All posts by Dave Lindsay
Below are all of Dave Lindsay's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
John McConnell: I have made a comment on the Margate page which you may be interested in:
Margate (Kent, England) transmitter | ukfree.tv - 10 years of independent, free digital TV advice
I wonder whether the coverage of the Margate transmitter was improved at switchover, in particular whether it serves those areas that you refer to. Judging by the direction of the attennas in photographs, it was only intended to serve the area to the west, possibly around Tivoli Park.
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Phil Hopkins: As Adrian Durrant says, you need Top Up TV, or it is available on BT Vision.
Strictly-speaking, Sky Sports 1 and Sky Sports 2 are not available on Freeview. "Freeview" is the brand name for the free-to-air digital terrestrial television (DTT) service. Sky Sports 1 and 2 are carried, encrypted, on the 81 full-DTT transmitters.
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jb38 (Billy): Do you think that there is the potential for the signal being picked up by the aerial and fed down the RF lead to be at such a low level or so poor that the signal carried along the HDMI cable could be being picked up in the RF lead? Maybe move the RF and HDMI leads apart or try removing the HDMI lead and powering up the Sky box, and then see if reception on the TV is better.
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J.T.Verrier: Pontypool does broadcast on C22, but it is COM5/ArqA which carries Pick TV and others.
PSB2: ITV Wales, S4C etc is on C26 and BBC is on C23 and not C21.
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jb38: The Digital UK predictor was giving me "Error 500" on Friday (or maybe Thursday). I wondered if they'd prevented me from looking at it due to doing so many requests!
I see that you're having difficulty and Mark Fletcher has said the same thing.
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Geoff C: There is no text, aka "Red Button", on HD.
BBC Red Button is only carried on the multiplex that carries BBC standard definition TV, and BBC radio.
See:
BBC - FAQs - Can I access the Red Button on BBC HD Channels on Freeview HD equipment?
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STEPEHN GOODALL: The BBC multiplex (Mux 1) is on lower power at 4.8kW. Mux D is even lower at 1.6kW. The rest are at 6kW.
There is probably little you can do until switchover in September.
You might be interested to know that now Olivers Mount has switched to digital, it is broadcasting at a higher power than its former analogue. If you were unable to receive it before, you "may" be able to do so now. This would obviously give you Yorkshire regional programming.
I can see on Streetview (photos taken January 2009, before Yorkshire switchover) that there are some vertically polarised aerials, although with Olivers Mount and the Hunmanby relay being in roughly the same direction, it isn't possible to sure which they are pointing at.
Hunmanby carries Public Service Broadcaster (PSB) channels only; they are BBC, ITV1, ITV2, Channel 4, E4, More 4, Channel 5, the four HD services and a few others. The other channels are the Commercial (COM) ones (ITV3, Pick TV, Yesterday, Film 4, Dave etc) and these are only carried by main transmitters, including Oliver's Mount and Bilsdale.
Oliver's Mount's PSBs' power is 2kW and its COMs are 1kW. You may be able to receive both; or, if its PSBs are only strong enough to reach your location, you could always combine (diplex) an aerial on Oliver's Mount with the Bilsdale one you have to give you the Yorkshire PSBs and COMs from Bilsdale (or PSBs from Bilsdale if you wish).
Unfortunately, if you can receive from Hunmanby, due to the UHF channels (frequencies) it and Bilsdale uses, it isn't possible to diplex two aerials in this situation. You could, of course, have two aerials and feed them into separate receivers.
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Stephen Goodall: Check that, for BBC services (BBC One, BBC Two etc), that it is tuned to UHF channel 34 by viewing the signal strength screen whilst on one of those channels. This is Bilsdale; Oliver's Mount is on C57 and Hunmanby is on C48.
If it turns out that it is tuned to C57 or C48, then run the automatic tuning scan through and unplug the aerial when it gets to 45% (or when it gets past UHF channel 42 if it gives these whilst scanning). This will scan channels used by Bilsdale, but miss out those of the two other stations.
Of course, it could be that Bilsdale's C34 isn't good enough to serve you, so you may find that your receiver won't pick it up.
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jb38: Thanks for posting about DUK Postcode Checker working now. I tried it an hour or so back and it was still off. It is now working for me.
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Thursday 16 August 2012 7:28PM
There are have been a few new PSB relay transmitters which were installed at switchover. Also, many transmitters post-switchover broadcast at a power that (theoretically) provides equivalent coverage to the former analogue. In order to cover the same area, digital transmitters are less powerful than the former analogue ones.
Margate is one of those which is radiating at a higher power, and considerably so. Before switchover, the analogue was transmitted at 20W and an equivalent digital signal would be at 4W. (This is to cover the same area.) However, the digital signals are now being broadcast at 200W.
mb21 says that the broadcast antennas are (or were) directional ones pointing roughly west:
mb21 - The Transmission Gallery
I'm not familiar with the area, but the Dover coverage map on this site shows a gap in the green "served" area which is to the west of the A254, around Tivoli Park. This would appear to be in the direction that the transmitting aerials are pointing. Therefore, I suggest that the Margate transmitter was installed originally to serve this pocket that would appear to have particular difficulty in receiving from Dover.
I wonder, why higher power signals after switchover? I wonder if this has been done in conjunction with a replacement antenna system that serves more than just the west. Have they (the ones shown on mb21) been changed for switchover?