All posts by David Hitchin
Below are all of David Hitchin's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.There seem to have been a surprising number of "wrong region" reports over some months, and more of them very recently.
How do these errors arise, and is there any sign that this problem will eventually be dealt with?
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I have two DAB radios in Seaford, one upstairs and one downstairs. Until a few days ago they were both working well most of the time, except for occasional short silent gaps.
In the last few days reception on both of them has become very poor, the "underwater" effect.
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Since 18:30 on 6th July BBC1 local news from Freeview at Newhaven channel 50 has been from London rather than Southeast. (The correct program is going out on Sky).
In spite of this being an area-wide problem in BN25 the BBC advisers only respond by telling people to do a manual retune to channel 50 - pointless if you are already on it - and of course it doesn't solve the problem.
It seems that the news feeds are being incorrectly routed, and that is not the sort of error that automatic checks on the transmitter can identify.
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I have spoken to a very helpful BBC manager. The main problem yesterday seemed to be that all advisory staff worked from scripts which all assumed that the fault was in the viewer's equipment, with no way of concluding and reporting that the transmitter might have been at fault. Their automatic checks only show that the transmitter is broadcasting but not that it is broadcasting the correct stream.
There were major faults on cables in the area, so perhaps the transmitter was not receiving the proper feed and had reverted to retransmitting the satellite signal for another region.
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The Newhaven transmitter came back at 5:33 this morning. My report that it failed at 8:15 was inaccurate; as I immediately switched to Sky I didn't make a note at the time. The BBC report that it failed at 8:54, but a check on my recorder shows that it really failed at 8:46. An AUTOMATIC retune on Freeview found the Whitehawk transmitter producing a decent signal on channel 60. The standard BBC advice about doing a MANUAL retune would have only taken me back to the broken channel 50.
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I am viewing from Seaford, BN25 2JH, picking up Newhaven and Whitehawk.
In the last day or so we have not been able to find COM4, usual automatic retuning. That seems to have happened since it moved to Channel 33. The other channels are pick up OK.
Is this just a Seaford problem, or is it more widespread?
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Just following up my previous post I have heard the same story from a friend in Shoreham, COM4 missing and not picked up on a retune.
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I have been advised that many aerials were designed for higher channels and will be less effective on lower ones such as 33. Also some were fitted with filters to reject channels below 40.
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Wednesday 28 August 2013 8:15PM
Seaford
The text said " Spacing stations 9kHz also means that the there was a limit to the quality of sound, as human hearing ranges up to 2kHz".
Surely 20kHz ?