Bloody Digital TV Switchover on Emley Moor Grrrrrrrrr

[Tweaker]

Hi Howard,

A little qualification re my comment on aerials is called for; the original freeview (DTTV) service was a lowish power one. This was to avoid interference issues with existing services. If your reception was poor due to low signal strength, then a new aerial with more elements on it, and hence higher gain, would have been in order. My dad lived in Tickhill, which is technically outside the old low power service area but, with a high gain aerial and an amplifier, he was able to get Freeview - most of the time. As far as the high power Freeview is concerned, generally, if you get a decent analogue or digital service now, you won't need a new aerial.
So, I wouldn't feel too upset at your TV engineer. Basically, he was trying to get you a Freeview service when you were in a pretty poor reception area - successfully, by the sound of it. These guys often referred to 'Digital' aerials as a shorthand for a higher gain version. At the time, the signal strength on Freeview was much lower than the analogue. The difference between analogue and digital signals, from the viewers perspective, is that, as the signal level decreases, an analogue telly's picture will just start to get more and more noisy. A digital Tv will look perfect up to the point where the picture starts to break up and then suddenly freeze or vanish altogether (the 'Digital Cliff' effect).

The high power DTTV signal is the same as the low power one (excluding the addition of HD content) so your TV will have no trouble receiving it (OK, there are some exceptions with early boxes but anything reasonably recent will be OK). It IS possible that with a high gain antenna and an amplifier, it might now be overloading your TV's tuner, although the digital service is much more resilient to this sort of problem and it's the last thing I'd try. The problem with one of your TV's not storing the tuning info is, I'm afraid, a problem with the TV. However, not all TV's are the same and it may be that there's an extra step in the set up, something like 'Store' or 'Save' after the re-tune process. Also, it's worth trying deleting all the stored channel info and starting again.

You shouldn't be losing any channels due to the switch over. Come 21st September, all the old analogue services will be available on Freeview + plus loads more (although how many shopping channels one person can watch is debatable!). The HD channels will also be available to a wider population.

If you realy want ot use an external Freeview box, there's no reason why you can't. The TV will need either a SCART or HDMI input but they all have these now. However, it should defo be a last resort.

Incidentally, Mango's link is a usefull one - specially the 'Digital Myths' bit. I used to use these guys eons ago for antenna's so they know their stuff.

Give me a call if I can help.

HTH

[HowardQ]

Again many thanks for an excellent reply Dave, (and Mango).
I think my current thoughts are pretty much in line with yours at the moment.
The problem telly does not have a save or store facility it just come back and starts working at the end of an auto tune, which works fine, nothing I can see tom interrupt this and do a manual save.
I can always get all the new stations, as long as I do an utotune before watching them, and that stays OK if I don't switch off.

I did not have the time last night to wire out the booster completely, so just tried with it switched off. This resulted in poor quality on analogue TV and "No signal" on Freeview so the autotune found nothing at all.

I have two actions planned for this weekend -

1) Wire out the the signal booster box and try again.
(if that is too drastic I can try Mango's idea of leaving it on and fitting an inline attenuator to cut it less).
The stations which are OKand will save are usually signal strength around 48%, the new BBC signals that don't save are 78% signal strength.

2) Clear out/restart from scratch with the Freeview set up on this telly.

Take it from there.


Many thanks again for all your help, much appreciated.