All posts by Michael Perry
Below are all of Michael Perry's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
E Poole:
BT have misled you seriously. BT Sport is available via Freeview but not FreeSat. (It may also be available to a computer or 'smart TV' via an internet connection of at least 5.6 Mbps speed) Your father's dish will be providing him with FreeSat programmes and cannot provide BT Sport.
If he does decide to take BT Sport, he will need a suitable 'set top box' (STB) as stated by KMJ, Derby. This would need a UHF aerial to be fitted externally and aimed either at the Belmont or Waltham transmitter and connected to the RF or Aerial Input of the BT Vision device. The output from that should be via an HDMI cable to an unused HDMI input on the back of the TV. If father's TV does not have HDMI, you may be able to use a Scart lead if the 21-pin socket is provided on the back of the BT Vision box and television.
Any mention of a 'converter' by BT shows they don't know anything about current TV equipment nor how that can be connected. You should complain about misinformation being given by them.
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Lee:
Malaga is way south of the coverage of the spot beam carrying C5, etc. However the signal does not 'cut off' abruptly as you move outside the intended coverage area so a larger dish can help, as you found with your 1m dish.
It is possible that the dish alignment may have changed and could be checked but that is likely to have affected all other services as well. It may be worth checking the LNB and dish are clean and free from detritus.
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david:
None of the transmitters based in the UK transmit any of the French TV services.
If you are asking about reception from the French transmitters, please see other replies already giving to this question elsewhere on this site where you have posted it.
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Marion:
Checking the Reception Map does not show any 4G masts at all and that service is not due to start until at least the end of August 2013 and that will be mainly in urban areas initially.
The map does suggest that you are in an area of poor reception and we would need more details of location (a good post code helps) and the equipment and aerial(s) in use for contributors to this site to help more.
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Peter, et al:
BT tell me that if you have the DSL internet service from BT Internet and at a speed above 5.6 Mbps then you should be able to view BT Sports.
As I only get 2.5 Mbps I am unable to confirm whether this is true nor what the performance is like. Clearly having a fibre-based internet service will give faster broadband speeds and hence better viewing via IPTV but the roll out of fibre is still somewhat limited across the country, especially in non-urban locations, and many towns are not yet equipped and some are at last 'taking orders'. At a price premium of course!
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Kieren, et al:
BT tell me that if you have the DSL internet service from BT Internet and at a speed above 5.6 Mbps then you should be able to view BT Sports.
As I only get 2.5 Mbps I am unable to confirm whether this is true nor what the performance is like. Clearly having a fibre-based internet service will give faster broadband speeds and hence better viewing via IPTV but the roll out of fibre is still somewhat limited across the country, especially in non-urban locations, and many towns are not yet equipped and some are at last 'taking orders'. At a price premium of course!
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Whilst largely agreeing with MikeB, there are some issues. Analogue terrestrial, as we had before 'Digital switchover' had been carefully planned for a 4 service channel allocation with the aim of covering over 97% of homes with 51 main transmitters and over 1000 'relay' transmitters, some of very low erp (effective radiated power output)- the smallest I know of being just 0.4W erp. DTV appears to many not to have been fully thought through and that seems to be the causal factor in so many retunes being required and it seems the 'average viewer' does not understand why. The main instigator seems, to me at least, to be Ofcom in not planning far enough ahead and allowing themselves to be, arguably, overly influenced by commercial considerations for services completely unconnected with television services, namely the needs of 4G operators.
There is also the issue of not understanding the vagaries of transmitting UHF signals - irrespective of the modulation methods nor the signal encoding systems. DTV is merely a UHF transmission using digital encoding with a form of quadrature modulation (often 64 QAM or higher) and is therefore subjected to the same transmission problems that UHF analogue TV had but with different unwanted side effects, no more ghosting but pixelation artifacts for example. That normal viewers are troubled so much with having to retune so often (far more than was needed with UHF analogue TV) should be of concern to those of us who have some knowledge and experience - but more especially to Ofcom! However, as you quite rightly say, we see here a minority of viewers and not all of the ones who have problems, so we see a small sub-set of the viewing public's experiences, so we need to be careful not to assume what is reported here is the norm.
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N Wood:
Have you tried swapping the TVs over? Is the problem still showing on just the one set in the position currently having problems? If yes, then suspect cables or aerial if you have separate aerials for each location, if no then suspect a possible TV fault.
Do you have 2 aerials or just one? If you have just one aerial feeding both sets, then it is quite likely associated with the section feeding the affected TV set - the part of the feed that is not shared by the TV that is working correctly. If they are fed from separate aerials with separate downleads, then it could potentially be either an aerial or cabling problem. In both cases, check the cables feeding the affected TV location and ensure they are undamaged and of good quality with effective screening. If in doubt, replace the cables and connectors feeding that TV with good cables, not cheap ones.
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Saturday 17 August 2013 6:04PM
David:
It may be possible along the south and east Kent coast and just possibly along the East Sussex coast but it is unlikely to be receivable further west due to distance from the transmitters near the north coast of France.
I have no details of the locations nor transmission channels of their transmitters nor of the encoding or modulation methods used though they are likely to be similar to those used in the UK and I have to assume that they use same format standards as we do now. They used to use 819 line 50 field transmissions for many services in addition to 625 line 50 field, but that was all analogue and not digital.
How about doing a search for information on the internet and letting us all know?