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Freeview Reception Problems ?


hilldweller

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If you have lost stations today you should retune your Freeview TV or Box now. Do so even if you have not. They are messing around with the thing today so stations will go and not come back till you do!

They are going to do the same on the 24 August so again put it in your diary RETUNE BOX/TV.

All this retuning seems not to have affected Virgin Cable TV

But my elderly mother uses analogue and freeview and is not good at all with technology much beyond an on - off switch.

Thanks for the warning History Dude, I will await my mothers phone call when she finds out her TV isn't working properly.

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I was busy with the switch over retuning sets in our house. :blink: Two of them I had a right problem with. One TV has the ability to store only 100 channels and the other 200. Well with the signals from several transmitters it takes the channel list up to over 213! So some of the stations like ITV3 were not on. The 200 channel one just can't accept 213 channels and so failed to load any! In the end on both sets I had to do a manual tune, making certain that not every channel was loaded up. So it has only 154 channels. Stupid TV desingers :P They didn't put that into the equation, when they made them sets, having four transmitters in the area! So if you are missing channels even after several retunes check the number of channels allowed and if in doubt selector manual tuning. :wacko::blink: ;-)

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I was busy with the switch over retuning sets in our house. :blink: Two of them I had a right problem with. One TV has the ability to store only 100 channels and the other 200. Well with the signals from several transmitters it takes the channel list up to over 213! So some of the stations like ITV3 were not on. The 200 channel one just can't accept 213 channels and so failed to load any! In the end on both sets I had to do a manual tune, making certain that not every channel was loaded up. So it has only 154 channels. Stupid TV desingers :P They didn't put that into the equation, when they made them sets, having four transmitters in the area! So if you are missing channels even after several retunes check the number of channels allowed and if in doubt selector manual tuning. :wacko::blink:;-)

The way to deal with that problem is to place an attenuator in series with the aerial lead while you are carrying out a re-tune. That way the signals from more distant transmitters are reduced to the extent that the set doesn't add them to the channel list. It also ensures that the intended channels finish up in the low number locations and not up in the 700's.

You can obtain an attenuator (12 dB should do the trick) from Maplins or ATV on Langsett Road. They only cost a few quid and can be removed and stored when the tuning is completed. At my ASL of 900 feet an attenuator is necessary to get the correct channels in the right order. Integrated TV's and Set Top Boxes tend to start from the lowest frequency signals and place them in the first positions even if they are weaker.

HD

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I was busy with the switch over retuning sets in our house. :blink: Two of them I had a right problem with. One TV has the ability to store only 100 channels and the other 200. Well with the signals from several transmitters it takes the channel list up to over 213! So some of the stations like ITV3 were not on. The 200 channel one just can't accept 213 channels and so failed to load any! In the end on both sets I had to do a manual tune, making certain that not every channel was loaded up. So it has only 154 channels. Stupid TV desingers :P They didn't put that into the equation, when they made them sets, having four transmitters in the area! So if you are missing channels even after several retunes check the number of channels allowed and if in doubt selector manual tuning. :wacko::blink:;-)

I suppose with older TV's they were made at a time when perhaps only 5 or so channels were ever considered, - not hundreds.

If it can accept 100, or 200 it is already handling 3 digits, so why not have up to 999 channels (or 1000 if you include channel 000), which is what most modern TV's do.

Like most people, our first TV in the 1950's could only receive 1 channel (BBC TV), and by the end of the decade 2 channels (BBC and ITV)

In the 1960's only 1 extra channel was added (BBC2)

In the 1970's no extra channels, although the change to 625 line UHF transmissions meant that almost everyone swapped from B&W to colour in this decade.

In the 1980's another new channel (C4) was added and then satellite TV started to appear offering a lot more

In the 1990's along came Channel 5, giving us the last of the analogue terrestial channels, but by now satellite and digital broadcasting were growing in popularity, the number of channels grew rapidly once you did this.

In the 2000's digital freeview came in. now the number of handleable channels which could be stored on pretuned systems was handled by sky boxes, freeview boxes and cable digiboxes. All the TV had to do was provide 1 channel (so 6 channels in total if you still wanted terrestrial) to accept the signal from Sky / freeview / Digibox etc which in turn could provide hundreds of channels.

The problem now though appears to be with integrated digital TV's which seem to treat each digital channel as a seperate channel and so really does need to be able to handle a massive number.

My mum seems to have had no problems with retuning her freeview box at all, and didn't even need either my help or my brothers.

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My ant was given a box by the retune people. It's able to identify the transmitter and which signal is strongest. I suspect a lot of the TV's now made can offer that choice. But electronic designers do like to mess about. I dread buying TV's and VCR's because they always have some function that you like that doesn't appear on the new device. The biggest bugbears for me are not enough sockets for devices on TV sets, or whatever plugs in goes a funny colour! The mute symbol that dosen't go away, which means you have to turn the sound down when you are listening to the hi-fi system, then up when finished. Widescreen defaults set to "smart" that you can't set to 4.3, making everyone look fat when watching none widescreen TV shows or early films. And HDMI which you have to switch manually unlike the scart, which goes automatic, especially when you have just selected HDMI, so you have to switch it back to HDMI again. :wacko:

Of course the switch-over means the end of PDC - standing for Programme Delivery Control, which used the old teletext signal to tell a VCR when to start and stop recording. Great if some sport or news show lasted longer than it should. You would have thought it would be easy to come up with a system on digital for that, but sadly not. :(

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. And HDMI which you have to switch manually unlike the scart, which goes automatic, especially when you have just selected HDMI, so you have to switch it back to HDMI again. :wacko:

Of course the switch-over means the end of PDC - standing for Programme Delivery Control, which used the old teletext signal to tell a VCR when to start and stop recording. Great if some sport or news show lasted longer than it should. You would have thought it would be easy to come up with a system on digital for that, but sadly not. :(

My four year old Panasonic DVB television seems to auto select HDMI when you switch on a HDMI connected DVD recorder.

When you switch off the recorder the TV reverts to the previous TV programme. I think I read somewhere that there are different varieties of HDMI connection.

The DVD recorder timer works from the electronic programme guide and seems to work very well. It starts recording seconds before the programme starts even if not at the advertised time. Up to now it's worked perfectly.

The PDC system didn't always work, apparently the PDC signal had to be manually switched on at the transmitter station and sometimes they forgot in the early days.

HD

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As digital TV does not support TeleText like analogue did does this mean that TeleText 888, which was subtitles, is no longer available?

It must have been brilliant for deaf and hearing impared people to turn on Teletext 888 and get English subtitles to programmes which were in English anyway but which they were unable to hear.

I used to hate programmes before TT888 where an idiotic looking person would stand at one corner of the screen, regardless of the actual scene and "sign" everything in sign language.

OK, so I could hear and didn't need it, but it turns out from deaf people I have met that they didn't like it either and that they much prefered subtitles of the type used by TT 888.

Surely there should be a hearing impaired subtitle service to replace TT 888 as the basic minimum even on digital TV.

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Digital text is still available. Instead of pressing the numbers you go to a menu and select subtitles. Depending on the broadcaster you could even get them in different languages just like DVD's. Also again if the broadcaster makes available other tongues, you can change the language being listened to.

There's no reason why that Dolby Digital can't be added for the sound selection. I suspect that might be on HD channels only though.

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Digital text is still available. Instead of pressing the numbers you go to a menu and select subtitles. Depending on the broadcaster you could even get them in different languages just like DVD's. Also again if the broadcaster makes available other tongues, you can change the language being listened to.

There's no reason why that Dolby Digital can't be added for the sound selection. I suspect that might be on HD channels only though.

Thanks History Dude, - I didn't know that.

OK, so I'm not deaf and I don't use the subtitles, - but it's nice to know they are still there for those who need them.

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