All posts by John Robinson
Below are all of John Robinson's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
@ Cutting: the best I can suggest is to follow the switchover instructions here: My Freeview box has no EPG, is blank on FIVE, ITV3, ITV4, ITV2+1, has no sound or the channel line up is wrong | ukfree.tv - independent free digital TV advice or here: http://www.digitaluk.co.uk/how_do_i_switch/connections__and__retuning/retuning_instructions
or see if there are instructions for your particular TV here: Freeview Retune - list of manuals | ukfree.tv - independent free digital TV advice (EH74EE)
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Briantist: yes I've looked at the transmitters by frequency. I'm probably getting 5 pre-switchover and one post-switchover mux from Craigkelly, 6 pre-switchover muxes from Black Hill, but can't really see another post-switchover transmitter in the 50s and 60s that's terribly likely, though there are several small ones quite a long way away. My postcode is EH7 4EE.
Thinking further, why am I having issues with just BBC Three and BBC News - everything else on the same mux(es) is fine...
And a final thought: it looks like I'm not getting Mux 1 on C33 from Craigkelly. Tuning my analogue set to C33 shows a faint, heavily ghosted STV picture. I have no UHF-generating device so I'm guessing it's a very faint signal from further afield. Did they turn Mux 1 off early? Was that the plan in the first place? I wish my box would tell me what it's getting from which muxes on which frequencies...
Ach it doesn't really matter. I'll retune again after Black Hill switches and see what happens :-)
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Welcome back, Brian. I hope you had an otherwise excellent and relaxing holiday, and that you make a quick recovery from your accident.
Of course you being somewhat incapacitated means you will be stuck in front of your computer so you'll just have to answer all those 1000s of posts ;-)
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My father discovered that Radios 3 and 4 had disappeared and thought the switchover re-tune had gone wrong. His eyesight is too poor to read the text that is shown on the radio stations' channels and in any case it makes no mention of the reason that they're off-air in their off-air hours.
While he has a radio, he has now asked me to find him a radio that he can use with preset buttons on it as he can no longer use a manual dial, nor will he be able to use one of the DAB radios with a tiny LCD screen, and it will probably have to be a good one to achieve the sound quality that his TV's built-in speakers do so that he can listen to music properly - his choice of TV was influenced by wanting to listen to Radio 3 on it. Clearly such a radio will not be cheap.
I for one would support reducing BBC Parliament back to a quarter screen in order to reinstate the radio stations.
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Will: I personally agree with your scepticism about the need for BBC Alba across the whole of Scotland, but Gaelic is an official language of Scotland and the decision on BBC Alba has been taken for whatever political reasons that I don't think we need to argue here; let's just get our radio stations back!
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Mike: the report does discuss "petalling":
In a few cases, the coverage that could be achieved by a transmitter is very extensive and serves several cities. An example is the Winter Hill transmitter that serves most of the Granada ITV region in the north-west of England. In these cases, we have modelled the
potential targeting of coverage using a technique we have named petalling. This enables specific targeting of distinct locations within the transmitter coverage area. The advantage of using petalling is that separate local services can be carried in each petal. In the case of Winter Hill, separate petals could provide different local TV services for Manchester, Liverpool and Preston.
Never mind petalling, I was wondering if this seventh mux could get us in Scotland our BBC Radio stations back on Freeview, at least for those of us covered by the main transmitters... I'd rather the Beeb dumped BBC Alba or switched it to this seventh mux but I don't suppose they will - because then the Gaelic speakers in the Western Isles wouldn't get it!
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Just noticed that Preston will be covered by Winter Hill Petal 3 on channel 0. I didn't know there was a channel zero.
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John: I don't see anything on the site about anything happening in 2012 - DSO's already happened across Scotland. The Digital UK tradeview estimator suggests you might be able to get the commercial muxes from Angus already with a good group C/D aerial with horizontal polarisation pointing approximately ENE (a bearing of 59°) in place of your current group B aerial with vertical polarisation pointing south. I wouldn't like to make any guarantees - maybe there are some hills in the way? - but if you already have a half decent wideband aerial you could go up on the roof with a compass and re-orient your aerial and see if you can get any sign of any signal on channels 53 and up (PSB muxes included) before you go buying a good group C/D aerial.
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fatima redwan: Alexandra Palace wasn't transmitting those channels at all up until 4 April, but now it is. If you were getting those channels before, then you must have been getting them from another transmitter. If you haven't already, you need to retune your set-top box or TV, see My Freeview box has no EPG, is blank on FIVE, ITV3, ITV4, ITV2+1, has no sound or the channel line up is wrong | ukfree.tv - independent free digital TV advice and Freeview reception has changed? | ukfree.tv - independent free digital TV advice
And no, it's not a con to get people to pay for satellite. Quite the opposite, part of the point of switchover is to get more channels to more people.
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Wednesday 1 June 2011 8:14PM
Retuned my el cheapo Sagem Freeview box and find I no longer receive BBC Three or BBC News properly on channels 7 and 80 respectively, though both are very vaguely there but badly broken up. I do get them fine on channels 800 and 801. I have done a factory reset as KMJ,Derby recommended to Neville Wake with exactly the same result.
I suspect I'm seeing a lot of transmitters. I have noted down the progress my box stops on while tuning, with the channel (it's too fast for me to get the MHz), the number of TV stations I have so far, and the 2K/8K mode as follows:
23 28 2
26 46 2
27 70 8
28 70 8
29 80 2
39 106 2
41 116 2
42 132 2
44 132 2
47 132 2
51 132 2
53 142 8
54 170 8
55 170 2
58 187 8
60 211 8
61 238 8
65 238 2
That's a heck of a lot more stops during tuning than it used to do, and some of them very close together. Is my aerial too sensitive for high power Freeview?