All posts by D Hall
Below are all of D Hall's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
How does one reconcile the statements from Sutton Coldfield transmitter news (top of the page) where on the one hand
"Over the next week Sutton Coldfield main transmitter: TV (analogue) Possible weak signal, TV (digital) working normally..."
On the other hand, effective power level for mux 2 and A is 'low' ????
Since I cannot get a sensible picture from nux 2 or A most of the time (B43), I believe the latter, not the former.
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Mike Dimmock - thank you for the explaination 64QAM versus 16QAM eh?
Actually, I miss-spoke. Mux A is the only one I cannot receive well at the moment, but it is highly dependant upon the weather and time-of-year.
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Well this switchover is going to cause phenomonal chaos, and here is why.
Because of the higher power on all transmitters it will mean possibly hundreds of thousands, even millions of sets will pick up signals from adjascent areas as well as their local area, when they do a 'reinstall' process.
This is already happening - it happened to me - and the result can easily be the tuner 'box' is overloaded with channels, locks up, and the initial installation process cannot be completed.
Here is my solution. From Sutton Coldfield transmitter, I should only get 5 channels, but I am also getting a weak signal on channel 26 which is added in by my freeview box, with fatal consequences as above.
The way I had to tune in this morning was to start the reinstall and immediately cancel it, after which I was able to do a manual install channel by channel. I just have two programmes with different numbers now.
I would welcome comments on this overlapping signal problem and how to reinstall 'next time'
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Bob, may I suggest the solution I found to the 'extra channel 26 problem' (post immediately above yours).
For film 4 you need to tune just Mux D, which from Sutton Coldfield is currently ch55.
Without your amplifier, you may not be able to, but as I described, until 21st you could if you can, do as I do and just manually tune channels 41,43,44,51 and 55
What will happen come 21st I dread to think.
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Ref Briantist
on this page, where you list the frequency changes from 1950, you omit to fully describe the period from 5th to 21st September 2011, where there were channel changes on the 5th - the principle one for Sutton Coldfield is BBCA to C43 apparemtly - virtually impossible to find out, but I did find it in Wikipaedia of all places once, and cannot find it again !
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After clear all channels and manual tune of channels 43,39,46,42,45 in that order, I have all expected channels, but a few programmes are not on the EPG numbers expected. For example, program 24 (supposed to be ITV4) is not assigned at all, and ITV4 actually shows up on 797 !!!
My box is a Nokia 221T
Is there any possible way to avoid this?
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Ever since freeview started, the subtitles for both ITV and Channel 4 have been quite different from all other channels.
Does everyone experience this same effect, where a few words appear, almost immediately disappear, then reappear with more words added, sometimes with a few original words missing from the start, or on a new line. In short, virtually unreadably jerky.
This is Sutton Coldfield transmitter, and I rather think the problem is much worse on the news channels than the pre-recorded programmes.
I ask for other opininons but I actually believe it is not something which my freeview box is 'doing wrong' - because I see it on two entirely different tuners.
Is it automatic speech recognition of a poor standard? I know BBC channels have hilariously wrong speech recognition at times, but at least it is usually readable.
Pull up your socks ITV !
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I have three freeview boxes. My two earlier ones are Nokia 220T (originally top-notch and quite expensive).
I have the same problem with both of those boxes as follows. However I try to install all Mutexes from Sutton Coldfield, I cannot get the programme numbers to come in correctly. For example, ITV4 should be 24, but appears as 807, and Yesterday is 802, not 12.
If I do a full reinstall, with the aerial in, the boxes tell me they find 88 new TV stations and 22 radio stations, but lock up without saving anything. Clearly some kind of memory overflow. Same if I dont put the aerial in until past MUX 21 which is picked up from Cambridge.
If I do a reinstall without the aerial in and then install individual MUXes I can get all programmes with a few numberings wrong as described. Same if I do MUX by MUX and also delete the programmes I dont need (like the sex rubbish all over the place) between tuning in each MUX.
OK, I have a working system, but the el cheepo third box does everything correctly and so much better.....it is as annoying as hell.
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During the recent cold spell, I again had trouble receiving just one of the Muxes (COM6) in Great Barr Birmingham.
This is exactly as before the power-up when the signals were low. Now they are high the problem persists, on different Muxes, exactly as I predicted they would do, it is interference from more distant broadcast sites is all that has changed.
As I have said before, no matter how well-spread the channel frequencies are around the country, those using the same frequency will interfere at some times during the year. The whole concept of freeview has this inglorious fault that would never have occurred if the powers-that-be had ignored the whole idea ofground-based broadcast and gone for renting a satellite.
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Page 1
Thursday 13 January 2011 10:04PM
Great Barr area, Birmingham. Like so many others, during the Sutton Coldfield mast changes there was loss of some channels. When the main mast was restored to use, everything came back, and particularly during the freezing weather reception was absoluteley fine.
Now the weather has warmed up agin, and at least mux B and C are either unreceivable or very blocky. Clearly, around here there is always some co-channel interference probably from 100 miles away or more.
So far, so normal for freeview.
My big question is, following the September switch-over, when the main mast goes to 1MW power, can I expect reception to come good or not?
My concern is that although the direct signal will obviously be hugely more powerful, so will all the other BBC transmitters, including whatever is causing the current co-channel interference. So here is a technical question I invite comments upon....can a more powerful signal discriminate better when the interfering channel is also more powerful ?