All posts by Dave Lindsay
Below are all of Dave Lindsay's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Alan Philpott: Might you be in the "Guildford Notch"; the side of the low power pre-switchover digital transmitter that throws out much less signal in that direction?
See here:
My Freeview box has no EPG, is blank on FIVE, ITV3, ITV4, ITV2+1, has no sound or the channel line up is wrong | ukfree.tv - independent free digital TV advice
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Bill Hill: You are much closer to the Eyemouth transmitter than Lesley, which makes a set-top aerial more likely to work.
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Steve Flynn: If you do have an issue receiving from Haslemere, you could perhaps reduce the height of your aerial. I see from Streetview that you are on quite a slope and that the Haslemere transmitter can be seen quite clearly sticking out of the trees on the opposite hill. Perhaps you can mount it on one side of the house so that the house acts to block the signal from Crystal Palace.
It shouldn't be the case that you should have to do any of this and you shouldn't have to switch regional programming by using Crystal Palace either.
Mike Dimmick: I understand that the idea is that the PSBs will cover the same area that the four analogue channels did and also that these will be in-group channels, meaning that no adjustment or replacement of aerial should be needed for them. In some cases, aerial replacement is needed for COMs.
Steve Flynn "may" have to change his aerial in order to receive from his local relay so that the COMs can have in-group channels for the London area. Haslemere is a low power transmitter so its coverage isn't that great. There has been two reports in this forum of people in TN35 5EE and 5EF (a couple of miles ENE of Hastings) being predicted as not being able to use their local transmitter (Hastings) when Crystal Palace's COMs come on air, despite the fact that they get an excellent signal now.
Is this a case of "Public Service" being sacrificed in order to satisfy the Commercial operators in and around the Capital?
Group A has been reduced to 10 channels in order for the majority of the 30s to be cleared for the sole use of a number of operators. Had there been a plan where channels are shared to provide best coverage rather than ringfencing some, then there would surely have been no need for the Haslemere/Hastings and Crystal Palace clash.
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pms421: The Henley-on-Thames doesn't broadcast Freeview presently. When it does (in April) it will only carry the Public Service Broadcaster channels. Thus, if your aerial is pointing at Henley, then your current digital reception isn't as good as it might be due to this.
See the Digital UK tradeview predictor (click the link next to your posting). It shows the UHF channel numbers used by each transmitter.
It also gives the angle of each transmitter and polarisation. You say your aerial is ENE; if it is horizontal, then you are directed at Crystal Palace. If you get a bit of something at the moment, then come the power increase in April, you "should" get everything without the need for changing aerial.
There is never any guarantee; crystal balls don't exist, hence the "should" can never be 100%. The only way to say for certain is to try it, but from what you describe, it looks very favourable.
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Lesley: You can get Freesat using the same dish as you presently use for Sky. This will give you more channels.
There are a few channels such as Dave that are not on Freesat that are on the Freeview full service and it looks as though Chatton is your only possibility for this at your location.
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Lesley: See this page for a comparison of Freeview vs Freesat:
Compare Freeview and Freesat TV | ukfree.tv - independent free digital TV advice
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Jane: The Freeview recorder should have an aerial in connector and an aerial out connector. Feed the aerial in to the Freeview recorder and then connect the aerial out to the aerial in on the TV. The recorder should have come with a lead for you to do this, or you may have one, for example one previously for a video recorder.
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ADRIAN: Perhaps you are in a marginal area for reception of ITV1, C4 etc on digital. The digital UK predictor certainly suggests that this one multiplex (group of programme channels) is "marginal" whereas the others are "good".
For this reason it might sometimes be available and sometimes not. Resetting and retuning is not good and should be avoided as now you have not got these services in your tuner's memory whereas if they were, you could switch over to number 3 to see if ITV1 was back.
The only time you should retune is when the services change channel when switchover occurs.
If there is a manual tune option on the device in question, then you need to manually tune to channel 22. If it doesn't pick anything up (or at least not a strong enough signal to provide a picture), then try again at a different time.
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ADRIAN: There were engineering works at Crystal Palace last week, in preparation for switchover. Perhaps whatever it was has changed your reception slightly, but enough for your I-Can not to have enough signal to operate. The other possibility is that the signal level has dropped due to some atmospheric change and may change back.
If you have no joy manually tuning to channel 22 (using the digital part of your receiver), then from 7th March the power of Reigate's equivalent multiplex (which carries ITV1,ITV2,C4,C5 etc) will be increased ten-fold and it is on channel 21. Your aerial is the wrong polarisation (horizontal when it needs to be vertical for Reigate) and is pointing a bit in the wrong direction, but it might work to some degree. It is a try it and see sort of thing. It might be better than nothing until switchover on 18th April.
I tried looking online for a user manual for the I-CAN device, but have been unsuccessful. I was hoping to be more specific as to what it is you need to do (i.e. which buttons to press) having found out how it works. If you know of the manufacturer's name and/or website for it, then it might be useful to this end.
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Friday 10 February 2012 3:02PM
Steve Flynn: Looking at the list, Crystal Palace and Rowridge use the same three channels for their commercial (COM) services and they switchover in April. So the reason it drops is probably due to possible interference.