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All posts by jb38

Below are all of jb38's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.


Parsley: To give you an idea of the directions of the various transmitters the ones referred to are as follows / Emley Moor: 31 degrees @ 22 miles (H polarity) Winter Hill: 310 degrees @ 31 miles (H polarity) Sutton Coldfield: 175 degrees @ 51 miles (H polarity) Chinley: 271 degrees @ 0 miles (V polarity) Ladder Hill: 195 degrees @ 3 miles (V polarity) It should also be appreciated that when receiving signals that are predicted as being either not possible or alternatively out of range, that the the levels received can change dramatically within every few yards or so, and so a person on one side of a street can have virtually no signal at all whereas a house facing them on the other side of the street can have a reasonably strong enough signal to resolve a picture. Of course as aforementioned in previous reply this type of reception is generally prone to being affected by both atmospheric and seasonal changes, such as tree vegetation and ground reflections.

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Parsley: Yes, if you are viewing a channel and want to know what its Mux number is for cross checking purposes, carry out a signal strength / quality (on some) check and you will generally see the mux channel number associated with the level being indicated.

By the way if you are experimenting its best to use ITV3 then you know that you are not receiving from Chinley or Ladder Hill.

ITV3 muxes from various being /

Winter Hill: Ch58
Emley Moor: Ch51
Sutton Coldfield: Ch42

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Teji: Judging by what you have said is inclined to indicate that the boxes power unit is defective, this not exactly being an uncommon thing to happen, as the internal capacitors dry up through age / heat and this causes a drop in the voltage supplied to the boxes tuner, hence it either turns intermittent in operation or fails all together.

This said of course taking it that you have tried the box on one of the other boxes positions / feeds from the dish.

I cant quite determine if your card is a "free to view" type or you actually pay a monthly subscription to Sky, if the former then you dont require to do anything "or" even have the card inserted, although it is necessary to enable you to view the correct local news for your area, however if its the latter then just try it and it will possibly be OK, but if not you simply phone Sky and tell them you have a replacement box, they in turn will ask you for its serial number plus your card number, then they will OA (over air) download the changes into your card, this by the way can take about 3 or 4 hours on occasions.

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J
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Wednesday 26 September 2012 12:04AM

paula: Are you sure that the coax you refer to as the aerial isn't for satellite (Sky or Freesat) reception purposes? as "F" connectors (the screw type) are 90% or more of the time used for satellite reception, and with any time they aren't the "F" connector found in a living room was usually for purposes of it being screwed into a small power unit used to power either a loft or mast head amplifier, as many of these devices use that type of connection.

You can of course get an adaptor that has a female "F" socket on one side and a male coax connector on the other, TV shops are likely to have them, but I would try and determine the purpose of the "F" terminated coax, although the main thing is that you cannot damage anything if you purchased an adaptor, just possibly wasted your money!

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Parsley: In areas such as these I would think its extremely unlikely unless the signal was being reflected from some object, which of course will not be shown on any charts, as the coverage limits of Fenton in its extremities is only indicated as being possible in a patchy (very!) fashion to the left of Buxton.

I did also mean to say that with regards to the ITV3 channels mentioned, these were indicated along the lines of a manual tune being used to test if any signal was possible, as on the majority of Freeview devices if "manual" tune is selected and the channel number entered into the box, as soon as this is done the level the signal is being received at will immediately be shown on the scale, there is "no" need to scan the channel.

This procedure uses the receivers tuner to act purely like a signal meter, but though because of this even although a signal might well be seen it could be under the reception threshold of the set to resolve a picture, and as such if scanned nothing might be captured, so this should always be kept in mind.

I should also say that its appreciated not all Freeview TV's and boxes allow manual tuning, and some Sony TV's scart scanning as soon as the channel number is entered.

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Wednesday 26 September 2012 5:18PM

Malcolm Reynolds: Its impossible for anyone to answer this query without knowledge of your location, this in the form of a post code or at least one from nearby, eg: a shop etc, as its not possible to check on the transmitter covering your area without this info.

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DS: I was reading your posting and just out of curiosity was wondering that when you mention you are getting good reception on the BBC channels but less so on others, are you purely referring to transmissions from Whitby?

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J
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Wednesday 26 September 2012 9:29PM

William: Having read your latest postings I have to say that what you have found as the result of your various tests is as would be expected for the way your plate is wired up, but though that is the problem! as the 13/18 volts from the Sky box should not be appearing on the main aerial socket unless that outlet is supposed to be used with an isolater type connector.

Does anyone else in your building that you may have contact with use a satellite system? as it would be prudent to find out if they have been supplied an isolater adaptor for use with the plate.

Of course irrespective of that you can cure the problem by simply placing a small ceramic capacitor (value not critical but not under 100pf) in line with the main aerials output socket as that would kill the 13/18 volts being fed into the Sky boxes aerial input socket.

The other mod I would carry out is to either try and by-pass the capacitor on the bedroom wall plate, or if its a standard square socket you should purchase another with a straight through connection and swap the sockets over, as that would then allow your magic eye to operate.

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J
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Wednesday 26 September 2012 9:31PM

William: Also meant to ask if you had managed to copy down the info on the plate in question, especially the model of.

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J
Freeview HD - final dates | High definition
Wednesday 26 September 2012 10:55PM

Carole: What model of Sony TV do you have? as the term full HD is sometimes used incorrectly in the technical sense albeit legally correct.

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