All posts by Michael Perry
Below are all of Michael Perry's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Bert
The numbers being given are Logical Channel Numbers (LCNs) and not the frequency channels previously used as nowadays each transmitted signal frequency carries several different programmes at the same time. Hence the need to refer to LCNs rather than particular frequencies. The numbers you are quoting are the LCNs being used by some people - though they should all appear on the same LCN unless the TV has not been retuned recently. The channel number being referred to for Whitehawk Hill the service in question is shown correctly as Channel 48 which is on 690 MHz which carries the COM6 group of programmes, as stated by jb38 in his submission. Other transmitters may have COM6 on different frequencies.
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Trevor Dobie:
Your location in the Kennet Valley, just off George Lane is surrounded by the hills of the Marborough Downs. You do not have 'line of sight' views of any of the main transmitters, the nearer ones being at Mendip, Oxford and Hannington. Without your aerial being able to 'see' the transmitting site, the chances of getting usable or reliable signals is virtually nil. So it is to the Marlborough transmitter you have to turn - and that is a Freeview Lite type. That means it has very limited programme availability and as far as I know none of them are currently HD services.
Having friends in Marlborough I know they have the same problems, SD only and fewer programmes than other friends in Swindon and Bristol.
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John & Michael
I used to live in a small rural hamlet and there still is no fibre service and most people are on 'exchange only' overhead lines which makes any upgrading a problem. The hamlet is in an 'intervention' area so should eventually be looked at under the BDUK contract with Wiltshire Council. But when? Today I noticed as I passed on the main road 2 miles from the village that Openreach are installing 2 cabinets at the junctionmeaning they are some 3.3 km from the first house in the hamlet. That means whatever FTTC service they may get will be significantly limited for speed - unless BT install a further cabinet actually in the village. Then they have problems of overhead mains supplies and deciding the best location so they don't pass and repass some houses.
I now live on the edge of the county town and we get 37 Mbps+ download speeds but notice that some servers are very slow, especially when busy.
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Ian
That confirms what my researches have suggested in that even having a good fibre connection does not resolve the issue of buffering. It is becoming clearer that there are at least 3 elements of the internet that can, and probably do, give rise to buffering problems. The connection carrying all the data to your 'local' distribution exchange can be slowed by a lot of traffic, especially at popular times and with ever larger content demands the load is increasing to the point where it has to be 'load managed' meaning it slows further. Then there is the international communication network and hubs. With again ever increasing demands this supposedly robust system does sometimes have problems, especially if a fault occurs moving the demand onto alternative feeds that may already be busy. The third problem area is the servers themselves. Each content provider has at least oen server connected to the internet and the better ones have several such servers effectively running in parallel, so sharing out the load created by demand. But that is not always the case and some sevrer hardware is not currently coping with high demand periods. So we get buffering which nobody likes.
Now consider that Ofcom are talking of moving all Freeview TV and radio services onto the internet, freeing up the Band 4 and remaining part of Band 5 spectrum for further sell off to the highest bidder. The effect of that on viewers will be significant as everyone wanting to watch TV will either have to have an internet conection at some expense (so perhaps no longer truly Freeview) or use Sky of Freesat services with the additional expense of the dish and receiver (unless their TV happens to have built-in satellite as mine does, but a dish is still needed). All additional cost for viewers who are largely not interested in the technicalities of how they get TV programmes as they only want to be entertained and informed.
Further, consider the data load if/when we get UHD (often called 4k) or even SUHD (suggested at a forum of TV manufacturers and needing at least 4 times the data throughput of 4k). That will increase the already hard pressed severs and delivery systems perhaps to the point of rejection by viewers. And what about those who cannot get internet nor satellite?
Most people were happy watching 625 line analogue TV with stereo sound, a text service and few interuptions and very rarely needing to rest/retune the equipment. Not quite what we have now with all too frequent (according to many non-technical viewers, the majority I suggest) needs to adjust the equipment rather than just sitting down to watch the programmes and enjoy the content.
Interesting times ahead - for some.
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Simone
As you are on a communal aerial system, it could be that a fault has developed with that. You will need to ask your immediate neighbours if they have the same problem with their Freeview services and do check that they are not talking about Sky or Freesat as they are different.
You are very close to both the Crystal Palace and Sydenham Hill transmitters so you should be able to try an 'indoor' aerial plugged into the aerial socket on the back of your TV to see if that gives any reception. There are a number available, such as at Curry's, see Layer 1 (others are available) but you do *not* want an amplified type as that would give far too strong a signal.
Please let us know what you find.
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Ashley
According to the Freesat channel information, see Freesat - Subscription free HD Satellite TV through a Digital Box LCN 120 is S4/C. It could be that your TV needs a post code so it can determine which services it should receive, so a check in the User Manual would possibly help. My LG TV asks for the post code at initial installation and it can be added later as well.
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Peter
My TV is a 32LB585v which has no analogue tuner but does have facilities for digital terrestrial, cable and satellite reception. You may want to look at LG 32LB580V Support: Find Manuals & Warranty Info | LG UK to download the User Manual for your TV set, save the download to disk and extract the contents - it's all in html format so can be read in your browser after the extraction completes.
My model has a DVB-T2 tuner for HD and can get satellite HD serrvices as well.
I have the 'magic remote' but we don't use it and we don't have any other 'dongle' either, so I'm afraid I can't be of much help with that aspect of your question.
I do know that when I need to tune/retune our set I have to select which tuner system I want to tune. It can be either just the Freeview, or the Freeview plus Cable or the Freeview plus cable plus satellite (and there can be more than one satellite setting!). The USer Manual helps but is not entirely descriptive so you have to work it out between the manual and the screen menu displays on the set.
If you definitely want an analogue tuner, then there are some available from on-line sellers but almost all of them are designed for use via a USB socket on a PC so may not work on the TV as the resolution may not match.
Hope that helps a little?
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Pippa
Looking at the Astra satellite footprints that indicate the areas covered by their signals shows that it rather depends on where in Sweden you are thinking. Some parts of southern Sweden can get some signals from the Astra 3F, 3G and 4A satellites but you may well need a larger than normal (for the UK) dish to get reliable results. You can check the coverage at
Satellite Footprints - SES.com
and selecting the pattern for each satellite.
You will not be able to get any reliable Freeview signals as Sweden is far to far away from the UK based terrestrial transmitters. You may, however, be able to view some services via the internet, depending on speed of connection. But note that some services are restricted to which countries they can be viewed in because of copyright agreements and limitations.
There is an article about digital television in Sweden on Wikipedia (if you trust the accuracy of the source?) at http://en.wikipedia.org/w…den.
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mazbar:
Maybe the software differs as mine does not even try to tune any analogue signals in Bands 4 and 5! Even if I have none of the options (Digital, Cable, Satellite) selected! It doesn't even try to tune then. Plus LG make no mention of any of these models having an analogue capability. If I select just one of the mentioned options, that is all it tries to tune, so by selecting all of them it tries to tune all connections but still does not show any scan for analogue signals on channels between 21 and 68 that were used for the analogue transmissions. It finds all the digital signals available locally, all the satellite signals being received by the 60 cm dish and looks at the 'cable' option but as we do not have a cable connection it finds nothing.
This response based on a recheck this morning having read your comment.
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Thursday 26 February 2015 11:10PM
As a published and peer-reviewed Technical Author I refuse to comment further.