All posts by DaveCheltenham
Below are all of DaveCheltenham's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.Ridge Hill (County of Herefordshire, England) Full Freeview tra
Monday 17 January 2011 9:20AM
Blakeney
Monday 17 January 2011 9:20AM
Blakeney
Briantist - I have been reliant on Ridge Hill for 21 years now and used to be one of the feedbacks to the control centre at Emily Moor for ITV and Evesham for BBC. The performance record over the years for analogue has been appalling with one fault, (black line flashing) on ITV lasting for 18 months. After a lot of complaints, they eventually traced it to one of the 2 microwave links between Bristol and Ridge Hill; the other hop being from Abingdon to Bristol. Part of the problem was the central monitoring equipment did not show the subtle/intermittent faults.
Channel 4 also had problems with sound hum and this was eventually traced to on one of the receivers, as it relayed Sutton Coldfield. This lasted for about 3 months. The BBC reserve receivers were pointing to Mendip so at a time of high pressure, the local midlands news could flip over to BBC West from Bristol.
The other thing about analogue Ridge Hill was that changeover to the reserve transmitter gave about a 30 second break. My neighbour who worked for EMI was part of the design and build team for the original UHF aerials at Ridge Hill but that is another story.
Early digital transmissions from Ridge Hill did not go well. They started at 5kW for the BBC but later reduced to 2kW much to the anger of viewers who could not receive the transmissions at the reduced power or had to upgrade their aerial.
As from the 6th/20th April with the new transmitters, let's hope all the problems are in the past; we shall see.
Regards
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Ridge Hill (County of Herefordshire, England) Full Freeview tra
Tuesday 18 January 2011 3:02PM
Blakeney
Tuesday 18 January 2011 3:02PM
Blakeney
I tend to agree with Bagpuss Brian as I also referred to your helpful guide but to no avail.
Unfortunately, the problem has been more subtle and I certainly would have liked to solve my reception issues. Hears to the 20th April.
Regards
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Is not part of the arguement that, if you have the transponder on DVB-S2, you cannot mix other configurations with it? Perhaps if broadcasters shared transponders, it would make it worthwhile?
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George - The skew setting of your LNB is particularly important for transponders like the one used by Channel 4 HD where 2 transponders (H & V) are on the same frequency.
Some time ago now, I also had a faulty LNB the started to lose discrimination between H & V polarizations. The common frequency transponders gave the first sign of a problem and could not be corrected by adjusting the skew.
Regards
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Becky - It may be that the signal is too strong as it is now 10 times the power it was on multiplex channel 53. The other point and most likely, is that like one of my early Freeview boxes, it cannot receive the QAM 64 8K mode which is now the standard for high power DVB-T so I have thrown it out. If this is the case, all the other channels will disappear on the 20th April. BBC 3 and 4 plus the BBC radio channels are still being transmitted on multiplex channel 63 until the 20th April. Hope this helps?
Regards
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Ridge Hill (County of Herefordshire, England) Full Freeview tra
Monday 11 April 2011 9:01AM
Cheltenham
Monday 11 April 2011 9:01AM
Cheltenham
Brian - Of course you are right about BBC 3; I should have said CBeebies being on multiplex channel 63 not BBC 3.
Regards
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Ridge Hill (County of Herefordshire, England) Full Freeview tra
Monday 11 April 2011 9:13AM
Cheltenham
Monday 11 April 2011 9:13AM
Cheltenham
Brian - You said "If you still have BBC TWO on analogue, then it's Ridge Hill, otherwise it's the Sutton Coldfield transmitter". BBC TWO Analogue (Channel 28) closed down on Ridge Hill early morning of the 6th April. Is not the channel number a better way to tell as BBC TWO Sutton Coldfield is on channel 40?
Regards
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Brian Slightly off topic but in relation to your answer to David; do you know why the Central West version of ITV1 HD on 10936V is encrypted?
Regards
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Saturday 15 January 2011 9:06AM
Blakeney
Tony - I had the same problem about 3 weeks ago on the same multiplex; it lasted about 2 days. Looked for any Tx problems but none reported so put it down to some fairly local interference. I live in the Old Bath Road area.
Regards