All posts by jb38
Below are all of jb38's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Lisa: To access the signal level etc of Pick TV (EPG11) you have to press "guide" and select "full guide" then highlight Pick TV EPG11 on the list, and if you then press the "info" button you will (or should!) see a number of different details concerning all aspects of that channel and including the quality, this info being taken from page 13 of your TV's user manual.
My main reason for wanting to know this information is, that once its known what signal level Pick is being received at you can then try exactly the same test on BBC or ITV1 and note if they are being picked up at a significantly higher level, as if they are then the easiest way to get over the problem is to purchase or borrow a signal booster to lift the overall signal levels being received, because and as aforementioned, I feel that the signal is there but is just under the reception threshold of your TV and that's why these channels are not seen, as I am located at 39 miles N/NW from Sandy and Ch48 and Ch51 are received at roughly the same level as CH52, albeit that I do appreciate that certain parts of Northampton can suffer from poor reception.
By the way you cannot tune in 11, as its purely an EPG (electronic programme guide) number and not an actual frequency.
Its fully understandable about you not wishing to knock any strangers door and I think that most people would feel the same, but its a pity that you don't know anyone with a simple Freeview set top box as for a test you could borrow that and couple it into your TV using a scart lead, as it would be almost guaranteed to have a more straightforward menu system making it easier to carry out a few tests over that used in the Samsung, Samsung's and LG's being nightmares to navigate through.
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betty_chienne: Many thanks for your update and pleased to hear that the wire aerial test was successful insomuch that somewhat proved that you are indeed receiving an excessively high level of signal.
As far as the final situation is concerned, and apart from what Dave Lindsay has mentioned, but you could just do as you have said and purchase a non-amplified simple set top aerial, although another trick that you could try using the original coax feed is to take the coax plug off the end of it and pull the braiding back over the centre core insulation so that more of it is showing, then take a single piece of wire and wind it around the centre core insulation giving it about six turns or so and securing it in place with a piece of masking tape or sellotape so that it doesn't unwind, then plug the single wire into the aerial socket.
By rights two pieces of wire should really have been connected to the coax plug that was removed, and with the coax plugs outer connected to the coax cables outer screen, likewise the middle of the plug connected to the wire that's wrapped around the middle core of the coax, the reason for this being that there is less likelihood of picking up interference.
By the way, "if" by any chance the signal is still to strong then take one turn off at a time until you achieve the desired result, as what you have done is make a type of attenuator.
Apart from trying that procedure you could just purchase a variable attenuator of 0 to 20db and place that in line with the aerial socket, is just that there has been instances where even a 0-20db did not reduce it enough, this being why I mentioned the wrapped wire technique as it doesn't cost anything.
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Mark Hayman: As you are not that terribly far away from the Thetford relay I feel that you might be better to try manually tuning in the muxes required from Tacolneston, as if an auto-tune is carried out its very likely to result in you picking up the BBC mux on Ch26 from Thetford, but because of its proximity to yourself is possibly blocking EPG's 1's position even although the actual channel cannot be viewed, and with this possibly because of an excessively high level of signal being received albeit that its only an 8 watts transmitter, but will appear far in away stronger to a receiver that's situated at only a mile or less away.
You should "factory reset" your TV or box to eliminate all channels stored and then select "manual tune" on whatever you are using and enter the following Tacolneston channels one at a time, these being: 55 - 59 - 62(HD) - 42 - 45 - 50.
Of course the above having been said taking it that the transmitter is operating correctly, as there seems to be a great deal of work being carried out at Tacolneston.
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Max: A short circuit on a satellite cable cannot actually burn anything albeit that if left this way for hours on end it could damage the boxes tuners power circuit.
I have never known an actual LNB to short circuit as such, as its usually always a single strand of wire that has accidentally wrapped itself around the inner core of the cable whilst an "F" connector plug was being screwed on, so unscrew the "F" connectors at either end one at a time and carefully check for what was mentioned.
It is of course also possible for water to have entered the connector at the dish end, but even although that might have killed the signal the level of short circuit it creates would be unlikely to damage the box in the same way as would a strand of wire.
Matter of fact, if one of your boxes gives an LNB short circuit warning then unscrew the "F" connector on the dish and see if the warning vanishes or not, if it does NOT then its the cable, or "F" connectors used on.
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Shelley Glover: On the rear of a Sky box apart from the black two pin mains connection that's used in all sorts of devices as well as a Sky box, the only other connections are two "F" type threaded connectors that the hexagonal rings on the "F" type coax plugs screw onto, then of course there is either a scart lead or maybe an HDMI type if the Sky box is an HD type.
So using what has been mentioned for reference could you please indicate what connections you are meaning? as the only possible one I can think of is the "F" type used on the coax, as these come in about four different sizes and with all being obtainable, this being why you should cut about an inch off the end of the coax and take that into a shop to make sure that any "F" connector plug you might look at can screw over the cable.
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Mark Hayman; Yes no problem, although depending entirely on the tuning menu system in whatever device you are using offers you could just manually tune in the BBC from Tacolneston on mux Ch55 then use the channels up-date or whatever your menu calls it to fill in the remainder of the channels as this somewhat shortens the procedure, its just that the tuning menu facilities offered in different brands of devices are all different, this making it impossible to give exact instructions.
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Shelley Glover: I did of course mean to add that as far as health and safety issues are concerned this only applies to the two pin plastic mains plug, as any other connections seen involve very low voltages in the order of approx 18 volts maximum on the "F" plug threaded connector stubs.
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Lisa: What you have now found would somewhat back up what I had previously mentioned about me suspecting that these two channels are actually there but just under the reception threshold of your TV's tuner, and with the only reason for you capturing them on this occasion being one of pure luck due to atmospheric conditions being favourable, and so its imperative that you do "NOT" under any circumstances carry out any further retunes on your TV if you find that the channels have vanished again, as even although these channels are now locked in your tuners memory they would be instantly wiped off it again if the retune button is pressed.
The other point is, and without wishing to sound too pessimistic, but I fully expect that you will lose them again when conditions revert to normal, but when this happens its very likely that they can be easily recovered by using a booster of about 10db in line with the TV's aerial socket to lift the signal slightly, as its either that or have your aerial changed to a wideband one "if" its not already one that's been fitted, of course needless to say that if it is then the booster is the only way around your problem.
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Lisa: If I could explain in simple terms the reason for your problem.
Its like you looking up at a short range of hills where on the left hand side of them you see a nice even slope all the way down to the ground level, whereas on the right hand side of them a slope is seen to come down so far then it suddenly drops to the ground, i.e: a cliff edge.
Analogue TV reception corresponds to the left hand side of the range, with speckle free reception being obtained to about a third of the way down before a grainy / speckly aspect is noticed to be creeping into the background of the picture from that position downwards, this grainy effect increasing to the point where the picture is actually in the background of the speckles.
Digital television on the other hand gives exactly the same quality of reception from the top of the hill all the way down until it reaches a point where it starts encroaching on a section near to the edge of the cliff referred to, reception in this section usually suffering from intermittent picture freezing and general pixelation being noticed, but though if it passes this point then the signal disappears completely over the edge of the cliff resulting in a blank screen, your missing channels not necessarily having fallen completely over but hanging under the cliff edge, and with the only way to "pull" them up again being to boost the level of the signal that's received and hence why I mentioned the aerial amplifier.
By the way, these channels stored in your TV's memory are "never" lost unless you retune the TV, or alternatively if the set develops a fault of a nature that requires it to be reset, although some older sets with limited memory capacity can also lose channels stored it the number picked up during a rescan exceeds the capacity of the tuners memory store, this always showing up if a TV or box is switched off immediately after a retune as the new channels will have gone, this being why its always best to retune after having reset a device.
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Saturday 26 May 2012 12:39AM
Matt: Meant also to include, that you should check the software version that's installed in your Philips as it should be 7.21, this having been "over air" downloaded on 20.06.2011.