Losing TV Channels

TomT

Member
Hi
I seem to be having a few issues at the moment..

My HD channels had stopped working, so last night I rescanned my channels and found everything except ITV4. HD worked fine last night but this morning, No Signal.

My aerial comes into the house and is spilt to 2 TV's. ( HDR and TV with Freeview built in )
I've had a local aerial installer check everything and the signal is very good running to both devices.
(No issues with HD or ITV signals.)

My TV with built in freeview get all the channels except HD ( as expected ) and ITV4 works well there. Yet my HDR doesn't get ITV4 and the HD have stopped receiving.

The HDR box has been upgraded to the latest mod version today, channels rescanned etc and still the same..

I did notice last night when I unplugged the aerial I got a slight buzz/shock/tingle from the HDR aerial in socket.

Any ideas ?? I've only had it a couple of months, so I could return it to comet for replacement...

Thanks
 
Some parts of the country are in the middle of digital switch over, I imagine your problem is related to this rather than hardware.
 
I am on Winter Hill. All HD channels coming through loud and clear for me.

The slight 'buzz or tingle' is nothing to worry about. I get that too. It's just a 'bonding issue'. I believe it's because the HDR is a 'double insulated' device and as such does not have an earth connection.
 
ITV4 is always the worst in my experience.

You may think you are tuning Winter Hill, but are you sure? Use the "List" button to check transmission channel numbers and correlate them with the expected channel numbers (press "i" once you have highlighted a channel of interest).
 
Winter hill is not far from Emley Moor which is going through DSO right now so it may be that you were receiving transmissions from there or another transmitter which has changed its output.
 
I have found that the HD channels are very sensitive to signal quality. With SD you get all, pixellation or nothing. With HD you get all or nothing. A small change in signal quality can cause the HD channels to disappear completely. A change in the atmospheric conditions can be enough to tip the balance. A good aerial and quality down leads are essential.

I found that I got the "no signal" condition when I powered on my blu-ray player. I resolved this by making sure that all the mains power leads were kept well away from the aerial leads. I also fitted ferrite cores around the mains leads of the equipment (fitted as close as possible to where the mains lead enters the equipment) and found this also helped to make the positioning of the leads to be less sensitive.
 
Yesterday I moved the HDR into the other room and rescanned the channels.
All the channels were picked up including ITV4 and all the HD. So I've proved the main aerial etc is OK.

I've moved it back to were it should be, moved all the cables around and now everything is working.

I think this could be due to a flush mount aerial socket. The cable is terminated into the socket, and the HDR connects using a short coax 'patch lead' this seems to work, but moving either cable does affect the signal.

If it keeps happening, I'll remove the flush mount socket, fit a plug and coupler and try that..

Thanks :)
 
How "thin" is your patch lead? If it's that skimpy stuff frequently supplied with TVs etc, maybe no more than 5mm diameter or less, chuck it out. Proper coax is 6mm, anything less is very lossy.

I had an incident a few weeks ago, somebody I know was badgering me because their new digital TV for the bedroom was only picking up the main channels, but the old CRT+digibox (split off the same aerial) was fine. All I did was rearrange the patch leads to eliminate a thin one, and they thought I had worked magic.

I wouldn't take away your flush socket - it's only a coupler after all, and a tidy one at that. Make sure the cable termination is properly done though, with no twists in the cable when the plate is screwed to the wall.
 
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