All posts by John Crabb
Below are all of John Crabb's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Dave,
I am not using a communal aerial. Oddly, when I try to retune I see the "signal strength" bar on C49 is about 80%, but the "quality" bar never illuminates and no channels are added. I successfully retuned my neighbour's receiver. The only differnce between us is that my old Yagi aerial is in the loft and hers is outside.
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Dave,
Strengths are about the same on the other channels indicated for Mendip, but quality 10. This applies to the HD channels and ITV SD. From memory, for Mendip, HD is on C58. It is really only C49 that is no good and possibly C48 too, I also see during retune that some channels in the low 20s are also poor. Could bandwidth limitations on either my aerial or amplifier be prejudicing the lower frequency channels? Thsanks for your help by the way!
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Dave, I live south of Taunton and after several manual retunes still have no BBC channels either - although my neighbour has (she has an old set top box)! If it is a general problem, is there someone somewhere who might be able to do something about it? Can we contact them? Thanks.
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Dave,
I am just a bit suspicious of a more general problem when I read the posts that say they have no C49 in Taunton, Wellington and Street.
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Just a general observation, speaking as a Taunton resident who has lost all BBC channels. It is tempting to believe that there is some fault with the transmitter, but the fact that many people in this area have not lost BBC militates against this theory. So I started to look more carefully for any technical problems closer to home. I found the article on "single channel interference" on this site to be very helpful. Following the advice, I disconnected my HDD recorder and connected the aerial cable directly to the TV. Bingo, BBC came back. I cannot leave it disconnected, so I am buying a new wide band aerial and amplifier in the hope that the improved signal strength will do the trick. There has to be a solution to a technical problem like this and it is more likely to be found within these four walls than on top of the Mendips.
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jb38 and KMJ,Derby: Thanks for those interesting points. I do not actually know how many people in Taunton and Wellington have been affected. If it is only a very small percentage of the total then it seems to me that they could well have been the ones operating just on the margin of adequate signal level. In my own case I have an old Yagi aerial of the correct group but the plot for it shows much decreased sensitivity at lower channels within the band.
I already have an HDMI cable. The problem seems to be with the RF cable passing the aerial signal from HDD to TV. Careful rerouting does seem to make a difference.
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Mark: I don't really disagree with any of your points. I was just discussing practical ways forward for those who feel able to engage with the issues. I am not taking Arqiba's part in this, but as they were presumably directed to clear channel 61 to make room for 4G, I doubt there is much else that they can do about it now. It would be nice if they could improve things but I actually think that in practice we will have to do all the fiddling, or pay someone else to do it for us. I don't like that any more than you do.
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The general complaint on these posts is the loss of BBC channels. It was my experience too. Logically, it was bound to be these channels that would have problems as they are the only ones that are now being transmitted at a different frequency; everything else has stayed the same I believe.
Despite the large number of unhappy people conributing to this site, the fact seems to be that the vast majority have survived the retuning without any problems. This suggests that the problem is not with the transmitter. I think the problems arise because the new frequency that we are all now trying to retune to is causing issues with our particular receiver set up. The fact that everything was fine before does not indicate that our receiver is blameless, it just shows that it managed to receive C61 but has problems with C49.
This means that we have to try ways of coaxing our receiver arrangements to behave properly on the new frequency. Once you start fiddling with seemingly trivial things you can be surprised by the results. In my case I ended up replacing the aerial lead that passes between my HDD recorder and my TV with a shorter one that I made up. This took me from zero C49 to quality 90%.
The article on "single channel interference" on this site is well worth reading carefully.
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To Michael Perry: Thanks for that info Michael, very interesting. Is there a book that I can read all this practical stuff up in?
In addition to fiddling with the cable length, I have now installed a new wideband, high-gain aerial. This did not initially seem to make much diffence over my ancient C/D Yagi. What finally made it all click into place was moving the HDMI cable coming from the HDD to a second socket on the TV. The second one was further from the aerial socket. Is there any possible explanation for this!? The improvement in the signal quality indicator was quite marked.
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Wednesday 27 March 2013 8:48PM
I receive from the Mendip mast. This evening I have tried to retune BBC A to C49 but no channels are found. I have lost BBC1,2,3 and 4. I have followed all manual tuning instructions, is C49 more difficult to receive than the old C61?