All posts by Chris.SE
Below are all of Chris.SE's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
John:
As it's a COM multiplex carrying no BBC channels, there's no reports from the BBC of any problems. And it comes as no surprise to me that I can't find anything reported by Freeview! There's no Planned Engineering listed either. There's no Tropospheric Propagation predicted either (and none present AFAIK). You could try phoning Freeview 0808-100-0288 option 3 but I'm not convinced they'll take any notice unless they've had several reports! Arqiva have never given the impression that they are very forthcoming with fault reports, so I'm afraid your guess is as good as mine.
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Richard caywood:
Now, this is interesting! As you say you have used a 4G Filter (it's a filter not an attenuator, but any device like this will cause some attenuation - insertion loss - as well as the specific filtering effect) we can't yet deduce whether the problem is "overload - too much signal" or Interference from 4G. The set downstairs isn't so badly affected because of the longer length of coax which will have some attenuation. Does this 4G filter have Ch.60 or Ch.59 marked on it at all?
Back in a post on Tuesday 14 May 2013 1:25PM you said "i have an attenuator 6db". Do you still have this 6dB attenuator?
Can you try the following and report the figures.
1) If you have the 6dB Attenuator, put it in place of the 4G Filter on the Bedroom TV and tell us the Signal % & Quality % for the Bedroom TV. Then remove it and connected the bedroom TV as normal.
2) Put the 4G Filter between the aerial and the Booster and tell us the Signal % & Quality % for both sets.
3) Remove the 4G Filter and put the 6dB attenuator between the aerial and the Booster and tell us the Signal % & Quality % for both sets.
If you don't have the 6dB Attenuator, then just do 2) with the 4G Filter.
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Antonieta Costa:
You will be best contacting the Smithsonian Channel see Smithsonian Channel: It's Brighter Here
This is an independent Help site for people with reception problems.
There's a "Contact" at the bottom of their page, and you may be best to look at the "Program Treatments/Submissions" entry.
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David George:
The BBC have reported a fault saying the transmitter was off-air "From 3:14am to 3:15am on 27th Jan 2020 - Off the air due to a fault" which obviously doesn't cover the here and now!
That report was posted on the TV tx page rather than here - strange!
Finding any information about transmitter faults for DAB (other than the BBC) is worse than hunting for a needle in a haystack.
The stations you might receive can be found using the postcode checkers at sites like ukdigitalradio: Home & https://getdigitalradio.com/ the latter saying you should have "fair" reception - whatever that means! but frankly they are useless as far as any faults are concerned.
If you are still having problems with the BBC mux, you can report it/contact them at Check transmitter faults | Help receiving TV and radio
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Richard caywood:
I think all this suggests that there are two things going on.
1) There is some interference and it seems to be affecting the upstairs TV more than downstairs. When you put the filter in the booster for TV2 it seems to be having little effect (if any), but if you plug it in to the back of the Bedroom TV you get Signal 84% Quality 84% if I read that right. This suggests most of the interference is being picked up in the coax run from the booster to the TV. This could be that there is some hidden mains cable nearby that has the interference in it and is radiating to the coax, or just the particular lie of the coax acting as an aerial for the interference. So I would leave the 4G filter in the back of the TV.
2) There is also some signal overload. (BUT the overload could be caused by the Interference and not the DTV signals that you are wanting to watch!) This is proven by the fact that when you insert the attenuator, the signal on the bedroom TV goes up (the reverse of what you'd intuitively expect!). It's also proven by the fact that when you put it in the aerial input or the downstairs TV the signal stays on 100% BUT the QUALITY goes up - this latter result is a typical indicator of TV set front-end overload, but as I've already said probably more due to the interference. When you overload even more, the quality will go to 0% and the signal reading also goes down - again the converse of what some may have expected.
So one combination that seems to give adequate? results at present is 4G filter in back of Bedroom TV, and the 6dB attenuator in the back of the Downstairs TV (because quality goes up!).
There is something else to try and more to suggest, but I'll post this first, so you can confirm you've followed what I've said and things are working as I've understood it.
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David Roberts:
Eh, are you kidding me ??? I've seen and heard bad reports about Freeview being useless with what they say periodically, but this bad! How did you contact them by phone or twitter? Please reply to that as I'm pursuing a number of issues with them and this will be added to the list!
OK, most info can be found on what I saw someone else describe as their "'Chad Valley' style Freeview website" ! when of course you discover where to look.
Here - Freeview | All your favourite TV shows, all in one place and all for free corporate/platform-management/700mhz-clearance">What is 700MHz clearance? | Freeview
Click on the link '2020 clearance events(Q1-Q2)'
Freeview | All your favourite TV shows, all in one place and all for free corporate/platform-management/700mhz-clearance">What is 700MHz clearance? | Freeview /clearance-events-2020
There's a miriad of documents you can see listed there, the Granada one will have details BUT
there are errors in that list, some as mentioned in previous posts above.
Some other pages of some (limited) use -
Freeview | All your favourite TV shows, all in one place and all for free corporate/platform-management/planned-engineering-works">Planned engineering works | Freeview
Freeview | All your favourite TV shows, all in one place and all for free service-updates">Service updates | Freeview
Freeview | All your favourite TV shows, all in one place and all for free corporate/platform-management/channel-listings">Channel listings | Freeview
You can also find other information from using the "Check Freeview at my home" on the home page Freeview | All your favourite TV shows, all in one place and all for free and also the Help page. Put in a suitable postcode, house names/numbers can sometime be important where roads are hilly, on the new page scroll down to click on "Detailed view"
At the top of that page, there's a 'View Region' option which can be useful as it carries historical information as well, but again, there can be errors from time to time.
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Raymond Alsop:
The Freeview Detailed Coverage Checker does predict good reception from Stockland Hill, however it's not quite as good as Mendip for the COMs4-6 multiplexes if you are at the high number end of the road. Also Stockland Hill does not transmit the COMs 7&8 multiplexes, so if you want any of those channels, you won't get them
Channel listings | Freeview
For all the multiplexes from Mendip you need a Group T aerial (Wideband will do) pointing ~NNE (bearing 21 degrees). For Stockland Hill a Group A aerial is quite adequate, although a Group K or T/Wideband will do pointing bearing ~SW (223 degrees). Both transmitters horizontally polarised.
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David Newman:
The BBC could save money on it's News budget by not sending news crews out to do a report at a location where no-one featured in the report is present or going to come out of a building to give a statement. Eg. when there's a reporting about something to do with Defence, being outside MoD main buildings when there's no-one there!!
They can do that from a studio, with a picture of the relevant location electronically inserted in the background - that's one reporter in a studio, not a reporter at a location & a camera-man and no doubt a sound-man as well as an engineer with a vehicle to transmit the report back to the studio!
One person instead of four.
We'll keep our local teams in the studio, thanks!
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Richard caywood:
So if you can post the signal & quality figures for both sets with the 4G Filter in the back of the Bedroom TV and the 6dB Attenuator in the back of the Downstairs TV, it'll hopefully confirm what I'm expecting.
Having done that, there is one other combination worth trying to see what the figures are -
Put the 4G Filter between the aerial and the Booster, and the 6dB Attenuator in the back of the Bedroom TV and post the figures for both TVs.
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Tuesday 28 January 2020 10:38PM
John:
Hi John, see reply on Rowridge Tx page.