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All posts by David Landers

Below are all of David Landers's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.


We've had problems ever since the Pontop Pike frequency changeover on November 13th. Despite regular retunes (auto and manual) we lost most Freeview programmes on both the TV and the Humax box. (With poor reception on some of those we still had, such as BBC1.) Then a retune on the night of 26th/27th brought them all back - for about 48 hours...

Freeview have just sent out two friendly engineers who decided that the mast-head amplifier was faulty (our fairly recent wide-band roof aerial is okay, apparently). The new amplifier brought back several programmes, but we're still missing a few, such as Blaze and Horror - wanted for old Star Trek episodes!

It seems that we're not getting one multiplex. How is this possible when signal strength on others is reported as high? Is FreeSat the answer? Or are 'peripheral' Freeview channels such as these available via broadband on a Fire Stick type plug-in device?

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Chris.SE:
Thanks, Chris.

Postcode is NE65 8AR. Signal strength is generally held to be poor at this location and we have always needed an amplifier (even back in analogue days). However; prior to the November 13th frequency changes, we had enjoyed a pretty full range of Freeview channels with decent reception. Then we got the problems that I mentioned.

The position right now is that the lost channels have suddenly come back again! This was some time after the second engineers' visit when they fitted the new mast-head amp. As I said in my previous post, that had pulled back all(?) channels apart from the one multiplex. In answer to your question, as far as I know, all channels on that one (SDN) were missing.

But then yet another retune, and suddenly there they are... Since nothing has changed at our end in-between, I assume it must be something happening at the transmitter, or weather conditions.

Incidentally, our Humax box always seems to pick up more channels than the TV - perhaps a difference in their sensitivity and/or power?

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