All posts by Gordon Insley
Below are all of Gordon Insley's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Phil Draper:
Phil,
From where you are located (Melbourne area) you should be able to receive good signals on all mux's from both Waltham and Sutton Coldfield. You are roughly equidistant from Waltham and Sutton Coldfield.
Waltham transmits most channels at 50KW and some at 25KW whereas all Sutton Coldfields transmissions are 200KW. So, Sutton Coldfield wins that contest.
Provided there is no hill, tall building(s), tree's in direct line of sight from your aerial to the intended transmitter and the aerial is outdoors not in the loft then there should be no problem receiving good quality reception from either of the transmitters.
If you have some old grouped C/D aerial i.e. not wideband, then that might be your problem. If that's the case then swap out your old aerial for a Fracarro Log-Periodic LP45NF or Televes DAT HD (available with built-in amp). Both are wideband high gain aerials (11.5dB & 17dB/active 29dB), the log-periodic being a little more critical on alignment (more rifle shot that shotgun). With a decent aerial you may not need a mast head amplifier unless the cable run is >15m or more. And a wideband antenna will see you through the requirements for reception following the new channel frequency changes (2017-2020) that are coming soon.
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Lesley.
You may find that your Freeview DVR has a setting in the 'Settings' menu to extend the record time beyond the posted time that the programme finishes. This is usually tens of second or up to two or three minutes and is there for just such occassions when programmes overrun slightly. You may also want to check the digital clock on the DVR (if it has one) as that can sometimes affect the start stop times, if the clock is fast it will start recording early and finish early.
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StevensOnln1...........
Thank you for the info and the link for Freeview Mux / Channel info
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Colin Sharp:
If the signal from the Panasonic loop-thro to the TV works OK then the Panasonic PVR might need a retune.
Try retuning the Panasonic PVR?
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SaID.
You have little or no chance of receiving a stable Freeview signal from the Waltham transmitter at your location on Broadway / Penny Long Lane as the location is too low down in a dip relative to the location of the Waltham transmitter 38km to the east, roughly Darley Park direction). Conversely the direction of the Sutton Coldfield transmitter (roughly in the direction of the A38 South) is flatter territory and more open and will provide you with a better more stable signal.
Who ever installed your new aerial should have been well aware of the best direction to align it.
I would suggest you get them back to adjust the direction of the aerial to target the Sutton Coldfield transmitter, which incidentally pumps out four times the transmit power (eight times for some of the lower powered 25KW Multiplex's) compared to Waltham.
Good luck with your aerial adjustment.
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P Lamb - Uttoxeter
Recent changes to the transmission format and frequencies for some Freeview channels has made them unreceivable by older TV's since they are transmitted in T2 format (old being 5 / 6 years of age or more).
If your TV does not have a compatible Freeview tuner that wil handle both T1 & T2 transmission formats then certain channels will now be unavailable. To solve the problem you could use a T1 / T2 compible Freeview digi-box or replace the TV with one that is T1/T2 compliant.
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Why are we seeing these repeated weekly notices that have been continuosly posted for months now about poor reception on both the Waltham and Sutton Coldfield Freeview TV transmitters?
Is there some lengthy engineering work ongoing on with the masts or transmitting equipment? or some other reason?
Please advise
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Monday 30 May 2016 4:34PM
Don't forget there could be the possibility of interference from any of the local 4G tranmitter(s) or in house RF devices, as is becoming a more frequent issue.
A 4G filter on the incoming terrestrial coax can fix the first item, moving your wireless router-modem and / or cordless phone / cellphone could be a fix for the other.