All posts by J Peter Wilson
Below are all of J Peter Wilson's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Where will the 162 new BBC DAB transmitters be? | Digital radio
Monday 21 October 2013 7:53PM
Bridlington
Monday 21 October 2013 7:53PM
Bridlington
Having just got back from a late holiday I am starting to catch-up on this news of BBC DAB roll-out of an extra 162 transmitters for their national services such as 6 Music and Radio 4 Extra
DAB is what we listen to most of the time either at home (Pure radios) or in the car (JVC + a good DAB antenna) as this is the only way I can listen to Jazz FM, Premier or UCB as well as the full choice of BBC radio is via DAB.
The signal is excellent on these specialist jazz and Christian stations as they have their processing just right I can listen to the music I love. Before DAB I did not have this range of choice and as most of my radios are single speaker not being in stereo is fine with me.
Most people I know do like the choice that DAB brings and some of us remember the days when we only had three BBC national stations and had to wait until 7pm to listen to 208 or Radio 270 off Scarborough!!
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Brian might it not be a good idea in your list of FM local stations to separate Star Radio in Cambridge from Star North East as they are completely different stations. According to the recent UKRD advertisement for a Star North East managing director it says that UKRD will be, re-focussing the station on its local area which covers much of County Durham and the town of Darlington, which is where the studios are based.
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As far as I understand it there is NO PLAN to switch-off FM for LOCAL & COMMUNITY RADIO.
Following a debate in the House of Lords during the passage of the Digital Economy Act 2010 the Bishop of Manchester said, I welcome the Ministers assurances about the continued provision for local stations to use the FM band. He said that we had been over this ground several times, but we have done so partly because of the seriousness of the issue and partly, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said later in the debate, because of the need to pin the Government down to get the precise assurance that people need.
If and when NATIONAL stations are moved off FM (and currently they hog over half the FM band) there will be more space for local and community radio and the possibility of giving many stations greater power. We will then have both free-to-air DAB for national radio and FM for local and community stations.
In the longer term there needs to be a plan for local stations to move to DAB multiplexes mini-multiplexes that match their service areas and not have to go on large county-wide multiplexes that are too big for them. This point was raised during the House of Lords debate and that is why there was all-party agreement for keeping FM for these stations until a digital alternative was available.
I am so glad that DAB has opened up the airwaves to stations that play jazz, blues, rock, gospel and contemporary Christian music. I am now able to listen to them at both home and in the car as well as to my local FM-only commercial station.
I for one am not interested in sticking to the status quo and I look forward to the roll-out of the BBCs national multiplex and for a second national commercial multiplex to extend choice even further.
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Is Freeview ready for the first local television service tomorr
Saturday 7 December 2013 5:11PM
Bridlington
Saturday 7 December 2013 5:11PM
Bridlington
Following yesterday's channel update (2013-12-06) on our Freeview TV we are now receiving Channel 8 Estuary TV in Bridlington.
According to the post code checker we are not supposed to receive DTT at our address but we inherited an antenna with an amplifier from the previous owner and we get good reception.
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Is Freeview ready for the first local television service tomorr
Sunday 8 December 2013 1:26PM
Bridlington
Sunday 8 December 2013 1:26PM
Bridlington
jb38: Thanks for your comments about testing the TV signal strength from Belmont. As we do not watch a lot of TV any signal break-up from Belmont has not so far caused us any bother. We tend to listen to radio more than watch TV: the DAB radio and local FM radio reception in Bridlington is very good. In addition for TV we have a ROKU streaming box so we can catch-up using 4oD, BBC iPlayer & Demand 5 if we miss a programme as well as having access to a wide variety of 450 other channels including Netflix, NOW TV, Revelation TV, Fox News and Jerusalem TV if we desire.
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Many areas of the country have a regional and/or local sense of community that is not reflected by the television as the TV editorial areas are based on the service area of a transmitter rather than a defined region such as Yorkshire.
For example if one lives in Scarborough and works just down the road in Bridlington then the BBC local evening news comes from different studios as the coverage of the county is split with BBC local news coming from three studios which are:
' Hull studios (Belmont + relays) for East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire;
' Leeds studios (Emley Moor + relays) for North, South and West Yorkshire (but excluding most of Harrogate/Northallerton/Ripon/Whitby areas);
' Newcastle studio (Bilsdale + relays) for the part of North Yorkshire that covers Northallerton, Richmond and Whitby but the main news coverage is for Teesside, Tyneside & Cumbria.
A county that still has its own identity needs to have a media that is relevant to its communities and that is why the region still has a daily newspaper The Yorkshire Post as well as many local weekly newspapers and commercial radio stations, such as Stray FM and Yorkshire Coast Radio, that cover areas to which people relate. Unfortunately BBC local radio editorial areas tend to be based on administrative counties rather travel to work areas or traditional county boundaries such as Yorkshire and its East, North & West Ridings.
Therefore I would suggest that in order to cover North Yorkshire BBC Radio York to be available via Freeview that it needs to be on North East & Cumbria region as well as the Yorkshire region.
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I find that the BBC's decision to help live within its £3.5b annual budget very commendable and at last the organisation is waking-up to the real world as the TV Licensing 'Tax' has allowed the BBC to be insulated for too long.
As a PSB the BBC has an obligation to provide the listener/viewer right across the nation with a range and a quality of services so these are brave decisions by Tony Hall to help the corporation in its 'fight' to retain the current way of funding the BBC when charter renewal comes up in 2017.
There are now more than 100 backbench MPs from all the major political parties supporting a change in the law which would make non-payment of the annual £145.50 charge a matter for the civil courts, rather than a criminal offence. This needs to happen as I have come across elderly people who are over 75 yet are being chased by TV Licensing and threatened with £1000 fines. It is this kind of action that once more brings the BBC into disrepute with license fee payers and makes many of us wonder whether the whole financing of the BBC needs to be done in an entirely different way if we are to retain at least some of the BBC's TV channels and all of their radio services.
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Briantist: Currently I have an elderly relative who is in a nursing home. She received an over 75 TV licensing renewal form at her home at the end of last year and so I phoned the TV Licensing offices to enquire what I should do about renewing her 3-year TV licence so that I did the right thing on her behalf. I was told by a member of TV Licensing that as my relative was currently not in her own home and using a TV supplied by the nursing home that she did not need a TV license.
When a letter from TV Licensing arrived at her home in January I presumed that it was a computer system glitch but within the last month another letter was received saying that TV Licensing will investigate my relative and that she may be liable to up to £1,000 fine. I have been told by another member of TV Licensing that all she could do was to put a 6 month stop on my relative receiving these threatening letters.
It is this kind of action that once more brings the BBC into disrepute with license fee payers and makes many of us wonder whether the whole financing of the BBC needs to be done in an entirely different way. Following all this hassle I have therefore written to my relatives MP about this matter.
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I live in an area of Yorkshire where I receive DAB services with a signal strength for the BBC National, Digital 1 and Humberside muxes at 100% on our home DAB/FM Pure radios - kitchen, bathroom etc - but only 85% for the Yorkshire mux.
All these DAB/FM radios on a rescan this week show an extra station but only Smooth Radio UK (Digital 1) at 80 kbps and 100% signal strength shows up on the station listing and not Smooth Radio (Yorkshire mux) at 128 kbps and presumably at around 85% signal strength. All the radios have all the other stations from the Yorkshire mux including Capital Yorkshire, Heart Yorkshire and the UCB stations showing on the station listing and I can tune into these stations but not Smooth from this regional mux.
I have not come across this before as in the case where Gold was on both the Humberside mux and the Yorkshire mux I was able to tune into both transmissions and similarly in the West Midlands where I could receive BBC WM both from the Birmingham and Wolverhampton muxes.
I wonder if it is something to do with the codings on the respective Smooth services.
Has anyone any thoughts?
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Wednesday 12 September 2012 8:53PM
Having recently moved to Bridlington I find that the DAB reception is fine from the BBC National, Digital 1 and the Humberside multiplexes. However the Yorkshire multiplex suffers as it does not a transmitter on Buckton Barn like the other three. Some of the other MXR multiplexes cover really wide areas such as their Severn Estuary and West Midlands ones. Perhaps if the MXR multiplex is to offer wide Yorkshire coverage it should add transmitter sites at Buckton Barn, Oliver's Mount and in the Dales at Skipton, Hawes and Settle.