All posts by Honest John
Below are all of Honest John's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
No sorry - message appeared in the wrong place. I am in Poole in Dorset and hope to get a signal from the Isle of Wight. But any helpful comments on my problem gratefully received!!
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For the past few days my father at BH15 2QE and I at BH14 8HJ (Poole) have both lost all BBC Freeview TV and radio channels for long periods of time. We both have new Panasonic Viera TV's, his connected to a newish communal aerial - not sure where it is pointing, and mine to a newish aerial which I thought was picking up Rowridge. Strangely my old Sony connected to a small aerial sticking through the bedroom wall is much less affected. I have been told the problem is because the French have turned up their signal strength and there are no plans for us to do likewise until next year. In the meantime it may be possible to retune on to Mendip aerial but this means I will lose local news programmes. This seems no way to run a switchover. It would have been nice if someone official had publicised what is going on - but perhaps this was done on the BBC South News when I couldn't receive it!
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Thanks for your comments, KMJ Derby. I guess what is hard is when a service we had invested time and money to achieve, in an admittedly marginal situation, is taken away from us without warning. In our innocence we thought the switchover process would be a series of reception improvements, with an occasional retune necessary, until we reached the promised land. In my father's case, the communal aerial on his block of sheltered flats was only installed a few months ago and is currently pretty useless. If I had known what the Freeview switchover had in store for us I would have definitely gone down the satellite route.
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Well, whadyer know!! Since my last post all my freeview channels have returned - it seems on a 24/7 basis, touch wood. They have been there for about a week now and after a couple of retunes I have finally managed to get a complete set. Not only that but my aerial pointing at Rowridge has started to pick up signals from Mendip, so that I can now get West as well as South regional programmes. All is forgiven - but what will happen if it rains? I think father is doing better as well but I can't be sure because I'm not monitoring him that closely.
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Saturday 26 March 2011 8:24PM
Poole
The last couple of days I have lost all the BBC channels, both radio and TV, for long periods. Today I had them at breakfast time but by mid morning they had gone again and still at 8pm have not come back although occasionally they have made a feeble attempt to splutter into life. Non BBC stations seem to be working fine. I have been using a recent rooftop aerial and a Panasonic Viera TV which was new at Christmas and has worked perfectly up until now.
Additionally I have an older Sony TV connected to a smaller, older, lower aerial. I am not sure how much affected this is but I can say that at this moment (2018hrs on Sat 26 March) the Sony is picking up Radio 2 but the Panasonic will not. My postcode is BH14 8HJ.
My father has a similar problem except that I tried to retune his set. I chose the wrong time to do this and so he has lost the BBC channels on a permanent, not intermittent basis. He has a similar Panasonic Viera TV and lives in a block of flats with an enormous aerial installed a few months ago on a tall mast. His postcode is BH15 2QE.
Is there something wrong with the BBC transmissions at present and/or are our particular models of Panasonic TV particularly susceptible to a weak signal? (BH14 8HJ)