All posts by Jonathan Snowden
Below are all of Jonathan Snowden's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.J
Lancaster (Lancashire, England) Full Freeview transmitterSaturday 2 February 2013 10:16PM
Carnforth
Thanks JB38 - we are lucky to have one of the few lines of sight in Arnside to the Kellett transmitter. My installation was put in about four years ago, with a high gain aerial and amplifier, and even in the days of the transmitter only being 200W, I could receive all of the freeview channels. My boxes can see a signal on channel 25, which like the others registers a good to very good carrier signal. However, UNLIKE the others, channel 25 now registers no signal QUALITY at all. This is very strange, as the others are all showing a good to very good signal AND signal quality. The four HD channels bring in rock steady reception on my £19 Tesco HD Box (no frills here) so I am still scratching my head a bit. None of the wiring has been changed, all other boxes are working as they did, but they ALL register the same problem with channel 25. By the way - do you know what this placeholder is doing for Dave ja vu on 791?
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Thanks everyone - that will give me a lot to go on. I'm not sure about Caldbeck, as I can't seem to register any of its other MUXs, so I don't think it is the problem. Different boxes in the house have regularly been foxed by transmissions from the Isle of Man, and one decided to display the listings details for two local Manchester freeview channels a while back (Channel M? I think?). We do have sky in three rooms, so it's not like I can't watch the missing freeview channels at all, just a pain that they were working perfectly and then vanished. Never mind. As for the "correct" region, I simply do not understand why ITV didn't put Granada right up the West Coast to the Borders when it had the chance - we are after all in the North WEST. Living so close to Lancaster, I'm not remotely interested in goings on in Newcastle. All this technology, and they don't care enough to sort things out. Another reason to point the aerial at Lancaster is that we woollybacks in the sticks do actually buy products advertised on TV, therefore half a freeview with the news from the other side of the country is NOT good enough! Thanks again for all your comments. I will go through them all again and see what I can find out about the sudden death of Ch25.
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The tv aerial does not go through the sky box at all. It splits at the aerial, with one feed to TVs at the back of the house, and the other to TVs at the front. It goes through a TELEVES amplifier when it enters the house. Without this, no signal is received at all. In the last couple of days Channel 25 has started to show a SIGNAL quality of "VERY GOOD" when you first tune it, but by the time you press the button to scan for freeview channels, it has returned to "NONE". The carrier quality remains at good to very good, and seems very stable. Busy couple of weeks coming up, so I don't know how much messing about with freeview I will have the chance to do.
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We recently went to stay in Hertford, looking forward to seeing Look East again after many years. The Sandy Heath signal was great, especially as Crystal Palace seemed to drop out a lot and the BBC London News was almost exclusively London-Centric. Something strange kept happening during the BBC One O'clock news that makes me wonder how the Sandy heath transmitter is fed with the right regional service - At the start of the programme there is a ten second opt out for regions to say what is coming up in their own news. Bearing in mind we were definitely tuned to BBC East (W), the picture and sound defaulted to BBC NEWS CHANNEL with a sport preview, and the subtitles gave a printed version of what we could expect on BBC LONDON NEWS. Then, at the right point at the end of the news, BBC LOOK EAST dutifully appeared! A bit confusing, and I expect the majority of viewers might not care, but is there a good reason for it happening like that?
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Dave Lindsay: Hi, we were there for a week, and it happened each weekday. During the six o'clock everything seemed to be OK at the beginning and the halfway point when they have to tiny regional opt outs to say what's coming up.
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Saturday 2 February 2013 11:30AM
Carnforth
Hi - since the beginning of the year, the channels on COM4/Ch25 have disappeared, and no amount of factory resetting on any of SIX different freeview boxes will bring them back? It started with a message about the return of Dave ja Vu, which did not return as billed on Freeview 25, but seems to be a place-holder only now, on Ch791. As usual i will have missed something obvious, but I can't see what it is! Help!