All posts by jb38
Below are all of jb38's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Mandy: Forgot to add, that its only feeds from a satellite dish that cannot be put though any form of distribution device.
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Big Mart: Yes you are correct about the coax plugs, as the jumper from the wall socket will have male coax plugs at each end, I suppose I forgot about the fact that I always go around armed with a multitude of couplers for all sorts of applications.
Regarding the set top aerial, I wasn't really advocating that you purchase one but just mentioned it in case you could borrow it from someone, but you can even do the test using a short piece of wire of of about 12" minimum pushed into the inner part of your aerial socket, as should any strong signals be in existance at your location then a piece of wire will pick something up.
I do though have a feeling that you might well be receiving a defective signal from the communal aerial system distribution amplifier, and with this being the reason for your limited success in getting over the problem.
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Big Mart: Yes, as HD is more critical than SD to signals that are less than perfect, this being why that its usually always found that just after any station has switched over to high powered operation that a number of people complain that rather than their situation having improved, that they have now either completely lost their HD reception or that their picture has started to suffer from periods of freezing / pixelation etc, and as just like in your own case SD being reported as OK.
It should be pointed out, that whether it be HD or SD these type of symptoms are the forerunner to the picture disappearing altogether, this being caused by the tuner being swamped by excessive RF levels, this causing its input voltage tolerance range to be exceeded.
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Dave Lindsay: No, and not in an extreme case either, as even with an excessively high level of signal that can obliterate reception by swamping the tuners input / oscillator mixer circuitry with will still only represent a fraction of the voltage that would be necessary to damage the tuners input / mixer transistors (i.e: micro/milli volts v/s volts) and a tuners input is usually protected against these type of excesses anyway, and with the only reason it creates havoc in a tuner is that the tuner becomes unstable and corrupts / destroys the data being carried in the signal thereby leaving virtually nothing to decode just like a dead carrier, the reason why no quality is seen indicated when a strength / quality check is made.
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Big Mart: No, and especially so in your case, as whatever is causing your problem has to be at a level that's just causing the difficulty and no more, and if you have a negative result from your short piece of wire test then its inclined to indicate that the problem could be being caused before it reaches you, and possibly in the communal aerials distribution amplifier system.
This being said though, its a pity that you cant verify your HDT500's performance at another location, as when dealing with problems such as yours actual tests being made on-site using different pieces of equipment can rapidly determine where a fault is located.
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Lee: As far as I am concerned, these Vestel chassis PVR's are / were by far the best around for their sheer user friendliness as far as the menu systems offered are concerned and quite a delight to use compared to some Humax's, albeit that the latter is undeniably technically superior, and although I have three Humax's (one a FoxSat HDR) my wife always prefers to use the Vestel T825 (Hitachi branded) that I also have coupled up rather than my Humax 9200 (one of) purely for the menu reasons mentioned.
Should be thinking along the lines of purchasing a new PVR, then a modern Vestel chassis PVR that has thankfully retained about 90% of the original classic menu system (and only menu system) is being sold by Argos, and is a Hitachi model 325 PVR with a 320Gb hard drive, and a model which I haven't (as yet) had any adverse reports about, friends of mine having purchased two of these PVR's just over two months ago now.
Although I dont suppose I should have mentioned that, as its tempting fate as far as Murphy's law is concerned.
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Jenny: The info you require is in page 30 of your manual under the "digital set up" heading / digital manual tuning, and seemingly you press the mux channel in that you want to search using number buttons, then you use the up and down arrows to tune.
It certainly seems to be an odd ball way of doing things, but that's the method described in the manual.
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Lee: If you have the facilities to be able to download the software then transfer it into the Digihome then by all means give it a try, its just that I generally dont mention that procedure as its total hit and miss as to whether or not it works, because if a tuner has a tight AFC capture range then in my book the problem really isnt completely cured except by replacement of the tuner, which to my knowledge anyway is not available as a spare part.
I would though appreciate if you can give an update on the results should you decide to try the procedure mentioned, and "if" successful if you could also mention the serial number of your PVR, as subtle changes to the circuitry are always linked to serial number ranges.
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Christopher: Yes, sorry about that misinterpretation, but its just that when you had said that channels 41 & 44 "now" vary between no signal and poor it could be interpreted that they were there in the first place, however judging by what you have said I would say that there is a reasonably good chance of obtaining satisfactory reception from Wenvoe if you can presently receive it when your aerial is not only mounted in the wrong polarity, but not pointing at the station either, but though its one of these situations where only an on-site test would prove if you can or not.
By the way, I dont really know if any gain figure is mentioned on the aerial amplifier you purchased, and although I feel that anything under about 8 to 10dB isnt much use, but a factor that you always have to take into consideration is the issue of a TV or boxes tuner being desensitised by a nearby transmitter being sensed when attempting to pick up a signal from a more distant station, as this problem always gets worse the higher the gain in the amplifier being used, because as is rather obvious that both signals are amplified at the same time, and this is why I mentioned about trying to make the situation unfavourable as far as picking up your local transmitter is concerned.
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Saturday 5 May 2012 2:20PM
Mandy: If you are referring to the Sky boxes RF1 output being fed into the distribution amplifier in the loft then the answer is "yes" you can quite safely do that, as if each of the bedroom TV's are tuned (in analogue if dual standard TV's) to the RF channel sent out by the Sky box there should be no problems whatsoever with reception.