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All posts by Ken Collyer

Below are all of Ken Collyer's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.


Yesterday afternoon (Jan 16th)I lost BBC1 & BBC2 (Digital) from Bluebell Hill. In the evening I decided to re-tune my PVR. Now I get Anglia on "1" and Southeast on "804" suggesting that in spite of being only 6 miles from Bluebell Hill, the Anglia signal is stronger. This wasn't the case prior to the loss of signal on the 16th.

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Dave Lindsay: Thanks for that. I'm not sure which Anglia transmitter I'm picking up, just that I'm receiving BBC1,2,3,&4 and ITV stations plus several radio stations from the back of my aerial. As my PVR has loaded BBC1 and BBC2 Anglia, into channel 1&2 and BBC1 and BBC2 Bluebell Hill into channel 804 and 816 I assumed the PVR is getting a stronger signal from Anglia. I just want to get Bluebell Hill onto 1, 2, 3, and 4 on my PVR. I could try re-tuning but I've done that twice already without anything changing, and every time I do, I have to re-set up all the programs I want to record. I guess I'll have all this again with the Crystal Palace switch over in April as I can get analogue from there now.

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Sharron: Following on from what Steve has said, it could be that your problem is due to a week signal, due to your location relative to Crystal Palace. People don't always realise that until full change over, digital transmitters are run on lower power that their analogue equivalents. If you are on Crystal Palace then the change over is coming for you in April, so it may be worth waiting till after that to see if things change. If they don't then a new aerial down lead is probably the first thing to try. If your aerial lead runs across the roof there is always the possibility that the outer insulation has been damaged through constant rubbing against roof tiles, and allowed rain water in. I have found water in the down lead to be the cause of poor signal in both situations that I've been involved with on behalf of friend before.

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Mark Allison.
I don't know if this helps or confuses things, but I watch TV from Bluebell Hill via a Humax PVR and last night I checked the EPG and as far as I can see all the information is there up until midnight next Wednesday. I did only look at the "Yesterday" channel but that also showed one or two others either side. It is of course possible that there was a problem with the transmitter and that it has been fixed between your posting Tuesday evening and my checking 24hrs later.


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Re September 19th re-tune.
As I understand it the re-tune is being driven by Ofcom, another bright idea from them, like adding a "1" in the telephone numbers to give ten times the number of lines. The only trouble was, it wasn't that simple but they didn't realise that until they were too far down the road to stop. The idea of grouping the channel numbers seems to be a good idea, but why was it not thought of years ago. After all digital TV has been around for something like ten years and the switch over has been under way for about five years. To make matters worse, because Sky are taking it court, only half the job is being done. If Sky win their appeal the news channels won't change making a nonsense of the whole idea of re allocation and grouping of channels. If Sky loss, then we get a second re-tune. GREAT!!! Do Ofcom realise that to re-tune each TV or PVR takes about ten minutes and that PVR's will then have to have all the recording schedule reset. And what about all the people who don't understand how to re-tune. Are Ofcom going to provide help. My fear is that Ofcom will now sit down and work out a reason for a re-tune every year or so.

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Briantist;

Can you clarify who DMOL are. I would like to complain to them. It seems to me the obvious thing to do is put the re-tune on hold until after the court case is resolved.

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K
Bluebell Hill (Medway, England) Full Freeview transmitter
Monday 1 October 2012 4:09PM
Gillingham

Mark; Try doing a manual re-tune. If you're preferred transmitter is Bluebell Hill the channels you need to manually tune to are 46, 43, 45, 39 and 54, and if you have an HD box or TV then Channel 40 as well. Don't forget to save the stations found on each channel before moving on to the next channel.

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K
Bluebell Hill (Medway, England) Full Freeview transmitter
Wednesday 3 October 2012 12:18PM
Gillingham

Dave; As the post code you gave is for southeast Essex, are you sure your mothers aerial is pointing to Bluebell Hill. If not, the problem is probably due to a weak signal and you need to find which transmitter the aerial is pointing to. Once you've established that you can find the transmitter on this web site (ukfreetv) and establish what channels are used and tune your mothers TV into those. For the aerial to aligned with Bluebell Hill from your post code it should be pointing roughly South West.

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K
Bluebell Hill (Medway, England) Full Freeview transmitter
Friday 5 October 2012 4:26PM
Gillingham

Dave. If your mother is only getting trouble on ArqB I doubt the problem is the Rouncefall transmitter as that only transmits PSB1, 2 and 3. On the other hand I have had trouble with ArqB. After the September 19th re-tune all at first appeared OK so I set my PVR up to record an early morning radio program, as I had before. When I came to listen to it there was nothing there so I went the station live and low and behold, nothing. So I tried one of the TV stations on ArqB and both sound and picture were breaking up. I decided that I'd do re-tune and see what happened, and it's been fine since. I don't know why that should be but it worked so I'm happy just to have an unanswered question rather than a problem.

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K
Bluebell Hill (Medway, England) Full Freeview transmitter
Friday 5 October 2012 7:35PM
Gillingham

Dave; Just to clarify; the re-tune that cleared the fault I had was a manual re-tune of ArqB only which from Bluebell Hill is channel 54.

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