House Television Reception

Over  this  side  of  the  world  I'm  still  running  an  elderly  Panasonic  on  Freeview  via  an  even  older  aerial  and  I'm  having  no  problems  at  all  David.  Apart  that  is  from  the quality  of  the  programmes  of  course  and  the  BBC's  inability  to  get  the North-west  { sometimes  referred  to  as  Granada-land }  news  on  their  HD  channel   101 

Brian

Apart from a handful of local BBC stations none of the rest are HD, we have the same here in MK with Look East and the quality is a long way below HD. I think the BBC deem it as being too expensive to convert the local stations to HD. I can watch BBC News on 231 but again not in HD. I suspect its the different transmitters but there are no faults showing on Sandy Heath.

David

We are the same distance from Sandy Heath as MK and have not had any problems signal wise, although we do not have HD but a couple of neighbours do and do not have problems with signal on the available channels,

David we only get 5 HD channels on Freeview 101, 102, 103, 104, 105 which are BBC1, BBC2, STV, Ch4,Ch5. 

Unless there is a storm around (rare up here) the picture quality is good and stable. We also have a Sony HD smart. 

I thought excluding 4G signals involved putting a filter on the aerial input rather than changing aerials...? I also thought new TVs came equipped with these filters fitted .. ? Its a long time since I last read up on the problem but that is what I recall. Don't think we have any problems here and I am not a million miles away from MK but I rarely watch the terrestial channels. It might be you have an interference problem? Reception here of the terrestial channels is not easy and you need some serious kit to get a good terrestial signal and it maybe the same applies in MK although you are on higher ground than where I am. It may well be better to do as I have and change to Freesat. I can compare transmission profiles and will do to see if that sheds any further light on your reception difficulties but it is a fair bet in my view you are either losing the signals or you have interference.

Have you asked what kind of experience you neighbours are having?

peedee

David,

There isn't line of sight to the Sandy Heath transmitter which is 23 miles away so the signal will not be be great which is probably why you have a booster. If your aerial rigger wasn't n on the ball and if you haven't got a quality aerial, downleads and booster then I suspect you will struggle with reception. I have a similar problem but have a historic installation comprising a high gain broadband aerial fitted with a mashead preamp feeding a booster and distribution amplifier located in the house to provide terrestial reception from Sandy Heath. This no longer feeds are main TV but does have a very low noise factor and provides good reception

peedee

There isn't line of sight to the Sandy Heath transmitter which is 23 miles away so the signal will not be be great which is probably why you have a booster.

A closer look shows the Sandy Heath mast is 800ft high which might just be good enough to give line of site to most areas of Milton Keynes. Some of the lower parts, e.g. the Ouzel valley may well still struggle with reception.

peedee

David have you tried checking out the BBC web site where there is information about HD channel developments, trouble shooting etc. You might find something on there.

This is a basic link but hopefully you'll find updated information. BBC help LINK.

Where we live we find HD is only in partial operation and drops out at certain times, we have to switch back to the usual standard definition.

TG

106 is BBC 4 HD, 107 is BBC News HD and 108 is Al Jazeera. There are more as well. Interestingly BBC 4 HD tends to show a lot of the Scadi dramas like The Bridge. That channel is a bit more stable than the other two but not reliable enough to set a recording. We can of course watch/record in non HD but the quality is no where near as good.  I find Al Jazeera quite interesting as you get news from all around the world often not covered by the BBC.

David

Peedee

I think a lot of my neighbours have satellite dishes. The other issue is that I am asking quite a narrow question so I wonder how many people regularly watch the channels I mention?  When you change channels you briefly see the signal strength bar which is sometimes OK but then disappears and I am just wondering why the signal should be so intermittent? Perhaps the installer has not put a beefy enough aerial up? This problem is a constant source of discussion on the internet on AV forums. I think eventually I will have to go down the satellite route. We could do with a recorded with a larger hard drive capacity so that may as well be a Freesat one! 

David