All posts by Kaz
Below are all of Kaz's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
My mother can't get half her channels from Heathfield either. They're supposed to be broadcasting 6;
BBCA on Ch.52
D3+4 on 49
BBCB on 47
SDN on 42
ArqA on 44
ArqB on 41
She gets 41, 49, and 52. Perfectly. The TV claims it's excellent reception. She also gets 40 - which seems to be coming from Bexhill transmitter, and is a duplicate of Heathfield's channel 49 but with different regional programmes I believe.
She doesn't get 44, 47, or 48, although she'll never get HD with her current equipment but she's still missing 2 of the channels and she NEEDS them. She particularly wants Challenge and ITV3. Luckily she can currently get them on Sky, but she's cancelling that soon and Challenge is not available on Freesat.
Can anyone give even the slightest clue as to what the problem might be? She's retuned twice and also tried to add them manually, all to no avail. Will both channels be okay from the 27th?
I also posted this on the Eastbourne transmitter page, but thought it might be wise to ask advice here too.
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Thanks Dave, we'll try the Sky-bypass tomorrow. Whatever happens, I guess we'll just have to wait and see what the 27th brings.
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Okay, now the final retune has taken place, and my mother's TV still can't pick up channel 44 (ArqA), although she has now got channel 42 (Mux A / SDN).
Does anyone know of any valid reason for a rooftop aerial on a bungalow on a hill in Eastbourne to NOT pick up just channel 44? I'm pretty sure it's not an HD channel, which would have been a valid reason as she doesn't have an HD tuner, but even manual attempts to tune it in fail - the TV just continues to search as if channel 44 has nothing on it :(
Thanks again for any help.
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Okay, now the final retune has taken place, and my mother's TV still can't pick up channel 44 (ArqA), although she has now got channel 42 (Mux A / SDN).
Does anyone know of any valid reason for a rooftop aerial on a bungalow on a hill in Eastbourne to NOT pick up just channel 44? I'm pretty sure it's not an HD channel, which would have been a valid reason as she doesn't have an HD tuner, but even manual attempts to tune it in fail - the TV just continues to search as if channel 44 has nothing on it :(
Thanks for any help.
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Thanks everyone! I'll be going round there tomorrow again, so I'll have to check whether there's any sign of a signal. As for the aerial, it seems (to me) to be pointing more-or-less directly at Heathfield. Anyway, looking at the aerial and then looking at the map on this website leads me to believe it's aimed very well. I will also have to check for green bits on it - shame I don't have any binoculars!
I'll be back tomorrow, and hopefully the conundrum will eventually be solved :)
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Well, not much to report really I'm afraid. No sign of any colours on the aerial at all, and the TV manual tuning just lets you choose where to start the search, then wanders off either up or down until it finds something it doesn't already have.
One peculiarity though, on Friday/Saturday they actually had both Challenge AND ITV3 available for several minutes - but then they went all nasty (pixelated and blocky, video and/or audio suddenly seizing up for many seconds at a time), and the TV insisted both channels needed retuning. (Not at the same time of course, just the one they were actually trying to watch at that moment.) Yesterday there was no sign of Challenge again. Mind you, Freesat from Sky apparently has Challenge for free, which Freesat doesn't, so as she's planning to cancel the Sky subscription and use her box and card for FsFs I guess she doesn't need to worry too much about whether she can pick up Challenge through the aerial. Presumably ITV3 is also available through FsFs, which will at least save the cost of having someone go up on the roof to fiddle with or replace the existing aerial.
It's most peculiar though, and certainly it would be better to get the Freeview working normally. Digital TV isn't all it's cracked up to be - hardly surprising with something forced on us by the government - at least with analogue you'd get a slightly snowy picture, but could still watch tv. With digital you get pixel-blocks, beeps, and error messages.
It probably IS the trees, and if she does pay for someone to sort it out they may well end up pointing it towards Hastings, even though the local channels are wrong. It would still be better than all this messing around.
Thanks to all of you for your advice, and we may be stopping to think about it but we've not given up yet ;)
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Thanks Dave, that is really interesting - although it's not going to make any of our family feel warmer towards Freeview!
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Thanks again to all of you - you're all very helpful I must say! As I said before (I think) she'll be phoning Sky soon to cancel her subscription. As she only has the cheapest subscription anyway, and their first year was up yonks ago, she'll be keeping her box and presumably they can't ask for the card back either (she'd have to buy a FsFs card otherwise). Hopefully that will be a success. It's not Sky+ or anything fancy.
Her TV is a Sony Bravia, I'm not 100% sure of the number because the manual I have here serves 5 different 32" models, it starts KDL-32[*****] (the five characters at the end could be
D27**
T28**
S30**
D26** or
T30**
but the manual is for all five plus five 40" models.
The manual digital tuning is on page 29 and goes;
"Digital Manual Tuning
Tunes the digital channels manually. This feature is available when Digital Auto Tuning is set to Antenna.
1 Press the number button to select the channel number you want to
manually tune, then press up/down to tune the channel.
2 When the available channels are found, press up/down to select the channel
you want to store, then press +
3 Press up/down to select the programme number where you want to store the new channel, then press +
Repeat the above procedure to manually tune other channels."
In other words, you put in the channel you want, and let it search nearby wavelengths either going up or down. Of course it just goes past the one you want.
Anyway, I think I'll buy a signal booster from a shop which will give a refund if it isn't suitable, and we'll see later in the week if that helps or not.
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Friday 15 June 2012 6:55AM
My mother can't get half her channels from Heathfield either. They're supposed to be broadcasting 6;
BBCA on Ch.52
D3+4 on 49
BBCB on 47
SDN on 42
ArqA on 44
ArqB on 41
She gets 41, 49, and 52. Perfectly. The TV claims it's excellent reception. She also gets 40 - which seems to be coming from Bexhill transmitter, and is a duplicate of Heathfield's channel 49 but with different regional programmes I believe.
She doesn't get 44, 47, or 48, although she'll never get HD with her current equipment but she's still missing 2 of the channels and she NEEDS them. She particularly wants Challenge and ITV3. Luckily she can currently get them on Sky, but she's cancelling that soon and Challenge is not available on Freesat.
Can anyone give even the slightest clue as to what the problem might be? She's retuned twice and also tried to add them manually, all to no avail.