All posts by StevensOnln1
Below are all of StevensOnln1's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Robert Price: The post above yours warns of engineering work taking place at The Wrekin this week. Unfortunately they never say how long the work is due to last as it is dependent on weather conditions and other factors (engineers cannot climb up the transmitter mast in heavy rain or high winds etc).
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Nicholas Anderson: Ofcom have already announced that they expect the remaining BBC and commercial AM stations to close by 2027. Absolute Radio already closed their national AM station a few months ago and most of the local AM licences owned by Bauer Media have already closed, with Global Radio announcing the closure of most of theirs along with Gold London. Radio 4 LW will cease to have separate programming from March 2024 and will likely close completely in another year or 2 once the energy companies who are currently funding it no longer need 198 LW to broadcast the switching signals for Economy 7 meters. Most BBC local stations have also closed their AM transmitters over the last 10 years.
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Fiona Beattie: RTE1 and RTE2 are both broadcast on the same multiplex (NI mux) at low power from Divis and at higher power from the nearby Black Mountain transmitter. Have you checked whether RTE1 is listed in the 800 channel range on the Humax anywhere? It may be worth doing a factory reset on the Humax to clear the channel list completely (make a note of any planned recordings first) then let the box do an initial scan.
If that doesn't work, please provide a full postcode so that we can see the predicted signal strength at your location.
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Mike O'Sullivan: Smithsonian Channel closed completed several months ago. Some of their content was supposed to be being made available on Pluto TV and some on Paramount+.
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A parks: Belmont is listed for engineering work this week, however work doesn't usually take place after dark for safety reasons. It's possible that there was some sort of fault or it could have been the result of local interference caused by electrical noise from something near to you drowning out the signal from the transmitter.
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Paul Robinson: Nobody is "messing around" with the transmitter. All engineering work that is carried out is essential to ensure that the structure is properly maintained and that all services are able to continue operating reliably. This will mean occasional interruptions to services as some works cannot safely take place whilst the transmitter equipment is operating at full power. Most work is also weather dependent as the engineers cannot safely work in high winds or heavy rain etc.
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Steve Connelly: There may be some additional coverage provided to fill gaps when FM services are switched off, but this is likely to be around the end of the decade and so far no plans have been announced. Listening online or via Freeview or a Sky/Freesat box are generally the easiest ways to listen to stations which don't have coverage at your home.
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Fred Hotchen : The commercial broadcasters are generally only interested in covering areas with a large population. If a transmitter doesn't cover one or more large towns or cities that aren't already covered by another transmitter then it's unlikely that national commercial stations will be bothered by having a gap in their coverage.
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wz: The only way for the BBC to make all of their stations available on DAB in stereo would be to convert them to DAB+ which would lead to millions of older DAB radios being unable to receive them as there is no spare capacity left on the BBC National mux. The BBC have already announced plans to close Radio 4 Extra as a linear station and make archive content available on BBC Sounds, so it's unlikely that it will ever exist in stereo on DAB.
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Wednesday 9 August 2023 10:52AM
Nicholas Anderson: Internet delivered TV has been around for 20+ years (TalkTalk TV began life as Homechoice back in 2000 before they were bought by Tiscali who were then taken over by TalkTalk - also BT TV was launched back in 2006 as BT Vision). For quite a few years internet TV services required a separate box, but smart TVs were around much earlier than 2015 (we have an LG 2013 model and they were on sale a few years before that).