My ITV/C4 Freeview channels have disappeared - what can I do? Is it my SCART ca
Brian Butterworth published on UK Free TV It is a feature of television signals that they can be effected by the weather. Aside from the obvious damaged that can be caused by wind or torrential rain, the onset of summer can cause a more intriguing problem called "inversion".
Basically, when the sun heats up the land, the hot air can get trapped below cold air at high level. This creates an "inversion layer" which acts like a polished mirror to TV signals. This causes two problems: you can receive both the original and a reflected signal from your own transmitter (on analogue TV this appears as "ghosting") or interference from TV transmitters that are normally too far distant.
The ITV/C4 multiplex of channels (ITV-1, ITV-2, ITV-3, ITV-4, CITV, C4, More4, E4, Quizcall) use a transmission "mode" called 64QAM, and it is sadly much more prone to these problems.
So, whilst a loft-mounted aerial will provide reception at some time, it will fail at others. The only real solution is to mount the aerial (or a new Class I aerial) outside on a pole, but some people report that changing the cable from the aerial to the set-top box to the high-grade satellite cable can also help.
The SCART connection, by the way, only carries a single TV picture, not the Freeview transmission multiplexes, so if this is disconnected it will result in degradation to every channel at once.
8:10 AM
Dion Stallwood:
Looking at the coverage map provided at Freeview reception at DT11+ 0DQ it would appear that you are right on the edge of the area served by either of the Rowridge services, you may even be hidden from the signals by a hill 2-3 km out from your home. For reception from Rowridge your aerial would be aimed at 103 degrees compass bearing. Is that the direction your aerial is aimed?
The problems you report are oftem caused by too strong signal, but at your distance from Rowridge and with a hill in front of you that is unlikely to be the cause.
Please could you tell us what equipment is being used and where your aerial is pointing as well as whather the cross rods, not the support beam, are veertical of horizontal. Then we contributors will try to help further.
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5:22 PM
hi there i have had no channels at all since sat pm. aerial points to iow. i am in rustington west sussex. retuned tv anc now it says no channels found!
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7:28 PM
john macgregor: As published by Digital UK, engineering works are ongoing at Rowridge:
Digital UK - Planned Engineering Works
With reference to your exclamation of "no channels found" -- QED retuning was shooting yourself in the foot. It was a bad idea because now you won't know when the signal is sufficient to serve you until you have tuned and you can't tune until the signal is sufficient to serve you!
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7:14 PM
We have standard freeview. Every month or so we loose certain channels, generally the ITV channels and sometimes the c4"s. We have lost these channels again for a week now. Returned a few times with no luck. We have also checked the aerial cable. Also When we do have them, we quite often on most channels the tv just freezes, stops and starts. Any ideas gratefully received.
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8:34 PM
Hi,
We experienced a lot of disruption yesterday, with a lot of interference and some channels not working at all, but today we've had no itv, c4, c5 or their like. At this moment I can get BBC1, 2, 3, 4, QVC, 4Music, Yesterday, Drama, the Horror channel and a few others. This is really annoying.
I noticed there's been some maintenance work at the Biddulph transmitter but nothing about disruptions today. We are a couple of miles south of Middlewich and our aerial points in the direction. What would you suggest?
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10:30 AM
To do a retune, following the instructions below.
1. Make sure the equipment is turned off and unplug the aerial from the back of your TV, box or recorder.
2.Turn on your equipment and perform a retune using the 'auto scan' process - your TV, box or recorder won't find any channels at this stage.
3. Turn off the equipment and plug your aerial back in.
4. Perform a full retune using the 'first time installation' option (sometimes called default settings' or factory reset') and your channels should return.
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6:56 PM
My freeview was working perfectly fine yesterday and went to night everything stopped working and weny of so i retuned it and now im only finding 53 channles we i had over 200, im wondering how do i fix this problem
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9:46 PM
Samantha: Never carry out a retune unless a message to this effect has been seen on the screen, as a sudden loss of reception is usually always caused by something other than anything associated with your TV / box, likewise reception will return of its own accord without any action having to be taken, whereas it wont if the box has been retuned, as retuning wipes out everything stored in the tuner, creating the situation whereby reception cannot return without further retunes having to be made in an attempt to recover channels lost.
As your retuning has picked up less channels than previous stored, the only option you have is to carry out further same until they are all recovered.
It would though be of assistance to have knowledge of your location, (post code or one from nearby, e.g: shop / post office) as this would enable the status of the transmitter covering your area to be checked out.
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9:28 PM
All of a sudden me have lots of flickering channels especially itv, c4, 5 etc but bbc channels are all fine. I have previously wobbled the Ariel in the back of the tv and got a better picture but that no longer works. Do you think this is a problem with the back of the tv where the Ariel is plugged in? Any ideas greatly appreciated. Thanks
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