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Freeview a waste of time

M

mr ada

New Member
Hi guys
Im sick of freeview. I keep losing channels ITV4 i watch, when i can. The tour de france was ruined as the recording droped out after about 3 pm.
I lose quite a few chanels on 538000khz. I live in ca14 and am on caldbeck, signal strength 80 quality 100% but when chanels go signal strength 100 quality 5-10%.

Just cannot trust freeview anymore.

Dave
 
The answer is "signal strength 100" - that actually means "100 or more". You are overdriving the receiver, causing the drop-out. Get the signal down so that it never exceeds 99 and you will be fine. 50 is perfectly good enough (as long as the quality remains 100).
 
mr ada said:
I lose quite a few chanels on 538000khz.
Click to expand...

Each UHF TV channel or RF frequency carries a Freeview Mulitplex or Mux, a Mux contains multiple digital TV channels, in your case UHF TV channel 29- transmitted from Caldbeck on 537.8Mhz carries this lot, so they will be all come and go together. More info. on Caldbeck HERE

Caldbeck-ch29.jpg
 
Channel 29 538000kHz showing 70% strength and100% quality this morning.

Can't recall any dropouts since digital changeover.
 
RobH1 said:
Can't recall any dropouts since digital changeover.
Click to expand...

Same here. In the early days, when I used an analogue TIVO pvr but had Freeview just for BBC4 and Film4, Freeeview was very flaky. After changeover I continued for a while using the TIVO with a Phillips STB - that was terrible as the Freeview signal was poor and the Phillips box unreliable. When I changed to the HDR ( and manually retuned to avoid duplicates ) all those issues vanished.

I'm a digital sceptic - I never expected it to improve on analogue. But now it is settled down it is as good, and in HD somewhat better. Remember how awful those early CDs were? Now after years of development they're almost as good as LPs.
 
Hi all
What gets me is its ok in the mornings and early afternoon then breakes up as the day goes on. I suppose its atmopherics ?

BH tried a less powerful aerial same thing, tried attenuaters but again loose the signal?

Puzzled

Dave
 
David Howarth said:
I suppose its atmopherics?
Click to expand...
Guess so.

David Howarth said:
tried a less powerful aerial same thing, tried attenuaters but again loose the signal?
Click to expand...
Keep monitoring the quality and signal strength. Quality less than 100 is not acceptable, and then the strength tells you whether the signal is too strong (100) or too weak. If your signal fluctuates between too strong and too weak, I don't know what to suggest.

Is Caldbeck your only option?
 
Dave appears to be in Workington and seems to have a clear line of sight to the Caldbeck transmitter with no high fells between. We are considerably closer under the same conditions. This afternoon a quick check revealed little change-strength 71%.
 
Hi all
Even on my computers in win7 media centre i get drop out,. I use Blackgold 3600 tv cards. I've noticed that i get bbc 1 and 2 scotland utv, and various scots and irish radio chanels. Ofcorse i delete these chanels. Then when everthing is playing ball if i do a rescan, they are not there. Too much sun me thinks.

Dave
 
Looking at the Caldbeck data there are a mix of 100kW (max) and 50kW (-3db) muxes. Ch29 is the highest frequency of the lower powered muxes, so if there is anything marginal in the reception (dodgy aerial, cable, tree in line of sight, ...) that may be the weakest link.
Just a thought - 80% indicated signal looks pdg to me.

EDIT 31/7: Changed 10 & 5 to 100 & 50.
 
You don't know that, 100 might represent the 0dB point, and at exactly 100 the quality might still be 100. We don't know how far above 100 the signal has to go before the reception degrades, or how far the signal is above 100 if the meter reads "100". The only way we can advise in situations like this is to recommend the signal strength does not exceed 99, but the headroom could be 105 or 110.
 
I base my comments on my own installation (which includes a ruddy great amplifier (installed in the low power days before DSO) that I can't get at to take out without a big ladder I don't have or paying someone dosh to do it for me - as it works OK at the moment I'm disinclined to do either) and measured signal levels and readings off the box, both with and without beefy attenuators. My signal strength has never gone above about the low 80s even with all that gain in.
I repeat my assertion - if your signal strength shows 100, you have a BIG problem somewhere which needs attention if you want it to work properly.
 
prpr said:
I repeat my assertion - if your signal strength shows 100, you have a BIG problem somewhere which needs attention if you want it to work properly.
Click to expand...
We are not at odds, except that I water that down slightly to say that if the strength shows 100 and quality<100 there is definitely too much signal. If strength=quality=100 you're on the margin of having a problem.
 
To experiment, I recorded a few ITV4 programmes last evening and overnight, no problems at all.
Checked signal strengths at random times proved little or no variation. Quality 100% on all.
Ch 23 73%
Ch25 80%
Ch26 77%
Ch28 75%
Ch 29 71%
Ch30 68%
Not sure if this is any help at all, but as stated above, no problems with freeview from Caldbeck.
 
Those are a very close-spaced set of muxes!

It would not have been possible to do that with analogue, there would have been co-channel interference. It strikes me that if the signals are particularly strong (but OK for an individual channel) they could add up to an overload through spectrum spread, particularly if changing conditions boosted them a little. Maybe prpr's idea about interference is on the money.
 
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