All posts by Michael Perry
Below are all of Michael Perry's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Anthony
But why should shift workers and others who view at night only get a poor slection of the normal output? They pay their licence fees the same as everyone else (I hope) so are just as entitled to the same service.
The legal reasons you mention are not a matter of the broadcasters' choice. In some cases EU rules and several laws prevent certain copyrighted programmes being broadcast outside of the original timeslot agreed and a +1 channel could go outside of that agreed timing.
TV services should, in my view, be available to all no matter what time they have available to view as long as the broadcaster is not breaking any copyright rules/laws and they fell they can support the broadcasting without making a financial loss.
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Richard Wood, Catherine and Peter.
Further to Richards suggestion about a 'wideband' aerial I would strongly recommend investing in a log-periodic and not a wideband Yagi. The log-periodic is much better and will be suitable for the foreseeable future broadcasting.
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Margorie
Check your Philips TV User Manual for how to set it to display the signals from the HDMI input. Not all TVs automatically switch to that so you may need to manually select it and the User Guide would tell you how to do that.
My Sky+HD box can show the ouitput from the VCR connected to it via a SCART. Your alternative is to obtain a SCART Extender that will allow the VCR to playback through the TV - but it will not record from the TV nor the Sky+HD box. These days very few people with a Sky+HD box need to record other than on that box. So the VCR would normally only be used for the playback of existing recordings on tape.
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s:
We need more precise information to be able to help you, such as where exactly do you mean by 'abroad'? You will not be able to get any Freeview channels outside of the UK, but you may be able to get some of the PSB channels via the Astra satellites at orbital position 28.2 and 28.5 degrees east as they carry the FreeSat services. The footprint of those transmisions does not cover the whole of Europe though.
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Steve:
I concur with MikeB. Having lived for many years in a rural area with initially a dial-up service that was supposed to run at 56kbps we actually got 32 kbps at best. That slowness is a very common experience for those not close to their telephone exchange so that affect not just rural area but also urban and suburban afreas as well. Even now that location does not get a reliable 2 Mbps, which is the Government's aim though it falls way short of what is needed to stream even a single SD channel without constant buffering!
The capacity of the internet to supply the massive volume of data needed for a 'universal' provision of TV entertainment is way beyond that which currently exists anywhere in the country except perhaps for those live next door to the exchange. Even FTTP (or sometimes called FTTH) is dependent on the ability of the internet 'backbone' to provide enough data throughput to meet the demands of all users worldwide, not just in the UK. Add to that the limitation of the servers that the internet relies upon as they cannot priovide all the data demanded all the time and often slow down the delivery of some data.
To supply a universal TV service via IP will require a massive investment way beyond that being spent on providing the current range of fibre-based services. The costs and practicalities make it highly unlikely to ever happen unless some new form of distribution and server technology is invented/discovered that has thousands of times the carrying capacity of the optical fibre currently being used and the equipment driving it.
Universal TV via IP is a very long way off, if at all. I'm talking decades not years.
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Gareth
Just a thought but you might have too much signal! If you use the search on this site looking to 'too much of a good thing' you will see a discussion about having too strong a signal can give the symptoms you describe. I'm not in your area so can't be sure, but it's worth investigating - possibly by adding an attenuator in the signal cabling (they just plug in).
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Dave Hagen:
The power output of any satellite transponder is a function of the Travelling Wave Tube (TWT) design and construction and is almost never changeable. What does get changed sometimes is which of the several TWTs are used for which beam and the aim of the on-board dishes are sometime adjusted slightly. Remember that the satellites are unmanned and remotely controlled from a ground station.
The effect of heavy rain is an absorption phenomenon that is entirely natural and is not technically interference. It comes about due to the size of a water molecule relative to the wavelength of the downlink signals, normally in the Ku band from the Astra (used by Sky) satellites. Some other satellites use a lower frequency range and in the USA they have services running in C band, not too different from the signals used for 802.11n WiFi in the upper 5 GHz band, which is almost unaffected by water absorption.
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Personally, I'd rather pay less than £3 per week for TV without inane and interrupting adverts - but I'd rather it was factually correct and not as biased as we see today from the BBC.
My attention span is actually several hours and not just a few minutes so I don't like my enjoyment being interrupted every few minutes by so-called adverts that I have no interest in at all.
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Rosey:
It doesn't serve enough people to make it commercially viable. It costs the broadcasters quite a bit of money to run the transmitters and if they don't get enough exposure of the adverts, and hgence a hoped for income from product sales, they will not invest in the transmitter. That's what commercial TV is all about.
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Sunday 14 December 2014 9:26PM
Brian
It is because they are far more suitable for current and future reception from all transmitters. A 'grouped' Yagi aerial is only suitable for a part of the UHF band used for TV broadcasting. For example, a Group C/D aerial is only of use for channels 49 and above but is not very good below that and it gets worse the lower the channel numbers. Nowadays, most main transmitters not only have the SD multiplexes but also some HD ones which are often (but not always) in the 31-37 range and a Group C/D Yagi aerial would not be much use. A 'wide band' Yagi is not that good either as its reception ability is quite variable across the bands used for TV so some signals will be noticably stronger than others and maybe the ones you want are the weakest - giving rise to reception problems often reported by the set as 'No Signal'.
One of the benefits of a log-periodic are that they have a fairly flat reception characteristic across the whole UHF band from channel 21 to at least channel 60. That means it can be used for reception of all the signals being broadcast currently. The future plans of Ofcom include the idea of putting all terrestrial digital TV (Freeview) into the lower channels range so by fitting a log-periodic you would be able to receive your current programmes as well as being as 'future proof' as is possible - unless the Ofcom plans change in the meantime. Log-periodic aerials are no more nor less susceptible to use by our 'feathered friends' as a roost than any other aerial.
The area you mention is not unusual as these better aerials are appearing all over the country, I had one installed in Wiltshire recently so that our new TV would be able to get all the SD and HD channels now and into the foreseeable future. I chose one because I know they are better having been in the TV industry since 1960.
If you are considering having your aerial changed, I would strongly advise having a log-periodic fitted and ignore any advice about needing a 'digital' aerial as there is no such thing.