All posts by Dave Lindsay
Below are all of Dave Lindsay's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Harish: If your aerial is directed to Bluebell Hill, then manually tune to C24.
If you have no joy, then wait until this Wednesday when Bluebell Hill completes switchover and ITV, C4 and C5 go to full power.
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H. Brown: The fact that you are receiving London programming is crucial and shows that your receiver is tuned to another transmitter - Crystal Palace. This explains why you may have poor reception; because the signals being received are from a different direction to which your aerial faces.
When the receiver performs the automatic tuning scan, it looks through UHF channel numbers (equivalent to frequencies) from 21 to 69. All of Crystal Palace's are in the 20s and 30, with Sudbury's lowest being 41 up to 60. Tacolneston's are interleaved with Sudbury's.
So to avoid Crystal Palace, have the aerial unplugged for the first 30% of the scan (or until it gets up to UHF channel 35 if it gives these during scanning).
There is, of course, always the possibility that, having dealt with Crystal Palace, there is another transmitter that is favoured over Sudbury. You will have to deal with that should you find it. It is a good idea to confirm that all is tuned correctly to the desired transmitter, so as not to find out when you want to watch something that reception is poor because it is incorrectly tuned.
See here for a list of multiplexes (three PSBs and three COMs) which are groups of services (those with a bullet in the "E"/England column apply):
DMOL Post-DSO Multiplex Channel Allocations
From Sudbury there are six multiplexes, each taking up one UHF channel. Each former analogue service used one UHF channel.
For one service from each multiplex, check that it is tuned to Sudbury by looking on the signal strength screen:
PSB1 | BBC One | C44
PSB2 | ITV1 | C41
PSB3 | BBC One HD | C47
COM4 | ITV3 | C58
COM5 | Pick TV | C60
COM6 | Yesterday | C56
Here I have given the first service within each multiplex (see the link for the full list).
For example, bring up Pick TV (number 11), and then bring up the signal strength screen. It should say that it is tuned to C60 for Sudbury. If it is C45, for example, then it is tuned to Tacolneston instead.
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Alan Reed: No, Eastbourne South Tower is a Public Service relay only. This is because the Commercial broadcasters don't wish to pay to transmit from small sites like this because they consider it not worth the expense.
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Nick Anderon: I assume that your native transmitter is Bluebell Hill.
The fact that you are receiving London means that your receiver has tuned to Crystal Palace.
Unplug the aerial for the first 30% of the automatic tuning scan to miss out Crystal Palace frequencies.
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Peter: Ensure that 5* is tuned to C58 which is the signal from Sudbury. This information is usually given on the signal strength screen.
If it's not, post what it is and I will see if I can suggest a workaround.
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MW: No. The Commercial broadcasters do not wish to invest over a 1,000 small transmitters like East Grinstead.
They achieve 90% coverage from 81 of the largest transmitters (largest by viewer population). To include the small transmitters would roughly double their cost of transmission whilst only adding 8.5% of the population to their potential viewer base.
They have no "Public Service" obligation and operate purely for profit.
The only thing you can do is investigate the possibility of receiving from another transmitter that carries the Commercial channels. In some cases this may mean going to some lengths.
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Collette Murphy: The Licence Fee does not guarantee reception of signals and it does not provide support with reception issues.
If you are using a television receiver, then by law you must have a TV Licence. If you sell all your receivers, then you can stop paying your TV Licence.
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Julian Fraser: You can't really compare signal strength meters between devices. However, you can compare the strengths of the different multiplexes with the same device. See if 56 and 58 are quite a bit lower than BBC and ITV on 44 and 41 respectively. This would tend to suggest that your Group B aerial is not good enough for C60 which quite a bit out of group.
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Sunday 24 June 2012 8:33PM
Nick Cleave: Where does your aerial point? If it is directed to the Dartmouth relay transmitter (which appears most likely) then it does not broadcast ITV3 or any of the other Commercial multiplexes.
Refer to the list of Freeview services by multiplex (those with a bullet in the "E"/England column apply):
DMOL Post-DSO Multiplex Channel Allocations
There are six multiplexes, including PSB3 which is the HD one (and is therefore unavailable for non-HD receivers).
The Dartmouth transmitter on Waterpool Road only carries the Public Service (PSB) multiplexes and isn't ever likely to carry the COMs because those Commercial broadcasters don't wish to invest in the small transmitters because they don't see it as worthwhile.