I may have been living under a rock recently - but I thought I'd have a quick research to find out exactly what is going on when they mess around with the freeview signal tomorrow. Whilst I'm at home trying to get my self back to full health I find myself watching TV a bit more than I used to. Any way, it seems that in November there will be a number of new HD freeview channels launched. So to accommodate, a number of channels (mainly BBC) are being removed from one set of transmitters to a new (from my reading lower spec) set of transmitters. Apparently some of us will find a drop of up to 33% in signal strength for many current BBC & ITV freeview channels. There are also a number of receivers which apparently will not work following the so called upgrade. So if you have a tuner which does not work after a retune tomorrow, I'd hang fire for a couple of months and buy a freesat HD box in November (when the new channels are launched) so that you will get everything again.
This goes alongside the little known BBC scheduled transfer to DAB (including stopping all transmissions on FM) of all its radio stations, in 2012 (I think it is scheduled for 2012 - it was outlined in the govt.'s latest communication paper - dealing with TV, Radio, Internet et al. earlier this year). New DAB radio for the car then?
TV tech is not my strong point, so I may be wrong on some counts, but... communication of the implications of these changes has not been forthcoming. I'm just hoping that when I go up to Leeds to see my Grandma and retune hers - its not a much bigger job than it should be - she is typical of her age - having not grown up with computers et al. Explaining it all to her requires a lot of patience...
I remember as a child in the 60s you were posh if you could get BBC 2 and later on super posh if you had a colour tv. In the 70s when I lived in South Africa there was no tv at all untill about 74/75. We used to listen to a lot of plays on the radio then ( Like radio 4 ) which when I think back was good for using your imagination as apposed to staring at some American drama were the good guy allways wins. At weekends for a treat someone would take it in turn to rent a Film & projector and all your friends and neighbours turned up to watch it.
We have freeview on the tv in the lounge but now we will have to buy 2 digital boxes for the tv's in the dining room & bedroom. ( or buy 2 new sets )..... I just might not bother !.......... :legit:
All i know is that the reminder pop up thing is REALLY STARTING TO HACK ME OFFF!
Quote from: CML-1591 on September 29, 2009, 06:06:25 PM
All i know is that the reminder pop up thing is REALLY STARTING TO HACK ME OFFF!
How do I remove the on-screen messages?Leading up to the 30 September you may find messages appearing on-screen reminding you about the retune.
To remove the messages from your screen you need to press the yellow button on your remote control. If you don't, they will disappear after one minute. The on-screen messages will appear each time you change channel to a different broadcaster, for example, if you move from a BBC channel to an ITV channel. However, if you move from BBC One to BBC Two the messages will not appear again.
Oh, forgot to say,
Wonder how many freeview boxes are going to stop working this time? Or send the channels all over the place like BBC1 up in the 800's etc.
Nothing like future proofing your setup to find out that when the switchover comes you have to pay again for equipment. >:(
They've already buggered one of my freeview boxes last time they messed around with the Muxes. The lightning took my other one out. Almost drives you to :beer: don't it.
We've had about 4 boxes so far - they keep blowing up or are not very reliable - problem we have is that we are right on the edge of coverage - officially we can't get it - signal strength is around 50% at best.
We now have a freeview box built into a relatively new flat screen tv - together with DVD, Ipod dock, Freeview card slot thingy.
If its going to drop by 1/3 then we are knackered!
Quote from: happypaddler on September 29, 2009, 01:26:35 PM
So if you have a tuner which does not work after a retune tomorrow, I'd hang fire for a couple of months and buy a freesat HD box in November (when the new channels are launched) so that you will get everything again.
do you mean freeview HD box? as a free sat HD box will need a sky mini dish.
Quote from: anglefire on September 29, 2009, 08:56:52 PM
We've had about 4 boxes so far - they keep blowing up or are not very reliable - problem we have is that we are right on the edge of coverage - officially we can't get it - signal strength is around 50% at best.
We now have a freeview box built into a relatively new flat screen tv - together with DVD, Ipod dock, Freeview card slot thingy.
If its going to drop by 1/3 then we are knackered!
Where are you? in 9 out of 10 casses, a
wide band masthead amplifier sorts out a very weak signal, you can get upto 25bd of gain, normally 60db of signal will be enough
Quote from: anglefire on September 29, 2009, 08:56:52 PM
We've had about 4 boxes so far - they keep blowing up or are not very reliable - problem we have is that we are right on the edge of coverage - officially we can't get it - signal strength is around 50% at best.
We now have a freeview box built into a relatively new flat screen tv - together with DVD, Ipod dock, Freeview card slot thingy.
If its going to drop by 1/3 then we are knackered!
I thought they were going to increase the power after ditching the analog part. ???
it's meant to be going up by a factor of 10, which can bring it's own problems as too much signal is as bad as not enough
Quote from: alan1572 on September 29, 2009, 09:20:57 PM
Quote from: happypaddler on September 29, 2009, 01:26:35 PM
So if you have a tuner which does not work after a retune tomorrow, I'd hang fire for a couple of months and buy a freesat HD box in November (when the new channels are launched) so that you will get everything again.
do you mean freeview HD box? as a free sat HD box will need a sky mini dish.
This is confusing me. HD freeview is upscaling existing signal (built in photoshop lol), freesat with higher bandwidth capacity copes with native hd signals...
freeview hd will have a mix of upscaled and native HD, there will be limits to how much hative HD they can show, the hd channels will be simulcasts of SD channels
Haven't done ours yet. Anyone had any problems? :legit:
Quote from: admin on September 30, 2009, 05:32:23 PM
Haven't done ours yet. Anyone had any problems? :legit:
yeah, can't find the retune button or anything like that
Quote from: CML-1591 on September 30, 2009, 05:36:21 PM
yeah, can't find the retune button or anything like that
This might help. http://www.tvretune.co.uk/productmanuals/
Did mine earlier and all seems ok at the moment and it is a few years old so I expected to go wrong on me.
Has anyone thought what will happen to car radios when they turn the analogue thingy off, that will be a nightmare as many are integral to other bits in the car :o
Quote from: admin on September 30, 2009, 05:55:49 PM
Quote from: CML-1591 on September 30, 2009, 05:36:21 PM
yeah, can't find the retune button or anything like that
This might help. http://www.tvretune.co.uk/productmanuals/
Thanks mike, although my TV is not on there lol
Did ours but it is still doing the same thing, telling me that I need to retune even though I have done so! Interestingly we had 110 channels before the retune, but now we only have 101. Not sure what's missing. And we still can't get either BBC 4 (used to watch a lot of it in our old house) or CBeebies (for the odd time we want to plonk our son in front of it for 5 mins).
Retuned all the tellys in my house then went off to work this afternoon only to be told that the freeview wasn't being updated till after 12 o clock, dinner time. Got home from work and had to do it all again, Four tellys... If only I read the information correctly :doh:
Quote from: happypaddler on September 30, 2009, 11:13:23 PM
Did ours but it is still doing the same thing, telling me that I need to retune even though I have done so! Interestingly we had 110 channels before the retune, but now we only have 101. Not sure what's missing. And we still can't get either BBC 4 (used to watch a lot of it in our old house) or CBeebies (for the odd time we want to plonk our son in front of it for 5 mins).
101 is quite normal, don't feel inadequate ;D