All posts by MJ Ray
Below are all of MJ Ray's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
I thought there might be something like that as lots of channels vanished for a while this morning. I'm surprised Pick and its siblings aren't also being moved, as their signal strength is poorer than most and I've not yet figured out why.
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Sue: Euronews, RT and Record TV all changed channel settings a few times 30 Sep - 14 Oct, so you may need to rescan if your receiver didn't follow them. If you don't want to do a full rescan, current channel details can be found on KingOfSat.net and similar sites.
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Sharon: which receiver and is that one channel or all? It sounds like your receiver can't find the signal for the full EPG. Now-and-next is broadcast alongside the channels themselves, but the full freesat EPG is broadcast on another transponder (which means my European-spec receiver doesn't see it). In the meantime, you may find the freesat tab on tvguide.co.uk useful.
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SB: sorry but here comes a brain dump! Different receivers have different sensitivities and it may be that they've kept a particularly sensitive Sky box to hoodwink complainers if they're dishonest, but 12% signal on some transponders is usually either a faulty connection somewhere (possibly in your TV - sorry!) or a misaligned dish.
Is it possible that when they scanned with the Sky box, there were fewer clouds and the misalignment was marginal enough for it to make a difference? Did you try a rescan on the TV immediately after the successful Sky box scan?
I'm not good with freesat channel numbers and the tv is at the other end of the house to the computer: if jamie's right that they didn't test properly, there should a pattern to the missing channels, like are they all on Horizontal or all on Vertical polarity, or all high or all low frequencies? Did the Sky box show the same level of good signal with all channels? Also, is this a freesat-approved installer? If so, they should be able to show it working with a freesat box. I don't much like the freesat regulated scheme, but it does count for something in cases like this and there's always freesat to complain to about them.
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Mervyn: best guess: unscrew the cable to the dish (that should stop the scrambled channel confusing it) and if that doesn't allow you to delete the scrambler and rescan, then go into the menus, pick Channel Edit: Factory Setting and start from scratch - sorry.
sam giammarco: no idea what's up there! Is there any pattern about which half you can see?
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Just heard an advert for this Jazz FM | News | The way you listen to Jazz FM which says "Jazz FM will cease transmission on National DAB on January 1st 2014 and from then will only be available on DAB Digital Radio receivers in Greater London" which I guess means it is leaving D1 National. Anyone knows what is replacing it?
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The biggest argument against the TV Licence is the stream of nasty misleading and dishonest letters sent by TV Licensing (actually Capita I think?) to honest licensees mainly because TVL's database is dirty, but TVL showed no signs of actually taking us to court for more than a year (which would have been entertaining because we did have a valid licence). Just a stream of nasty letters which TVL try to make look like court orders when they're no such thing (strange paper sizes, looking like an old typewriter or daisywheel) and there's this whole guilty-until-proven-innocent theme to them, saying that you must call them or write to them if you have a licence, which just doesn't work because TVL are incompetent or maybe it's simply cheaper for them to ignore those protestations of innocence and keep sending the nasty letters in the hope some people will buy a second licence!
I've also seen good evidence that TVL harass the newly-bereaved while they struggle to sell their dear departed parents' homes and there are many similar incidents reported on the web, including my old friend TV Licensing, threats and abuse | Bagel Belly Blog - My own case only stopped after I went public and lodged a complaint with the BBC Trust but I've now a deep antipathy towards the BBC and their hired goons.
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Briantist: taking that argument, you'd switch to a different gas retailer. That's not an option we have with the nasty nasty TVL. I'm not saying ditch the licence: I'm saying Ditch TVL/capita.
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Another thing to consider is that Freeview and Freesat have enabled a lot of imported and homebrew (often computer-based) devices which at best can take a Common Interface encryption module and often cannot. Many owners of these devices will work on cracking the BBC encryption as a first option (despite what the law says) and probably ignore it as a second option, like they did with ITV/4/5 when they were still encrypted. Some owners of those (including me) don't want to trade with the Murdoch empire and would probably ignore all BBC channels in preference. There'd still be a lot of European channels receivable easily with a dish here, after all.
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Sunday 1 September 2013 1:49AM
Briantist: is there any reason that only Lindsey is coloured in for Lincolnshire and not Kesteven and Holland?
Also, quite a few of the "covered" areas don't yet have local services, like parts of Norfolk.