My state of the art fat screen tv ... only joking of course. I do have a modern fat screen but it used to have a beautiful picture
I’m sorry to go on about this again, but is anyone else out there having difficulties with their digital signal?
Most of the time it’s ok, but there are periods where my television is completely unwatchable (and not just because of the parlous lack of decent programmes). Several Sundays on the trot there has been so much interference – sound cutting out, pixilation, no signal at all – that I have had to abandon programmes and catch up with them another day on iPlayer.
Whilst iPlayer is a wonderful thing, I didn’t really want to watch the superb ‘Birdsong’ on my tiny computer screen, sitting in an office chair in The Bunker, when I could have been sprawled on the sofa with a packet of Minstrels and box of tissues, sobbing with the emotion of it all.
The interference is predominantly on BBC1 and Dave, although I frequently lose other channels altogether and have to retune at least a couple of times a month and sometimes every day, if we’re going through a bad patch.
Action had to be taken. I rang the ‘digitaluk’ helpline on 08456 50 50 50. I was greeted by a bored sounding girl who gave the impression that she had no technical knowledge and couldn’t give a toss either way.
I explained my problem to her and she asked a few cursory questions about my set top box, aerial etc. She asked me where I lived and whether there was a transmission station near me. I told her that I was opposite a railway line and she said that this was probably the problem.
“Are you telling me that people who live near railway lines are all going to have their television signal interrupted?” I asked.
“Probably,” she replied, “loads of places get interference from all sorts of things.”
“But when we had the analogue signal this never happened, I had a perfect picture all the time!” I exclaimed.
“Ah,” she answered knowingly “but there were people in places like The Hebrides and the Highlands of Scotland who got really bad signal all the time. With digital they can get a great signal now.”
“So.” I said, my dander well and truly up “With analogue most people got a great signal, but because a few isolated communities couldn’t watch Eastenders, the rest of the country has to put up with intermittently crappy television.”
“Pretty much,” she said, clearly irritated my lack of wider social responsibility. “Have you considered getting a satellite dish?”
“I don’t want a chuffing satellite dish, I want a handful of channels, really efficiently broadcast so that I can watch ‘Call for the Midwife’ on a Sunday evening without wanting to throw aspidistras at the bloody telly.” I pay a hefty licence fee so that this can happen. I do not wish to pay for another piece of unsightly hardware to adorn the outside of my house, joining the other two pieces of satellite hardware that have been abandoned by the previous tenants. Why has this all become so difficult?” I whimpered.
“It’s progress, it’s a much better system that will benefit many more people.”
“It hasn’t benefited me. Who can help me?”
“I really have no idea.”
Fabulous.
This is what the ‘digitaluk’ website has to say on the matter:
It is difficult to ascertain the precise cause without seeing individual equipment set-up or installation. It could well be that your aerial needs attention due to its condition, or how securely it is fixed to your building. Here are some other potential causes below:
- Often the cause can be old/loose aerial plugs, which can also cause blocky pictures -a new aerial cable to the TV or set top box would solve this. It is probably worth checking this first
- If you have an aerial amplifier you may be getting too much signal – if so this needs to be disconnected
- If you have an aerial splitter serving a number of points in the home this may cause problems
- Atmospheric interference (e.g. high pressure weather fronts, high winds or snowy conditions) can also cause blocky pictures, as can electrical interference (e.g. a TV near to a fridge or a boiler)
Why did these things rarely affect my analogue reception?
Answers on a postcard, please.
Welcome to the club, we’ve had this for last few years due to using digibox to obtain extra channels (God knows why we bothered though !!) One year plugging in xmas lights on other side of room had a rather adverse affect and following year plugged into socket nearest tv no problem.
They will never give you a solution to this problem because there is no one cause, It did improve somewhat when HE bought a new all in digital tv so maybe it is just one of those government conspiracies to get us to spend more money on new tellys. By the why if you did watch everything on your iplayer you do not need a licence for that because it only applies to watching stuff as broadcast !
Very prescient, as I’ve been wanting to do a rant over in Unmitigated England about the digitising of television. I’m lucky in that for most of the time I get no problem with reception, but what I object to, in short, is that every evening when I switch it on I have to tell the digibox that I don’t want to reorder my channel list, and if I’ve had the temerity to watch programmes for over three hours or so the screen gets blocked out with a panel that asks me if I want to turn the television off. Usually at some critical dramatic moment. If I’m not in the room in order to yet again reach for the remote it just does it anyway.
Analogue was a much superior system because it had greater error tolerance, the actual signal itself was more robust. The one and only reason Her Majesty has allowed Her Majesty’s Governmint to “swap” us all over is twofold rather than Benny Hill manifold – on digital with it’s thin little beep-beep dot-dot nonsense “they” can cram more channels in the available bandwidth to flog to International Corporations – and “they” can now flog the bands that the old analogue use to fill to even more International Corporations for, yup – even more money (that we’ll never see).
My digital signal’s bestest in Winter – less foliage on the trees between me and the transmitter on the Lincs Wolds about three miles away! Wind makes the trees wobble about like politicians waiting in the bar for the division bell so on windy days forget television. In Summer when the rain makes the foliage wet and the trees move around because their roots are soggy and loose the National Digital TV System actual sucks signal out of my home via the TV.
When I lived in Norfolk (as much as anyone can, in Norfolk) Poirot used to regularly grey-out totally just as he was about to announce and the killer is – whenever a taxi drove past with his radio transmitting.
Progress. You wait until the Water Board goes digital, then we’ll have problems.
I still have my analogue TV which I seldom watch. I watch OH’s TV but the lack of anything worthwhile watching is scandalous. I’ve no idea why I can still get a signal on mine.
It’s the weather. Guaranteed, we get it here in North Norfolk all the time. The finer the weather the worse the signal. Not a lot you can do about it.
Tis a case of the old adage “Never trust anything digital” Digital is really a delicate flower. When it’s in tip top condition it’s perfect and beautiful, but any slight breeze or downpour and its gone. Analogue on the other hand is a bit dowdy but it’s robust and in adverse conditions degrades slowly and in the case of FM Radio or analogue tevelvision allows usable reception with even quite a large loss of signal strength. The problem is of course that there is no longer any choice, it’s digital or nothing. Let’s hope we can keep FM going so we don’t suffer the same fate with our radio reception.
Owl Wood- I thought it was just coincidence but I had been going to put that our digital picture always managed to pixilate, go generally fuzzy etc. just at crucial moment of any detective/murder mystery denouement – Poirot being a typical example ! The only explanation I can conclude is that this done purposely as Ms Christie seems to be the mainstay of digital drama and is repeated so often if we did ever find out ‘ who did it’ what would we have to watch – one would have to dig out the old Cludeo board !!
In defence of digital radio – R4 extra is a saviour from endless analysis and news and Peston on R4 but could they lose Milton Jones and the Goons- and the Glums( Sunday morning schedule for non christians is dire but it does mean I get up earlier and walk the dogs at unreasonably early hour for humans !)
We have normal radio downstairs and digital upstairs so if moving about doing chores one doesn’t miss the answers on Brain of Britain or punchlines from News Quiz due to time delay on digital signal.
I had to bite the bullet long ago and get a satellite dish. It’s the only way to get good reception round here, and even with that you still get the occasional blue screen on certain channels accompanied by the ‘No Signal Being Received’ message. I’ve tried flogging the digital box with a rolled up copy of The Yorkshire Post when it happens, but to no avail.
It never ceases to astound me that I can sit and watch live cycling on Eurosport from out on the roads around the globe, with crystal clear images being sent by a bloke perched on the back of a motorbike – and yet my regional TV station, twelve miles down the road, can’t get a picture to me without it pixelating and freezing up frequently.
As for your reception problems, are you sure it’s got nothing to do with your mechanical timer switc….. oh, wait a minute.
One plus point for digital tv – you can delete channels -, so I need never be astounded at finding myself sitting watching ‘live’ cycling or for that matter any ‘sport’.
If only they would put all things olympic on one dedicated deletable digital channel. I bet none of that coverage pixelates.
Nothing much useful to offer I’m afraid as we watch little television and when we do the digital signal seems to be acceptable, but a friend with a digital signal booster seems to have solved her problems.
I’m impressed at how knowledgeable you all are about how digital works. It does seem to illustrate my point though, that the whole system is completely arbitrary depending on where you live, weather conditions, the presence of extra-terrestrials or whether you dance round your sitting room three times clapping your hands on the off-beats.
The worst thing is that there is no-one to complain to as it is a done deal. It is undoubtedly a government plot. Any day now, all our screens will go blank and suddenly Peter Mandelsson will appear, his skin reddened, his eyes dark and hollow, cackling wildly, with all the world leaders turned into marionettes behind him, dancing a frantic, tragic dance of their own invention. Cameron and Clegg will be imprisoned in a giant bird cage, their great long noses twitching with fear as they are made to watch re-runs of TOWIE and Hollyoaks on a permanent loop for all eternity. Or something.
And g-rider? Enough with the timers already. Put them behind you and move on.
The most disturbing thing about your comment WH, is that you are apparently so familiar with a certain television programme that you can blithely reduce it’s long title to ‘hip’ initials. Oh dear. I shouldn’t know what it stands for, should I?
We used to lose Channel 5, and all on the same MUX whenever it rained hard (cBeebies!!!) and Channel 4 and all its brothers and sisters whenever it was windy. It has been a bit better since they upped the power on switchover, but nothing like they promised.
The problem with re-tuning here is the display of all the channel names (‘Mum, what’s Adult Filth?’)
It’s terrible, but it’s always been arbitrary and has always depended where you live. Here in a small town in the Cotswolds we had difficulty receiving Channel 4 or Channel 5 in the analogue days. A few years ago, we had an aerial man around to see if anything could be done. He went on the roof with his boxes of tricks and came back white as a sheet: ‘It’s amazing you can get a signal at all ‘ere, mate,’ he said. We had to be grateful for BBC1 and 2 and ITV, apparently. Now we have digital, we can receive all the main channels and more, with rare episodes of pixellation (What’s that you’re watching? Oh, just an episode of pixellation). So we are in the ‘Outer Hebrides’ bracket, and have benefitted from the switchover. But why should others have to suffer? The legendary ‘they’ should be spending more of the money they make selling off bandwidth ensuring that the likes of you can get a decent TV signal.
We have Virgin Media on the main TV, but ordinary Freeview on the bedroom TV. I retuned the Freeview box as instructed and have now lost all the BBC channels! Great, so now the things that we actually have to pay through the nose for are conspicuous by their absence.
I think it’s all a plot by the satellite and cable companies to force us to buy their services. Bah humbug.
The comment by chrisjr at Digitalspy might help you. Message boards are often a good source of expert advice.
Good luck!