All posts by Mike Dimmick
Below are all of Mike Dimmick's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
ALL: Officially the services from Black Hill were going to be off-air from midnight to 6 am. If you retuned between those times, your TV or box could have picked up signals from another transmitter, or a partially-completed reconfiguration from Black Hill.
If you're still having problems now, you should retune again first and see if the problem goes away.
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Derek Carpenter: Complain to ITV plc.
Basically they cheaped out and only bought enough delay equipment and monitoring for the six services they can fit on satellite.
Those services are:
Granada (Manchester)
Central West (Birmingham)
Wales
London
Meridian South-East (Maidstone)
Yorkshire West (Leeds)
You get the version that is part of the same advertising sales macro-region that you're part of. For you, this is the 'West' macro covering the old HTV West, HTV Wales and Westcountry regions.
The Meridian South-East service is transmitted to the entirety of the Meridian and Anglia regions (the South East macro), while Tyne Tees and all of Yorkshire get Yorkshire West. I'm not sure whether Border gets Yorkshire West or Granada. All of Central gets Central West.
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Colin: Check that your box hasn't decided to tune into Stockland Hill instead. Some just store the first version of the channels that they find, and Stockland Hill is on lower frequencies. The prediction for the commercial muxes from Stockland Hill is variable or poor, and the aerial will pick up less signal from that direction, but it could still be enough to detect the services. Changes at other transmitters, particularly Ridge Hill which now uses the same frequencies, could have made it worse. See Digital Region Overlap for some thoughts on how to fix this.
"I have the biggest aerial one can buy."
That could be your problem. Digital UK's postcode checker shows a prediction of 99-100% across the board, and it's usually a bit pessimistic.
There's a slight terrain restriction which will reduce levels slightly compared to clear line-of-sight. Line-of-sight levels are expected to be 80 dBuV max, on Mux 2/D3&4 (C54) and minimum 69.6 dBuV on Mux A/SDN (C62). These figures include 10 dBd of aerial gain, which is what Digital UK use in their predictions. The recommended upper limit, to avoid intermodulation, is 65 dBuV.
If you have any amplification, you should remove it. You will probably also need to add some attenuation to bring levels into spec.
As far as the TV licence goes, it's your licence to own and operate a TV. That's it. You have to pay the full rate if you own a colour TV. You can still pay a reduced rate for a monochome TV, bizarrely. The funds from the licence fee go to the BBC only, so even if it were based on reception - which it is not - I can't see that you'd be entitled to any discount if you were getting all BBC services.
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Donald MacLeod: Very few Freeview boxes put their output on the aerial cable. You would need one with an RF modulator. Your older box may have had one, most new equipment doesn't.
It is possible to buy separate RF modulators that just plug into a SCART socket on the Freeview box.
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John Lees, andrew mark: The BBC has never provided a West-region service from Ridge Hill or its relays. Given the cutbacks they are having to make, I doubt they would want to do so now.
ITV only started the West service after breaking up the older Central South sub-region in 2007, primarily to put Oxford in with Hannington to form 'ITV Thames Valley'. They put Ridge Hill in with Central West from Birmingham as the served area was considered too small for a separate news service. (Ironically, ITV Thames Valley has ended, and Oxford and Hannington viewers now get the Southampton service.) The three-way divide of Central's news service was a condition of the 1991 licence.
It's more likely that regional services will be closed down, though the Prime Minister - whose constituency is near Oxford - has put pressure on to keep his local service.
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Sean: Did it work before, or have you only just bought this TV?
The HD signal is at half the power of the other transmissions, but require the same signal-to-noise ratio as Mux 2, which carries ITV1 and C4 plus other related channels. It is transmitted from Lichfield, where analogue C5 comes from, rather than Sutton Coldfield, and aimed only into Birmingham to reduce the risk of interference to anyone else. They are also on a lower frequency, lower than the traditional analogue group, and your aerial might not pick up as much signal as for the SD multiplexes.
We really need a full postcode to see what the situation might be for you.
At switchover, at the end of September, the HD transmission moves to Sutton Coldfield, where it will be on a clear channel, broadcast in all directions, and at the same power level as BBC One (etc), as well as being within the range of all UHF aerials that have been used here. (It replaces the BBC Two analogue service.).
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Robert Dawson: 'DV3' is probably the stylised DVB logo from DVB - Digital Video Broadcasting - Home . The model number is likely to be on a sticker on the back of the unit.
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Bob: Red Button streams are up at 11954 MHz, on Astra 2B rather than 2D where all of the BBC's main channels live. It's possible that something was blocking the 22 kHz tone that the TV sends to the LNB to tell it to switch to the upper band.
If you are feeding the TV from another satellite box's 'LNB OUT', the other box will have control over the high/low and horizontal/vertical selection signals if it's on rather than in standby, or for recorders it may take control if recording two channels at once. If you have split the cable feed from the LNB to more than one box, either only one leg of the splitter will allow the control signals to pass up to the LNB, or if both boxes are on at the same time, the LNB can get confusing signals. Ideally you would run separate cables to separate outputs on the LNB for each input on each box or TV.
If you have some DiSeqC equipment, it may be blocking some of the selection signals, as it uses the same features. The TV might have a normal/DiSeqC selection mode - you might have selected the wrong mode. DiSeqC sends 22 kHz pulses for selection of different dishes, while the LNB requires a constant tone.
Of course it could simply be that the LNB's 22 kHz tone detector has failed, or the tone generator in the TV has failed.
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Ray Reed: You say this is happening on multiple TVs, fed from one distribution amplifier. Have you checked the amplifier's power supply? http://www.wrightsaerials.tv/articles/whatsat-201006.pdf
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Wednesday 22 June 2011 2:37PM
Gerry: The SkyLink system is designed for you to plug the aerial connection into the Sky box's aerial input (e.g. RF IN). The Sky box does not actually use the input, it adds its modulated output to the rest of the signals picked up by the aerial.
Otherwise, you can use a splitter in reverse as a combiner.