All posts by Mike Dimmick
Below are all of Mike Dimmick's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.Jody: Do you know if the aerial points to Waltham, or Sandy Heath? Waltham is nearly due north, while Sandy Heath is roughly south-east.
If the aerial's aligned on Waltham, there is a possibility that you're getting enough signal from Sandy Heath (now that the PSB multiplexes are at full power) for the box to decide to tune in the wrong transmitter. Check to see if there's a working set of channels at different channel numbers, e.g. around 800. If so, delete all the channels and manually tune in the frequencies shown on the Waltham transmitter page. See Digital Region Overlap for some more advice.
If it's definitely aligned on Sandy Heath, it's possible that your TV doesn't support the 8K transmission mode and it's tuning in Waltham instead. Check on the list at TVs and boxes that do not support the 8k-mode | ukfree.tv - independent free digital TV advice . Again, fringe reception of a different transmitter will work sometimes, but not reliably.
The estimated signal strength from Sandy Heath is pretty strong, so if you have a booster or amplifier, try removing it. Very strong signals might be distorted by the amplifier, making it impossible for the TV to decode them. (RG47SH)
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M
Ridge Hill (County of Herefordshire, England) Full Freeview traWednesday 20 April 2011 8:13AM
Reading
Geoff Coupe: The BBC never provided a West-region service on analogue, and there is no plan to provide one on digital either.
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JohnB: The transmitter being closer or further away often has little to do with it, because the transmitters have different power levels. Once switchover completes you have three options: Belmont, which transmits Yorkshire/Lincolnshire regional programmes, Waltham, which broadcasts East Midlands, and Sandy Heath which broadcasts East programmes. Of those, Sandy Heath is the most powerful for ArqB, then Belmont, then Waltham.
The Sky Sports channels should still appear in a Freeview box's programme guide, at channels 41 and 42, even though they're scrambled. It's possible that your box has tuned in a weak version of Mux D from another transmitter, because that multiplex is on a higher frequency than Sandy Heath at the other nearby transmitters. Try deleting all the channels carried by ArqB and then manually tuning C67.
Once you've got Sky Sports 1 and 2 in the EPG, check the reception of other channels on ArqB, such as ITV4, Film4 and Yesterday, to see if Sky Sports will be reliable.
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r.gadd: Llanharan doesn't carry ITV3. You must be using a different transmitter. Can you provide a postcode to see which one it is?
It's most likely to be Wenvoe. The SDN multiplex is currently at pre-switchover power levels and on its pre-switchover channel - I think also on the pre-switchover antenna which is low down and has a restricted radiation pattern. Next Wednesday SDN and ArqA will move to their final channels, final power levels, and to the main aerial. You will need to retune.
In the right weather conditions, you probably get interference from Beacon Hill ArqB (also on C51) reflecting off the atmosphere. Normally it's blocked by the terrain. This channel clash will go away with next week's retune at Wenvoe.
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steve: Yep, Arqiva have pulled a sneaky swap of their multiplexes to give ArqB the slightly better frequency. This is shown on DUK's postcode checker, but isn't in any Ofcom documentation.
BT must be paying Arqiva a lot to make sure Sky Sports works as well as it can do! (Sky don't *want* their sports channels on terrestrial, they were made to do it by Ofcom at BT's request.)
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wutty: The Sky Sports channels' permanent home is on Mux D/COM6/ArqB. Same thing, different names, we usually use Mux D to refer to the pre-switchover mode and ArqB for the post-switchover mode. There wasn't enough capacity for Sky Sports on Mux D before switchover, so the BBC carried it on their Mux B instead. Mux B has to be cleared for the HD channels at switchover, so the BBC cleared out all the services they couldn't provide in all regions in the big retune in 2009, making space that they could then sell.
Unfortunately, ArqB is currently on a worse frequency than Mux B was, is transmitted at half the power, and - because of the mode change - requires more than twice the power to work reliably. It will stay this way until September - the final locations for this multiplex (and ArqA) are being used by Sutton Coldfield and The Wrekin can't use them until Sutton Coldfield switches over.
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wutty: To convert from frequency to channel, subtract 306 and divide by 8.
514 MHz = C26 = BBC A
490 MHz = C23 = D3&4
698 MHz = C49 = SDN (West, temporary)
SDN transmits at double the power of ArqA and ArqB, and using a mode that requires the same signal level to work. You probably have a box where the 'quality' indicator only shows uncorrectable errors, so it will only show less than 100% if the picture is already breaking up - making it pretty useless for troubleshooting.
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JohnFol: You're actually using the Crystal Palace transmitter. Hannington does not yet transmit HD signals. Results for HD services are expected to be variable at that postcode - they're half the power of the other digital transmissions from Crystal Palace.
The prediction for Hannington is poorer than that for Crystal Palace at that address. I'd stick with CP.
HD service will not improve noticeably until Crystal Palace completes switchover on 18 April next year.
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Roger: I really wish Brian would take down the NEW indicators, they just confuse people. Nothing new has started and nothing new will start in the immediate future.
They're the result of a study that the then-owner of half the transmitters, NGW, did in 2008, on which channels could *potentially* be allocated to new services at some point in the future. The regulator, Ofcom, has not yet begun the auction process or even announced when they might. It's now tied in with the government's pet local TV project so probably even further out.
The main frequency plan wasn't finalized when they did the study - more than half the country hadn't been published, and Tyne Tees and Ulster *still* haven't been published even now. Since it was done, there has been a Europe-wide agreement to release everything over C60 for mobile phones which involves reshuffling everything a bit.
The only reason for putting them in these lists was to guide choice of purchasing new aerials, but the rules for the study tried to ensure that the allocated channels would be receivable on an existing aerial anyway.
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Tuesday 19 April 2011 11:08PM
Reading
Richard: Freeview in your area has always come from the Sandy Heath transmitter. If you have a booster or amplifier, try removing it now. You're 28km from Sandy Heath, which isn't that far when the power levels are this high.