All posts by Dave Lindsay
Below are all of Dave Lindsay's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Lucy: TV in the UK is broadcast from powerful main transmitters which spread their signals over large areas. Despite this, there are pockets where these signals cannot be received sufficiently from these main stations, usually caused by the terrain.
In these places small low power "filler in" transmitters are installed, such as that at Patcham so as to provide a service.
The channels that don't broadcast from Patcham are run by the Commercial operators. They operate solely to generate profit by selling advertising to advertisers. Their objective is therefore to gather as many viewers as possible (to watch the adverts) at lowest possible cost to them.
They have opted to transmit from 80 of the largest transmission sites (by viewer population) and achieve 90% coverage of the population.
There are around 1000 small transmitters like Patcham and for them to transmit from them would roughly double the amount of money they spend on transmitters. They were invited to transmit from more sites, but they declined.
The services that are broadcast from Patcham are the "Public Service" ones.
In some cases it is possible to have a new aerial fitted to pick up the full Freeview service from another transmitter.
| link to this comment |
Dave: No. Your best option would be to look with a view to receiving from Whitehawk if you can.
| link to this comment |
David, you have rather confirmed my suspicions. I was looking to see if the local electricity distributor (whatever it happens to be called today) carries reports of issues on its website.
It is SSE Power Distribution and messages have been posted on the Twitter feed (the author of which has signed of for the night):
southernelecPD (@southernelecPD) on Twitter
It was posted an hour ago that the majority of homes in Haslemere that lost power now have it back.
| link to this comment |
Brian Wood: The use of "Storeton Wales" is so as to distinguish from the Granada services that Storeton transmits. It carries the Wales Region channels towards Wales as well as Granada ones.
| link to this comment |
Richard Walker: With such close proximity to the transmitter, the signal level going into your tuner could be too high for it to cope with.
Have a look here:
Freeview signals: too much of a good thing is bad for you | ukfree.tv - independent free digital TV advice
Another thing to be aware of in your general area is that receivers may tune to Rowridge when doing their scan (because its signals are quite strong and/or because they will be found before Whitehawk when scanning). The trick here is to remove the aerial lead for the first 50% of the scan.
If you have a set-top aerial, then try it, at least as a test as it will pick up less signal, though whether it works will depend on location.
| link to this comment |
Tracy Gill: Retuning was necessary this morning because the Commercial services changed channel.
If you are missing BBC services, then you need to manually tune to channel 61. Running the automatic tuning scan just risks loosing others.
With such close proximity to the transmitter, your receiver could be being overwhelmed by the level of the signals going into it which could be the cause of your problem. Have you tried fitting an attenuator?
See here for an explanation:
Freeview signals: too much of a good thing is bad for you | ukfree.tv - independent free digital TV advice
You can pick them up for a few pounds on eBay:
VARIABLE ATTENUATOR TV SIGNAL REDUCER 20dB 3 5 6 9 10 12 15 18 DIGITAL FREEVIEW | eBay
| link to this comment |
Katy: It would appear that you are probably picking up West from Mendip instead of Central from Oxford.
Is your aerial facing Oxford?
The easiest way, if your set allows, is to change the "Region" or "Network" and that is in practice selecting the transmitter.
It may well be the case that your box has stored the Oxford channels in the 800s. Consequently, manual tuning to Oxford may not move its services to the proper positions (1 being BBC One etc). Depending on the design, the box may just do nothing because as far as it's concerned, then channels are already stored.
You really need to wipe the channels from the memory before attempting a manual retune. How you achieve this will depend on how the box works. For example, on some you may be able to run the automatic tuning scan through with the aerial unplugged to "blank" its memory. On others this will result in it telling you that nothing was found during the scan and that it has retained the channel line-up it had before!
What is the make and model of the box? I may be able to find the instructions for it online and make further suggestions.
| link to this comment |
Simon: I must echo the thoughts of Richard Davis. The fact that reducing the level of the signal going into your tuner does not improve matters suggests that the signals are overloading the amplifier.
| link to this comment |
margaret: To get the missing channels, you need to got to the manual tune function on your receiver (assuming that it has one) and tune to channel 55.
Where is your aerial pointing? Is it pointing east north east? Or is it pointing north west?
It should be pointing east north east in order to receive the Freeview channels as only Pontop Pike is broadcasting them.
There are engineering works at Pontop Pike this week which means that digital TV is liable to interruption and analogue may be subject to weak signal (although with your close proximity I shouldn't think that will be an issue for you).
You should therefore not retune your set because when the signals come back, they will be as they were before; in the same place.
As I say, you will have to keep trying manually tuning to channel 55 until they come back.
| link to this comment |
Tuesday 27 March 2012 8:36PM
John: Good to hear you got it sorted.
It was the HDMI lead; as simple as that!