All posts by TheKLF99
Below are all of TheKLF99's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.Btw I asked ages ago about our aerial. It turns out that our aerial is indeed pointing totally the wrong way. I have installed a TV in the back bedroom, with an aerial inside and am getting perfect picture from the Ludlow transmitter, but the aerial on the roof receives absolutely nothing. In the main living room though we've gone with Sky as I don't really do climbing up on to roofs to sort aerials out (I get scared of heights!).
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Oh also I have noticed on the Freeview we do only get a small amount of the TV channels on Freeview, I'm just wondering seeing as our TV only receives half the TV channels from our local transmitter does that mean we get a 50% reduction in our TV licence fee then? Shame it doesn't work like that, but really it should!
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SY8 3ED - Philips aerial inside house (flat panel aerial that incorporates a powered philips digital booster unit in it).
I was getting perfect signal from the Ludlow transmitter until the other day when all BBC channels disappeared. I've reset the TV twice now and the only one MUX it's getting is the channel 42 (ITV) MUX. Is there something wrong with the other two MUX at the moment?
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This seems to be a common misconception by a lot of people - they take out a Sky contract, and they think that if they cancel their Sky TV all their channels will disappear.
This is however not true - I have Sky TV downstairs, but I also have satellite TV in my bedroom, to get this all I did was run an extra cable from the Sky satellite dish into a HD satellite card in my PC and there we have it free satellite TV.
I don't get all the Sky channels but there are still many Free to air satellite channels out there that are still available.
All the BBC channels are free to air and can be received by a Sky box with either a cancelled sky card in the slot or no sky card in the slot.
Also many of the other terrestrial channels are FTA (free to air) - like ITV, C4, C5, Film4 is also free.
If you plug your satellite dish into a generic free to air satellite receiver or PC tuner card you may find that at first you receive about 20 Channel 4's (if it's a Freesat receiver or a Sky box these are pre-programmed to only show one Channel 4), and you'll also notice a number of BBC1's, ITV's and C5's. These are regional variations the main difference between each region is the advertisements - for example in the West Midlands you might see adverts for things like West Midlands Safari Park or the Birmingham and Wolverhampton locations of DFS or Ikea, where as on the North West versions you might see adverts for Gullivers in Warrington, or DFS, Manchester, Ikea Warrington, etc. Also if your over the border in Scotland you'd notice that by removing your sky card the STV would change to ITV, and in Wales S4C would swap with C4.
If you remove your sky card from the slot you will find that after a few minutes it will switch all your regional channels to a London version (BBC London, ITV London). It uses the postcode stored in the Sky card to figure out which region to show (and if you want to watch something that's not in your region if you go to the end of the Sky channels in the 900 beyond the adult channels you can get the various BBC regions).
If you cancel your card but leave it in the slot it will still use your postcode to give you the same region, and if you have a sky box that doesn't have a card you can call Sky up and ask them to send you out a Sky Freesat card - note this is not the same as Freesat (even though it shares the same name). The Sky Freesat card will be matched to the postcode it's sent to so it will correct the channels to your correct area.
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The interesting thing about this system is where would people who are exempt from council tax stand on this one. In our house we have one person over 65 and two people registered disabled and our council tax is 0.00 every year because of this.
Would that mean that the broadcasting levy be paid or would the broadcasting levy be extra and not exempt, and also woud that mean that if someone was in real financial difficulty and didn't own a TV they could actually possibly lose their house or end up being arrested for not paying broadcasting levy even though they have no way of receiving it.
If they do opt for this plan there should be some way of opting out or helping people who are less fortunate if they actually can't afford a TV, otherwise it's going to be going down the same route as the bedroom tax and the poll tax, with many people who are unable to afford it finding themselves either homeless or on the wrong side of the law.
Also Briantist "This is a simple levy on all households as it is simple to use BBC services without having a TV at all. " - this is not always the case, if people want to use the BBC services even via a computer or a youview/playstation/xbox the first thing they've got to get is some kind of laptop or computer, or youview/playstatin/xbox (which you need a TV or monitor to plug it in to) and also a valid internet connection to watch it on - which also excludes quite a number of rural areas where internet speed struggles to exceed 2mbps.
Also the BBC do have a way of blocking people who do not pay their TV licence/broadcasting levy from viewing iPlayer - and really they should do. If you try going to HBO USA it asks you to login with your subscription details, this also verifies which country you live in. If you go to BBC iPlayer it's totally open, if your abroad and you go to BBC iPlayer you will only see the international version of iPlayer, not the UK one, but if you use a VPN you can see the UK iPlayer from abroad without paying any TV licence fee to the BBC. If the BBC had a system that asked you to register for iPlayer and validated either your TV licence number of council tax number as having paid the licence fee, like HBO does then it would restrict the number of people watching iPlayer without paying anything. I know there would be nothing to stop someone just sharing their licence number with friends abroad, but it would provide at least a little bit of extra protection.
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John robertson: also if you cancelled your sky subscription you would not get freeview channels you'd get freesat channels, unless your on about getting the freeview channels through an aerial and not the dish.
There is a few differences in freesat to freeview channels - there is a list here of freeview channels
List of digital terrestrial television channels (UK) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
and here is a list of freesat channels
Channels | Join Freesat
Plus even if you do pay Sky the extra for the recording facilities to be turned on, if your on about recording from the aerial (freeview) you can't anyway - you can only record from the freesat channels (satellite) as the Sky box has no freeview decoder in it and no way of inputting a freeview picture into it.
If you did want to still record and pause TV and not pay sky you could always just buy a general HDD recorder, many of these have the play/pause function on them, and some even include a DVD recorder, or backup to USB, network sharing, abilities to swap hard drives when it's full, etc which is far more functionality than you get from a Sky+ box.
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Does that mean that it will also be axed from Sky too - because Sky use the same satellite? It makes no sense to offer it to only Sky customers and not to freesat customers because either way they've still got to send it up onto the satellite, only difference is they encrypt it if it's on Sky. Does it cost more to send an unencrypted signal onto the satellite then or do they work it out by number of viewers?
I'm really confused. Also one thing that might have helped if Channel 4 actually got rid of the number of alternative versions of Channel 4 broadcasting on to the Astra satellites. I know they have regional adverts but surely instead of having about 20-30 Channel 4's on Astra, just have one national one that shows national "satellite" adverts, and if you want local adverts then tune to the one on terrestrial TV.
Btw in case your wondering what I mean about 20-30 C4's is if you have a Freesat or Sky box you don't see them because they set up to your own region automatically, but if you have a DVB card in your PC or a basic FTA box without the freesat stuff built in about the top 20 channels are all Channel 4 and each one is a different region - the only difference being the adverts, like C4 West Midlands tends to show adverts for places like West Midlands Safari Park, C4 North West will show adverts for places like Gullivers World and Knowsley Safari Park, etc...
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Sunday 6 March 2011 6:54AM
Ludlow
We've recently moved into the area (Middleton near Ludlow - SY8 3ED), into a new housing association property. Looking at the aerial on the roof it looks quite new but receives absolutely nothing, no analogue or digital and looking at where it's pointing on Google maps the only transmitter in it's line of sight seems to be the Sutton Coldfield one (it's pointing at 47 deg and is mounted Vertical, and it's on the roof).
Is there any reason why the people who owned this house may have pointed it this way, is there a transmitter out there that will be switched on when the switch over happens or has the aerial shifted a bit?