What I love about digital TV

Dave_C_2

Why are you all surprised?

This is Britain in the 21st century, where everything is project managed. This means that the Engineers (who actually do the work) have been told to concentrate on switching the analogue system off as a matter of priority because that is the deadline and look after the new system as and when faults develop.

A fault-tolerant changeover will be too expensive and will make the project slip.

Of course every Friday morning the Engineer must spend two hours filling in a complex time sheet because every penny must be accounted for, and we just can't afford overtime on this project.

And so on.

Dave, been there, done that and the promised T shirts didn't arrive on time.

vyle

While it is a pain, what you need to realise is that effectively, switching off the analogue was the start.

It's like doing the plumbing. sometimes you need to switch off the water before you can do the rest of the job.

For instance, in Anglia, they switched off the analogue and upped the power on the digital signal from sandy heath.

There are also secondary transmitters that were on low power, which provided the lower end channels. They recently got moved to their new "channel" which is set to be their permanent residence. The transmitter was on low power during that change, and has since been powered up.

It's not a simple case of just clicking one's fingers and getting full country coverage, and is it so hard to just memorise the channels you want, rather than manually delete those you don't every time? Surely you don't manually flick up/down through every channel to get where you're going?

Lastly, retuning is a piece of cake. Pretty much every TV has a simple process of pressing:

menu > settings/digital settings > digital auto tune

It really isn't hard to read a few options and work out that the "digital" part of the menu means that it governs the digital tuner, and that "auto tune/auto store" means automatically retune.

Dave_C_2

vyle wrote: »

Lastly, retuning is a piece of cake. Pretty much every TV has a simple process of pressing:
menu > settings/digital settings > digital auto tune

Hate to disillusion you, but where I live there is a small angle between the low powered Kimberley transmitter and the preferred High power Waltham transmitter. If I auto-tune then the Kimberley transmitter messes up the retune and not all channels are stored.

For me to retune
1) Look on internet and find the 5 or 6 channel numbers for the Waltham Muxes
2) For each TV:
... A) Unplug aerial and auto-tune to clear channels
... Replug aerial
... C) For each channel from step 1
...... i) Menu > installation > Manual tune
...... ii) Select channel number
...... iii) Tune
...... iv) Next channel
... D) Next TV
3) Job done - every two (expletive deleted) weeks

Dave

clemmatis

I've been Freeview for ages, I didn't need a new aerial when I got it, it was fine.

Then Wales went digital and my Freeview service degenerated... !! The signal didn't get better when analog was switched off, it has, though, gradually improved. I do miss the analogue picture quality.

I am though relatively privileged, I do get all the channels I should and my re-tune works.

-- and I have cable TV in another room

oldagetraveller

qetu1357 wrote: »

Get Freesat much better picture quality and relability - and free once installed - you can reuse existing Sky dish for example.

http://www.freesat.co.uk/

Obviously it never rains where you live?!:D

My Freeview Humax box also has a far superior picture than my Humax Freesat box.:cool: It's free also, the clue is in FREEview.

vyle

Dave_C wrote: »

Hate to disillusion you, but where I live there is a small angle between the low powered Kimberley transmitter and the preferred High power Waltham transmitter. If I auto-tune then the Kimberley transmitter messes up the retune and not all channels are stored.

For me to retune
1) Look on internet and find the 5 or 6 channel numbers for the Waltham Muxes
2) For each TV:
... A) Unplug aerial and auto-tune to clear channels
... Replug aerial
... C) For each channel from step 1
...... i) Menu > installation > Manual tune
...... ii) Select channel number
...... iii) Tune
...... iv) Next channel
... D) Next TV
3) Job done - every two (expletive deleted) weeks

Dave

Ah youre in one of those areas.

I had to talk a customer through doing that on a sony TV the other week and it wasn't too bad, because she'd lost stations on two muxes (I think it was 16 and 19 or something) and the TV scanned all the channels within, and so for two scans she got back 7 channels.

KxMx

Re missing BBC channels, are you in the midst of a switchover? If so you should find all the BBC channels scattered in the 800's and after your switchover is complete they will go back to normal.

I have found service after switchover slightly dissapointing, we did gain several channels, but some we had problems with before we sometimes still have problems with now. And we had the correct aeriel installed so that's not the issue.

daveyjp

esuhl wrote: »

Looking on the bright side... I think they're going to increase the power output of the digital transmitters once the analogue TV ones are turned off.

I reckon this is an urban/internet myth. Before switchover we received 60-80% strength on every channel - perfect picture.

We went fully digital last night - I have retuned three times today and one or two channels are in the 90s, but most of them are in low teens - completely unwatchable.

loracan1

qetu1357 wrote: »

Get Freesat much better picture quality and relability - and free once installed - you can reuse existing Sky dish for example.

http://www.freesat.co.uk/

oldagetraveller wrote: »

Obviously it never rains where you live?!:D

My Freeview Humax box also has a far superior picture than my Humax Freesat box.:cool: It's free also, the clue is in FREEview.

I've got both on my telly, the quality is pretty much the same (slightly different hues but both excellent on BBCHD for example) unfortunately every time it rains the freeview decides it won't work any more, given up now and stick to freesat.

What's worse is that on the rare occasions I can be bothered re-tuning, the first channel it gets is gayrabbit...just waiting for my son to ask if he can watch it!

vyle

daveyjp wrote: »

I reckon this is an urban/internet myth. Before switchover we received 60-80% strength on every channel - perfect picture.

We went fully digital last night - I have retuned three times today and one or two channels are in the 90s, but most of them are in low teens - completely unwatchable.

going "fully digital" or the "changeover date" are misnomers. The date is when analogue is switched off, NOT when the digital signal is at full power.

Go here and stick your postcode in the box on the right for all the info you need.