All posts by Dave Lindsay
Below are all of Dave Lindsay's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
sparky: The BBC standard definition channels from CP are now at full switchover power whereas the rest are not.
Check that BBC One is coming in on UHF channel 23 as at the first stage of switchover relays begin broadcasting BBC digital for the first time and being high up your receiver could have tuned to one of them for BBC.
Also ensure that the RF out (if there is one) does not clash although I doubt it as C23 was used previously for ITV analogue anyway.
Depending on what you find, worst case scenario may be that you will have to use the set-top aerial for one and the roof-top one for the other until 18th April when you will see if it rights itself.
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sparky: Also, does your recorder have two tuners in and if so does the problem occur when recording from one mux and watching (via the recorder) from it? Or is it just when watching another mux via your TV's own in-built tuner?
Without the blind in the way, how does your set-top aerial fair with respect to recording BBC One and watching ITV1 or vice versa?
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m kinsella: The simplest method to get it back on to Crystal Palace is probably to run the automatic tuning scan with the aerial plugged in and then unplug when it gets to 30%. Once completed plug the aerial back in and it will hopefully have tuned to Crystal Palace.
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The transmitter network is operated by Arqiva. On its contact page there is a link to click if you have problems with reception:
Contact Us - Corporate Arqiva
However, this simply provides links and phone numbers for the broadcasters!
As Arqiva is the company responsible for getting the transmitter back on the air, one would assume that it will be best placed to tell you.
Arqiva has a monitoring station at the Emley Moor transmitter, tel 01924 508100. Whilst Buxton is not part of the Emley Moor group, perhaps they can advise.
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m kinsella: Crystal Palace uses low channels and Dover higher ones up. Unfortunately Blue Bell Hill uses one the is within those used by CP, so the unplugging aerial trick isn't so easy. Now you've supplied your post code it can be seen what's possibly causing issues. When the second switchover happens on 18th April, this may not be a problem.
At the present moment in time there are the following channels (in ascending order):
22 CP ITV1
23 CP BBC One (full power)
24 BB ITV1
27 BB ITV3
28 CP BBC Four
29 CP Yesterday
32 CP ITV3
34 CP Pick TV
CP= Crystal Palace BB=Blue Bell Hill
If your TV allows manual tuning, then use it. You may have to wipe everything stored in it first. If it will allow manual tuning but only once it has completed a scan and found something, then aim to pick up at least one of the CP multiplexes and then add the rest.
In any case, if you do scan, have the aerial unplugged after 30% as there are no CP channels higher than that.
By the way, the scan runs from channel 21 to 69, so you can calculate a percentage from that if your receiver does not give UHF channel numbers as it's scanning.
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john tatman: If you have not received Freeview before 4th April, then the rest will become available to you on 18th April.
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Martyn Smith: From the description of the fact that you have turned your aerial away from where it used to face I suspect that your aerial is way OTT which is overloading your tuner.
Before switchover the power of Crystal Palace was/is 20kW. Where line of sight to the transmitter is good, a small set-top aerial is likely to be sufficient.
I used a non-powered set-top aerial at 25 miles from Emley Moor before switchover when transmission power was only 10kW. This worked quite well. I have one of these Labgear aerials:
Set Top Aerial Labgear | eBay
The fact that signal quality is so low may have come about due to the signal level being way too high for what the TV can cope with. It's a bit like turning up your hifi to full blast and then amplifying it a bit more. The outcome is total distortion which could explain the poor signal quality in your case.
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Mark T: What about the additional electricity of all the set-top boxes that are on standby that would not be needed had TVs had digital tuners built-in? What about all the plasma TVs? And all the flat-screen TVs that don't bother with hard power switches, instead taking power in standby?
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Ray Buck: This problem usually comes about because the device does not have spare memory for some channels. There is usually a workaround because the device is likely to be picking up and storing channels from other transmitters (that in practice you probably don't watch). It's a bit like children eating sweets and then not having room for tea.
Examination of the frequencies used by Reigate shows that the new BBC channels use C60 which is at the high end. Indeed, Yesterday etc is even higher, so I wouldn't be surprised if that behaves the same. The automatic tuning scan goes from low frequency to high.
The workaround is to prevent the device from picking up those other signals that waste its memory. If manual tuning is available, then wiping the memory and manually tuning should work.
In some cases you can unplug the aerial lead during part of the scan to avoid picking up some signals. However, I'm not entirely sure how likely this might be effective here as interleaved with Reigate channels are those of Crystal Palace and possibly Midhurst.
The automatic tuning scan goes from channels 21 to 69.
My advice would be to run the automatic tuning scan and pick up ITV1, C4 etc on C21 and then unplug the aerial.
Then manually add C60 (BBC), C24 (ITV3 etc), C39 (Pick TV) and C66 (Yesterday etc).
Come 18th April, do the same. This time C21 (the first channel it will pick up) will be ITV3 etc. Then add C60 (BBC), C57 (ITV1, C4 etc), C24 (Pick TV etc) and C27 (Yesterday etc).
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Thursday 5 April 2012 1:42PM
Jemma: I don't know whether you know, but there have been power failures in the area over the last few days due to the weather.
This report, posted at 0721 this morning, says that power has been restored to all affected areas in Derbyshire:
BBC News - Power restored across Derbyshire following snow storm
Give the main BBC Derby switchboard a ring (01332 361111) and see if anyone knows when it might be back on. Then post on here to let others know.