All posts by Briantist
Below are all of Briantist's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Brian Butterworth: My post above the last " B's Freeview Detailed Coverage" is a link to Freeview Detailed Coverage Checker | Freeview ?
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UK Free TV fix 3: fix everything else...
| free and easy
Sunday 30 July 2023 10:02PM
Shoreham-by-sea
Sunday 30 July 2023 10:02PM
Shoreham-by-sea
Chris.SE: Ah yes, I did spot that one earlier.
I think I need to do a little something about the whole SD/HD duplicates. It was fine when it was a few channels, but now quite a few of them.
Anyway. I've just sorted out the All of the free TV channels in the UK | free and easy for 21 years page.
Perhaps even the odd UD one?
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Chris.SE: The analogue radio data comes directly from Ofcom - www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/file/0020/91307/TxParamsVHF.csv - so the answer to the question is do I create an override data file or do I ask them to fix it?
As I used to work for/with BT Broadcast Services we installed the data network that supplied the output for the analogue and digital TV transmissions for the broadcasters and mux owners. This meant that I had either been myself to the TV transmitter site or knew people who had, whereas with radio the low bandwidth/data rate meant they could use off-the-shelf solutions such as ISDN 2B+D so they didn't need anything ... expensive.
This means that the list of digital TV transmitters is hand-curated from the public data but has been cross-checked with real world checking.
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Chris.SE: OK. I thought that the code that translated the NGR into lat/long could coped with the different lengths of NGR, but this looks like it needs some extra help.
Hopefully that makes it easy to fix...
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Chris.SE: It seems that the PHP code was quite capable of using any length of NGR, but the database table was assuming 8 characters!
I've changed the code to use only 8 character by converting them to the 8 character form (but using the whole thing for the lat/long).
It seems to have fixed the transmitter in the sea problem, for example Brighton Race Course (Brighton and Hove, England) analogue radio transmitter | free and easy for 21 years
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UK Free TV fix 3: fix everything else...
| free and easy
Tuesday 1 August 2023 7:33AM
Shoreham-by-sea
Tuesday 1 August 2023 7:33AM
Shoreham-by-sea
Chris.SE: The index for the comments is derived from the index which is the NGR. I will have to have a look at which values have changed and see if I can get the comments back.
I'm wondering about the coverage not showing for some TX. I'm guessing that the system uses the NGR index to reference the separate coverage-map-generating server, via the Cloudfront cache.
I will see what I can do.
I think some TV transmitters also show the coverage in "advanced mode" but not in "cheap" mode.
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Read this: BBC faces review of licence fee model with alternati
Thursday 3 August 2023 6:20AM
Shoreham-by-sea
Thursday 3 August 2023 6:20AM
Shoreham-by-sea
Even going back to the 1980s there have been committees set up to investigate this very thing - Peacock Committee - Wikipedia - but the costs of blocking those who don't want to pay always becomes too politically hot as this would (at best) double the cost for everyone else: so whilst an interesting idea, it would be political suicide.
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Sunday 30 July 2023 3:30PM
I've been working on stopping the server crashing since Wednesday. I've done several things (new hardware, more database, code changes to use less database connections).
I've also had a go at guessing which transmitters are which from the list of BBC names. I still have no clue as to the location of "Freeth Allotments" and "Constantine Farm" but the rest
"Beccles South Road" => "Orfordness-A",
"Bodmin"=>"Penaligon Down",
"Bourton On The Water"=>"Icomb Hill",
"Caister Ormesby Road"=>"Great Yarmouth",
"Cale Cross House"=>"Wrekenton",
"Cefn Eglwysilan"=>"Rhondda",
"Danbury Bakers Lane" => "Danbury",
"Edinburgh SHF"=>",Braid Hills ",
"Etchinghill"=>"Horn Street",
"Forden"=>"Long Mountain",
"Glasgow William St" => "Glasgow West Central",
"Hull MF Clough Road" => "Hull MF",
"Hunterstone" => "Hunters Stone",
"Ibthorpe"=>"Hurstbourne Tarrant",
"Ilimington"=>" Leamington Spa",
"Kidderminster VHF" => "Kidderminster",
"Kirkby Underwood"=>"Gunthorpe",
"Largs Holehouse"=>"Largs",
"Merseyside"=>"Mersey Tunnel",
"Monmouth UHF" => "Monmouth",
"Nuneaton"=>"Hartshill Quarry",
"Penmon"=>"Llanddona",
"Sedgley Beacon" => "Sedgley",
"Sideway"=>"Fenton",
"Sittingbourne Stockers Hill" => "Sittingbourne - Swale House",
"South Benfleet" => "Benfleet",
"Spalding Drove"=>"Gunthorpe",
"Swaffham"=>"Daffy Green",
"Wroughton"=>"Blunsdon"