour has a large cypress tree - and this was the problem. Said he would move the aerial to the other side of the house and fitted onto the chimney, extending the cable back to the original side. I should point out I live in a chalet-style bungalow, so there is no loft access, and hence the cable has to stay where it is...
The result was not good - the Sony could tune into a somewhat smaller number of channels, but no picture - just sound (with a few bits of interference) but NO picture on any channels. Trie a factory reset, etc, no luck.
The strange thing is the cheapie Technica set in the bedroom works fine there, and also works fine plugged into the same aerial socket as the Sony. It reports the signal strengths much the same - BBC about 64% and some of the ITV channels about 55%.
The TV guy (who had spent 3.5 hours by that time) blamed my Sony TV and said I needed a new TV. I'm not so sure though - it seems the signal strength has been degraded by moving the aerial and adding an extra length of cable.
What are my options? Could the signal strength be just too weak for terrestial TV, or is it likely still to be an aerial problem? I am loath to buy a new TV in the hope that it will work better, when the old one did... and the cheap one works fine!
thanks for any help/advice
Keith