Freeview problems

joolsybools

We have been having problems with our freeview reception for the past 4 or 5 days. We got back from being away and loads of channels had disappeared. I have since re-tuned several times and only got 64 digital channels plus 5 analogue (not sure how many I had before, but it was definately more). We now have no BBC1, 2, ITV1, Channel 4, Channel 5 and quite a few others.

Any suggestions what the problem could be? The Wii is switched off so it can't be interference from that. The block of flats we live in has Sky, but we don't, could it be interference from the Sky signal?

I'n in London and get the Crystal Palace signal.

Thanks.

bikerchris

I would have thought you're in the ideal location for reception. Unless lots of your neighbours suddenly got sky I wouldn't have thought it would interfere. If you haven't changed anything at all since it last worked well, it can only be a transmitter issue, but that's very likely. Perhaps you have a neighbour using freeview and you can asked them what their status is like? Or there may be a freeview related forum somewhere. I'd blame your box, but if you're getting some channels it must be OK - if it's old I would have some concern.

I hope my ramblings help some how.

fwor

No, it won't be interference from Sky - Crystal Palace's multi-megawatt transmitter will walk all over Sky without a dish to focus the puny satellite output.

If you have an outside aerial, it could be snow/ice melt-water in the cabling, which can reduce signal level below the threshold of the receiver.

Otherwise, Crystal Palace might be on reduced power on one multiplex if engineering work is going on, though I doubt that would be true for any length of time, as that transmitter covers a huge number of people.

TRTerry

As of 31st December 2010 my Panasonic TH42-PZ80B TV lost the ITV channels from the EPG guide and can not tune in to them. I believe this is due to the service being withdrawn. See ukfree.tv/fullstory.php?storyid=1107051746 for some more details. How can I receive digital ITV now? Do Panasonic have a plan to replace the guide? Is this covered under the Panasonic 5 year warranty? When purchasing I had no reason to suspect that the EPG service was reliant on an unconnected service provider that has potentially made my TV unusable.

lucylucky

TRTerry wrote: »

As of 31st December 2010 my Panasonic TH42-PZ80B TV lost the ITV channels from the EPG guide and can not tune in to them. I believe this is due to the service being withdrawn. See ukfree.tv/fullstory.php?storyid=1107051746 for some more details. How can I receive digital ITV now? Do Panasonic have a plan to replace the guide? Is this covered under the Panasonic 5 year warranty? When purchasing I had no reason to suspect that the EPG service was reliant on an unconnected service provider that has potentially made my TV unusable.

I suppose it depends on who withdrew the service. If it was unconnected with Panasonic then I doubt they will be interested.

Inactive

TRTerry wrote: »

As of 31st December 2010 my Panasonic TH42-PZ80B TV lost the ITV channels from the EPG guide and can not tune in to them. I believe this is due to the service being withdrawn. See ukfree.tv/fullstory.php?storyid=1107051746 for some more details. How can I receive digital ITV now? Do Panasonic have a plan to replace the guide? Is this covered under the Panasonic 5 year warranty? When purchasing I had no reason to suspect that the EPG service was reliant on an unconnected service provider that has potentially made my TV unusable.

I seem to recall that Panasonic sent out a software upgrade to customers when something similar happened a couple of years ago.

fwor

lucylucky wrote: »

I suppose it depends on who withdrew the service. If it was unconnected with Panasonic then I doubt they will be interested.

Agreed, though it does seem to me hard to understand why companies such as Sony and Panasonic should design their products to depend on a third-party EPG which they don't have any direct control over, without offering the option to fall back to the standard Freeview EPG, which will be there forever.

I suspect that it would be relatively trivial for them to issue revised firmware for these devices to have them use the Freeview EPG, but it seems they have calculated that they can blame someone else (the "analogue switch-off") and the gain in people having to throw otherwise good gear away and buy new will outweigh the loss of custom from people who vow never to buy from them again.

Incidentally, I'd also suggest to TRTerry that you probably will still be able to receive digital channels, but you may need to tune them manually (and of course you will see no EPG...).

TRTerry

Thanks for your comments.

Some info for clarification.

The TV is a Panasonic TH42PZ80B purchased December 2008.

The ITV channels no longer show on the EPG, neither can I tune in to them ( chan 29 490Mhz). They simply no longer exist as far as the TV is concerned. I have tried a retune, manual tune, and factory reset with the same result each time.

Tellingly there are no adverts showing on the EPG, yet it stills shows all info for the other channels BBC1 etc.

We receive transmissions from the Waltham transmitter and get a strong (10) high quality signal.

My other (new) panasonic TV still receives the ITV channels as does my older Humax PVR9200T.

The Aerial is loft mounted and new. Sat quality cables used throughout.

I concur that my system, the Transmitter, signal strength etc are fine. The TV seems to be working OK. The ability to receive ITV is missing.

UPDATE
I made the comments above earlier, and have left them there to show how wrong I was!

My path to discovery came from a suggestion to re-tune the set after disconnecting the power and aerial so deliberately clearing any 'memory' and creating a 'failed to tune any signal' report from the TV. Then reconnecting the aerial and attempting another retune. This surprisingly connected to Waltham but with a very low signal, and poor quality reception. All the stations affected were on Waltham's MUX2 transmitter which is lower powered than MUX1 used for BBC's channels.
On fiddling with the back while using the signal condition menu I found I could change the signal strength from low to high by flexing one of the coax connectors. To cut a long story short, I renewed the connector and soldered the cable to it and replaced a crappy £1 shop coax cable between my PVR and TV. Voila! My MUX2 signal returned to a fairly strong signal albeit not as good as MUX1, but it shows that a simple poor connection just pushed my box and me with it over the edge.

It seems coincidental that the GuidePlus announcement arrived at virtually the same time leading me down a path of anguish. NB the announcement did not include my panasonic model number but I normally assume these sorts of reports are not always entirely comprehensive.

Thanks to everyone that applied their minds to my problem


Cheers


Terry