All posts by Dave Lindsay
Below are all of Dave Lindsay's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Keith Collinge: No. Dave is only available via Sky's satellite subscription service and free-to-air via Freeview, although not everywhere that Freeview is available.
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Alex: Digital UK Postcode Checker suggests that you might have a good chance of reception from Whitehawk Hill, which would allow you to watch BBC South East. A look at your road on Streetview shows a fairly even mix of aerials on Whitehawk and aerials on Rowridge.
If you decide to have an aerial fitted for Whitehawk whilst retaining the Rowridge one, whilst the installer is up there, it might be worth getting the Rowridge aerial switched for vertical polarisation so as to take advantage of the stronger Commercial multiplexes (which are stronger vertically).
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Dave Lindsay: I assumed that the "coverage" you were referring to was that of the signal. I wonder now if you were in fact referring to the area that the news reports relate to.
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Northern Powergrid (that's name for the local electricity distribution board today) said in a tweet that supplies had been restored in Halifax by 18:45:
Twitter / Northpowergrid: Supplies completely restored ...
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dennis: I guess that you're receiving your TV from Winter Hill (or not as the case may be).
Refer to the page for the transmitter (by clicking its name above):
-> "Transmitter works 23 August 2012: Engineering transmitter work will take place between 00:01hrs and 06:00hrs. TV services that will be disrupted: Analogue services - n/a Digital services - PSB1, PSB2, PSB3, COM4, COM5 and COM6 will be subject to periods of shutdown."
-> "Over the next week Winter Hill main transmitter: TV (digital) Liable to interruption, Radio (analogue) working normally, Radio (digital) working normally."
It looks like engineering work is going on overnight. In situations such as this, don't retune your receiver because all it does is loose the tuning information which is correct anyway.
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john hunt: Perhaps the issue is that the TV is tuned to the wrong transmitter; maybe it is tuned to a transmitter other than the one the aerial faces.
At your location, there would appear to be two main possibilities:
- Winterborne Stickland which is at 251 degrees - aerial will be vertical (elements up/down)
- Rowridge on the Isle of Wight which is at 110 degrees. Aerials can be horizontal or vertical, but will probably be horizontal as the vertical component has only been added earlier this year at switchover. New aerials would probably be best vertical for Rowridge.
If your aerial faces Winterborne Stickland, then check that the receiver hasn't tuned itself to the signals from Rowridge instead.
To do this, bring up the signal strength screen whilst on BBC One and it will say that it is tuned to UHF channel 46 (equivalent to frequency) for Winterborne Stickland and C24 (channel 24) for Rowridge.
Do the same for ITV1. It is C43 from Winterborne Stickland and C27 from Rowridge.
If your TV receives HD channels, then go to BBC One HD and bring up the signal strength screen and it should say that it is tuned to C40 for Winterborne Stickland and C21 for Rowridge.
If your aerial faces Winterborne Stickland and you find that it is tuned to Rowridge, then run the automatic tuning scan with the aerial unplugged for the first 30% to miss out scanning of the Rowridge channels. Once you have done this, confirm that it is tuned to Winterborne Stickland by following the procedure above.
Winterborne Stickland does not broadcast all Freeview channels it is a Public Service Broadcaster (PSB) transmitter only. PSB services are BBC TV and radio, ITV1, ITV1+1, ITV2, Channel 4, Channel 4+1, E4, More 4, Channel 5 and the four HD services.
The other services (ITV3, Pick TV, Yesterday, Film 4, Dave etc) are known as the Commercial (COM) ones and do not have as a comprehensive coverage as the PSBs as the smaller transmitters like Winterborne Stickland don't carry them.
Thus, if your aerial faces Winterborne Stickland and you receive COM channels, then you can only be receiving them from a transmitter off-beam of your aerial which is why poor reception may ensue.
If your aerial is facing Winterborne Stickland and you carried out the unplugging aerial trick to get it to tune correctly, then you will be missing COM channels. As I say, the best you can do is tune to Rowridge's COM channels. If your TV has manual tuning, then you need to go through and do a manual tune/scan on C25, C22 and C28.
If your aerial faces Winterborne Stickland and you decide to have it replaced with one on Rowridge to give you the full complement of channels, then it might need replacing if it is a "Group B" one (yellow tip - although it could be faded and difficult to make out from ground level). Rowridge aerials are now best vertical as COM channels aren't as strong horizontally.
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For a full list of Freeview channels after switchover, see:
DTG :: DTT Services by Multiplex
This shows which services are carried on which multiplex (signal), of which there are six in total:
PSB1: BBCA (BBC One, BBC Two etc)
PSB2: D3&4 (ITV1, C4, C5 etc)
PSB3: BBCB (BBC One HD, BBC HD, ITV1 HD, Channel 4 HD)
COM4: SDN (ITV3 etc)
COM5: ArqA (Pick TV etc)
COM6: ArqB (Yesterday etc)
To re-itterate, Winterborne Stickland doesn't carry any of those within the COM groups it is PSB only.
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John McConnell: It is the case that post-switchover Margate uses Group C/D channels, whereas for the former analogue channels were Group A ones.
Group C/D is the top third of the band of frequencies used for TV. Group A is the bottom third.
Consequently, viewers using Millmead "may" have a Group A aerial whose sensitivity isn't sufficient on the higher C/D channels.
Dover was C/D before switchover and remains so. The reason for Margate changing Group was so that it could become a Single Frequency Network with Dover that is they broadcast (PSBs only) on the same channels/frequencies, something which works OK for digital signals, but not for analogue.
I wonder, and perhaps one of the pros could give their thoughts on this, whether the difficulty experienced by those whose aerials face Dover, is that the vertically polarised signals from Margate are coming in stronger, perhaps off-beam as well (depending on location), and as a result that this could be the source of poor pictures.
I wonder if the solution may be to re-orientate Dover aerials of affected viewers on to the Margate transmitter (also switching them to vertical polarisation).
I am not dismissing the possibility that your part of town is unable to receive from Millmead now. However:
1. I wonder how sure it is that the difficulties with poor reception have not been greatly reduced due to the increase in power; how can we be sure if no one has tried?
2. I wonder if the poor reception from Dover is being caused by the vertically polarised signals being radiated from Millmead.
Also, if some of the terrain is above the height of the Millmead transmitter, then why might it have difficulty receiving from Dover directly? After all, Dover can be received from the roof of the building on which the transmitter is sited (which you say is lower).
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Mal Norman: See my posting above, made in March. The answer is still no, unless you can receive from a full-Freeview transmitter such as Wenvoe.
Your only other possibility is satellite; Freesat is a popular alternative.
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tim: Without having any idea of where you are it is impossible to answer the questions.
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Wednesday 22 August 2012 5:43PM
Wendy: You need to press Input until it is in analogue mode (I say "until" because I have no idea whether it needs to be pressed once or multiple times).
Then, ensure that the Sky box is on, and go into the menu and select Settings > Setup > Auto Tuning.
As there are no other analogue channels, you might as well leave the Sky box on number 1.