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All posts by MikeB

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


Jo: Check the TV's for signal strength, etc. You havnt included a postcode, so we have no idea what sort of signal you are supposed to be getting, but it could be that Com5 is the canary in the coalmine, and the others are also low signal strength. So check the lot. Next, check you are tunedninto the right transmitter - TVs can lock onto a different transmitter, perhaps much further away.

If the signal is bad on all of them, then its a common cause, so look to where that is - perhaps a failing splitter or dodgy booster power supply.

What do you mean by a Sky aerial? That comes off a dish, so the assumption is that the signal comes off via coax throught the house, fed from either.

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Trevor Harris: The BBC can shoot stuff in 4K (Blue Planet, Planet Earth, the World Cup and of course Wimbledon certainly were), but no terrestial transmitter could handle that amount of data without having to remove a great many other services.

The net has always been the way to deliver 4K - at least as far as terrestial is concerned (moving to HD might make it possible for a mux to have a couple of channels, but who knows...), but Sky Q and Virgin have the bandwidth as well. So while you could watch all of the above BBC programmes in 4K via Iplayer at some point (BTW - I get 1080i from Iplayer, which is a lot better than C4), its BT, Virgin, Sky and of course Amazon/Netflix thats making the running with 4K content (and Sky is increasingly wanting you to go down the net route). And I suspect there might be other players - Facebook has apparently paid a large amount of money to stream exclusively a lot of football in India, and they have done the same in the US with another sport.

Freeview is going to be around for a while, even with 4K - there are no bandwidth problems for big events, and the equipment is standard (even in Weymouth, and I say that as someone who is proud of the county they were born in..). And if Freeview isnt enough, there is Freesat etc. Put it this way, people still insist on using LW and VHS....

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Paul Cooper: Check that your sets are all actually tuned to the correct transmitter. If you have an underlying fault already with your system, then not finding the correct transmitter would starkly show that up.

Put your postcode into the website - it will soon show you if your area is good for Freeview or not. If not, then go with a dish, but Freeview would be much cheaper even in the short term - the equipment is a one off payment, and its possible your TV already has a Freesat tuner.

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W.May: Perhaps they could also have 'equal billing' for flat earthers (actually, Good Morning Britain did do this the other week), people who believe that crystals heal, to balance the head of the BMA, someone who is an astrologer when they next talk to an astronaut about what its like in space, and perhaps someone who does spirit readings about the future when they ask the head of the Bank of England about a possible rise in interest rates.

Or they could stop with the false balance they often still employ (and have been warned about in three seperate reports over the past decade) about climate change (if the Royal Society thinks its real, can be explained by well understood physics and is observable, then its highly likely - which they do, judging from their website).

Physics is real, so is climate change. The ice is melting, sea levels are rising, temperatures are increasing, and the effects are observable now. Denial makes no difference to those, but it makes dealing with it just that bit harder.

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Rowridge (Isle Of Wight, England) transmitter
Wednesday 29 August 2018 5:51PM

Paul Cohen: Check if you are on the same transmitter - Sony tuners are normally pretty sensitive but a bit more robust than Humax ones, they tend to withstand higher transmitter outputs before breaking up.

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Steve: Actually, LG's often do have freeview and freesat tuners - check the model or simply look on the back, to see if there is a F fitting. If so, then yes, you can use a dish, and aerial, or both. But of course, the usual exceptions apply!

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MikeP: About the time you got your TV, I remember mentioning to an LG rep that the TV had an F fitting, which was a great feature. He replied that they didnt like to mention it, for reasons I never quite figured out. However, they are certainly Freesat compliant these days, and do mention it.

Freesat has crept back in since Freeview HD came with digital switchover, although Sony still only have generic ones, and they are far fewer models than before. But an averge decent Samsung 4K set should have one, and like high level Panasonics, even two.

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Mardler : Its good news for UK broadcastering, which is going to have enough problems post brexit.

If you look at PBS in the States, they buy a lot of UK programmes, from BBC and ITV, plus indies. The ability to use that large library and production capacity will be a great help.

If you dont like the BBC, you dont have to use it (and I often complain about it as well), but I suspect your idea of 'political bias' might be different from mine...

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Full technical details of Freeview
Wednesday 19 September 2018 4:38PM

David Fordham: C4 HD isnt on Freesat any more, as you will see from looking through the news section. As for BBC4 HD, can we assume you have other HD channels?

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Freeview 2024?
Wednesday 26 September 2018 4:27PM

michael scott: You will either have to stream or use Sky Q for 4K, but its good your getting actual fibre. If you want to switch back from Sky Q, remember that the LNBs for Q are different from Freesat, so you might have to replace them.

Your TV is in many ways already a combo. It will stream for you, will have DVB-T2 as standard, may well have Freesat (sometimes two tuners for each), and you can record to is (although a sperate box makes life a bit easier), and is of course networked.

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