Missing Channels on Crystal Palace Freeview

Avoriaz

I have installed a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-900 USB stick on my laptop.

I selected and scanned for the Crystal Palace transmitter and I am able to get most but not all of the channels I expected.

I am missing ITV1 and other channels on Mux 2.

Here are the channels I can get. (I’ve cut and pasted the picture from 3 screenshots)



According to this, Mux 2 has a low effective power level but I get Mux A which is also low.

I’m in Weybridge in Surrey, near the fringe of Crystal Palace reception.

Google produced this old MSE thread.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

kwikbreaks

Missing channels on Freeview are invarably caused by insufficient signal strength and the best solution for that is to improve the antenna. Occasionally a preamp (booster) may work especially if you can insert one in the coax nearer to the antenna (eg feed it into a bedroom or the loft and have the preamp there) but in the main all you'll often be doing is increasing the noise along with the signal and it still won't work properly.

fwor

Have you downloaded and installed the latest software from the Hauppauge website?

I had a very similar problem when I last installed one of their products on a Windows PC, and it was just a bug in the s/w that came on CD with it.

Avoriaz

Thanks for the replies.

Kwikbreaks: I did suspect signal strength as we are in a weak signal area. We tried analogue freeview many years ago with little success so we installed Sky.

Fwor: Yes, I downloaded Windows7 drivers and software from Hauppauge this afternoon.

Paul: A few neighbours use Guildford but for us, CP is stronger. We can't get Croydon. I will take my laptop round to a few neighbours and try it there.


We won’t be changing anything anyway as we have just sold our house and are moving to the South Downs soon. We will be renting short term as we haven’t found a house to buy yet.

I've had the USB TV stick for a few years but rarely used it. I decided to try it out on my new Windows7 laptop just in case we can't get Sky or another TV service for a while in whatever rented house we end up in.

Credit is due to Hauppauge that they have made Vista and Windows 7 drivers available for an old Windows XP device.

At least I know that I should be able to get some TV on the laptop as a temporary measure.


Thanks again.