All posts by Richard Russell
Below are all of Richard Russell's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
> The info on your web pages is detailed and useful, but only if it's kept up-to-date!
My thoughts exactly. I don't think the channel given for COM8 is correct either: the table shows it as 37 but at
COM7 and COM8 - a516digital
it's listed as 56 (the SFN channel that COM8 is being moved to nationwide). Waltham isn't an isolated example: the information on Tacolneston is wrong too. Is ukfree.tv being updated at all?
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> Please see the Digital UK website
I appreciate that one can usually find the correct information somewhere, but if the info here (ukfree.tv) cannot be relied upon it would be better to delete it entirely.
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I find the DigitalUK coverage predictions hard to fathom. Here they show the main six MUXes (100kW) in the orange ('variable reception') category but COM7/8 (27kW/24kW) in the green ('good reception') category. What would explain the lower-powered services providing better reception than the higher-powered ones, at the same distance? It's definitely not what we experience in practice (COM7 is not receivable and COM8 is marginal).
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Our Humax PVR is also currently reporting Tacolneston ch.55 (COM7) as having zero signal strength (COM8 on ch.56 is OK). This wasn't the case immediately following the 6/6 retune event, when both ch.55 and ch.56 were receivable, so looks to be something that has happened since. On a signal meter ch.56 is reading 50 dBV but ch.55 only 27 dBV which is noise level.
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> I have lost 15 Freeview channels since the retune.
15 is exactly the number of services in COM7, which by all accounts is currently off-air from Tacolneston (channel 55). When it's back do another retune and hopefully all will be well.
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> there has been some work going on in the last few days at Tacolneston. Probably this is
> mostly a final transmitter tuning to ensure that the reception is as intended on com7 and com8.
None of which explains or justifies channel 55 (COM7) being completely off-air for two-and-a-half days! Arqiva have apparently said that the cause was a cooling system failure, but it's not very satisfactory that the fault wasn't spotted until 9 a.m. today.
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> Seem to have lost some HD channels after recent retune. 113, 107 etc.
Those services are in the COM7 multiplex, which was completely off-air from Tacolneston from around lunchtime Friday until about 10 a.m. this morning. If you retuned in that period, it explains their loss. Try retuning again now the transmission has been restored.
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Wednesday 6 June 2018 3:47PM
I am trying to find out which mux is on which channel at Tacolneston, after today's changes (6th June). The main table above appears not to have been updated (at the time of writing) and the 'how will frequencies change over time' chart is evidently wrong, for example it says that ch42 is BBCB which it isn't here (it also gives the date of the changes as 31st March)! Any suggestions for where to look?