Poor Freeview Reception- anyone else?

JohnB47

Hi.

Since yesterday, we've lost quite a few TV channels on our Panasonic TV and PVR (or HDR, as it can sometimes be called). We get 'No Signal' messages.

We are served by the Beacon Hill transmitter and I've had a look at the mux channels my sets are receiving - many show reasonable strength but poor or no quality. I'm even receiving signals on a channel (23) that's facing the rear of my aerial - despite my manually tuning to only the Beacon Hill transmitter channels.

Two channels are OK, which suggests that my sets and aerial are OK.

I've read a bit, on the web, about the current high atmospheric pressure causing this sort of problem so I thought I'd ask here. Some people say they haven't had any freeview channels for days.

Is anyone else having this problem??

Inner_Zone

Has been reported in several forums. They suggest do not retune. I had the issue last night, switched to Freesat instead.

JohnB47

Inner_Zone wrote: »

Has been reported in several forums. They suggest do not retune. I had the issue last night, switched to Freesat instead.

Thanks.

Having done some more digging, I came across this from the BBC web site:

"There is currently a large area of high pressure across the southern half of the UK and extending across much of Europe. Pressure readings in the London area were 1030mb this morning which is high, but not unusually so.

However, it isn't the high pressure itself which causes interference with TV signals. It's the presence of what is known as an atmospheric temperature inversion. A temperature inversion is when a layer of warm air overlays cooler air at the surface. Temperature usually decreases with height above the earth's surface, but when there is an area of high pressure, the air aloft sinks down towards the earth's surface and it warms up as it does so.

This creates a sharp thermal contrast in the atmosphere which TV and radio waves see as a physical boundary. There are many TV and radio waves travelling through the lower atmosphere and in such atmospheric conditions, these waves can be refracted or bounce off the inversion overhead and this enables them to travel much further than they would otherwise be able to.

In this way, the usually strong Freeview signals can experience significant interference with other, normally distant, signals from other sources."

So much for the benefits of the digital era. (OK, I know TV in the old days was poorer quality overall but it wasn't as 'off or on' as digital seems to be).