All posts by Ben Ward
Below are all of Ben Ward's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Like many others, we have a pretty much non-existent service at the moment. The main TV set downstairs (Toshiba) uses its own Freeview decoder, as well as a second F.V. box (Sony) which feeds an old PVR. We have a second set upstairs with a second rooftop aerial point connected to a Humax Freeview decoder. The boxes downstairs are the ones with the problems (no signal) but strangely, the Humax is fine. But connecting the aerial directly to the Panasonic F.V. system upstairs gives the same problem as the set downstairs - no signal.
All this started a week or so ago, with frequent "If you lose Freeview channels after X date, you may need to retune" messages on all systems, which seems to have coincided with analogue switch-off in London. I have been looking around at pages and threads on this site, very interesting stuff.
We have not had these kinds of problems before and nothing else has changed; I have retuned all the Freeview boxes to no avail. I am now thinking it may be a physical problem with the aerial. Any ideas? The aerial is on the roof.
Thank you. 
I really appreciate the responses, guys. The 'too much signal' idea is very interesting; I moved my only working decoder (the Humax) to downstairs, and connected it up there. Of course, it works fine which kind of confirms that the Humax is the only decoder of my four which can handle a possibly too-high signal (Mike's point).
Dave, I will check my local channel tunings. I'll post back with my findings.
Regards,
Ben Dave Lindsay, you said "Check that the receivers are tuned to the channels used by Mendip and not Bath." How do I do this exactly, please?
Thank you,
Ben Dave, how I do I tell what transmitter a channel is tuned to? Is absence of info about this a limitation of different F.V. boxes?
My standard def. BBC1 (and its alright today) is indeed tuned to C61, but I'm not sure from which transmitter.
Thanks,
Ben Thanks for the supportive comments, chaps.
Getting an attentuator hasn't helped me, unfortunately. I am still inclined to think that its the equipment; the Humax receiver works fine, the other 3 receivers are in fact getting worse, with a scrambled signal, or no signal at all...
Thanks Dave, I will give those things a try.
Ben grahame baker, I have precisely the same problem, so you are not alone! The folk on this site have been very helpful but I have not yet sorted all the problems out.
Ben jb38 thank you for your reply.
The Humax (downstairs) tells me the following:
Ch61 AND 54 - strength and quality signals are both 100%. I can't even tune into 61 or 54 on any other sets.
Our aerial system uses a 4 way signal splitter in the attic, so in fact the same signal arrives downstairs as well as up. (I will have to clamber into the attic this weekend to confirm this, but I am sure thats what we had installed).
Only 3 of the 4 outputs of the splitter are used. There is no loop through on any of them.
Humax: PVR-9150T
Sony Freeview: VTX-D800U
Toshiba TV: 37XV555D
Panasonic TV: TX-L19C20B
Many thanks,
Ben Ben Ward: I have no idea why my last post seems to have come out bold. Sorry folks... jb38 thanks.
I bought this attenuator: 
Adjustable 0-20dB attenuator, coaxial connector version: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics
I will try it on the Humax and report back. Do you know, will it attenuate simply by connecting my aerial, or do I need to twiddle with the red control? (there are no instructions). Doing so didn't affect the quality of my upstairs set, a newer Panasonic TV w. Freeview.
In the last few days, I have had lots more channels had spontaneously appeared on the Panasonic (including the missing BBC ones yesterday.) But they have been there only during the day and are gone again come the evening.
Regards,
Ben (SN126BF) It gets more intriguing; most of my channels (except all the Channel 4 ones) are back after having all been messed up for weeks. Wonder how long they will remain working normally though?
I am as frustrated by all this as Lordgeous (like you I'm in Bath) and Tracey Gill - no-one at Freeview to contact really and the only help the other helpful users on this site.
I never either a) asked for or b) wanted all these digital channels and all their extra services anyway myself; given that, what was so wrong with the previous analogue system? I spoke too soon of course. Signal strength and quality is very variable this week, from nothing to 100%. I will keep plugging away i=at this, as I like a challenge! :-) Lordgeous, I hope your situation remains the same and you continue to get all your channels. We have *some* of our channels now, but not all especially BBC and Channel 4 ones. No BBC at all still, and the other channels are messed up (except the Humax receiver, which is fine). I've almost given up hope, next step is to enquire with a local TV repair company and see if they have any tips.
Good luck Lordgeous! Ben Ward: jb38 thank you very much for your advice and suggestions. I have done the tasks you suggested I do, as follows:
i. Ch61 on the Humax shows quality and strength both being 100%
ii. On the Panasonic, manually tuning it to Ch61 in the way that you said does result in some signal, as opposed to nothing. Nonetheless, I proceeded with the 2 bottom paras of your posting instructions. Having inserted my attenuator, I turned the knob as slowly as I could but to be honest it was very hard to tell if my twiddling was having any effect at all - quality varies from 0-20% at best; strength varies from 85-100% and both display bars flick around arbitrarily so its hard to gauge any effect, as I said.
Anyway, that's what I found. All our Freeview signals worked fine up until April, as I am sure I've previously mentioned.
Regards,
Ben Ward Ben Ward: jb38 I have been away and only seen your informative postings today. I will get back on to this tomorrow!
Thanks again. Ben Ward: Lordgeous, it might be very handy for me anyway if you could post the details of your local ariel guy in case I needed to call on him. Not sure if that's allowed on here, and there doesn't seem to be a PM system.
Thanks. Thank you jb38 - the situation is that the Humax antenna power selector is now set to OFF; it was indeed switched ON when I checked. It doesn't seem to have affected the situation with the Panasonic (or indeed a Sony VTX-D800U I am using) however, still non-existant.
Cheers Will do, jb38 my posting about the helpful service engineer was just in case I ended up in a deadend. Will respond to your new question tomorrow (I'm out right now) OK, I repeated the test I did before. Humax signal strength is about 75-80% and quality is 100%. Antenna power is off.
Transferring the aerial to the Panasonic and doing those tests again showed that strength varies from/flickers between 0-20% at best; quality varies from 85-100% which is pretty much what it was before when antenna power was on, on the Humax. jb38, I am posting part way through my latest attempts to sort myself out :-)
I reset my Panasonic back to factory condition etc. as you suggest above. It didn't help sadly. I have noticed that when I do an auto setup or rescan for channels, the system defaults to 'Channel 21' - isn't it meant to be 'Channel 61' for this part of the world?? How do I change it as it seems stuck?
I will tackle the next part of your suggestions this coming week, powering down the 4 way aerial splitter.
nb Sorry if I wasn't clear before, I don't have a second rooftop aerial, all F.V. boxes are and have been supplied from 1 signalfrom our only aerial with a splitter in the attic. One of those signals is further split in 2 for the downstairs (main) TV, to the Humax and (when it was working) to a Sony VTX-D800U.
Regards. jb38, the process of switching off the mains power supply to my 4 way splitter has been proving a bit of a task as its all in the attic, and I'm not as young as I was so scrambling around up there is difficult! So I am asking a friends son to help out with tracing exactly what cable system/splitter and so on I have in the attic and will report from that point. Perhaps some issue with the splitter is the cause of my problems? We'll see...
As far as the other things you've suggested, using the same aerial cable that gives me normal 90-100% strength/quality on the Humax, but plugged into the Panasonic, only gives me signal strength of between roughly 10% and 30% at best (though with signal quality of 100% each time) when manually checking channels 61 - 54 - 48 - 56 - 52. So rather than green occasionally flickering into yellow, its red occasionally flickering into yellow. I've not yet had time to try the 18inch length of wire you mentioned; could I not get the same effect by using a different aerial cable from the one I know works? (btw I tried a second cable, and no signal appeared at all.)
Thanks. Success! I have sorted out my TV problems FINALLY. It was merely a failed line amplifier which wasn't putting out enough signal (so it was indeed a mains issue). Aerial reception was fine. Thanks go out to Kevin from Wiltshire Aerials.
With a fair few loss of signal/pixellisation problems on the Mendip transmitter reported on here, could some sort of spike have messed people's signal/splitter/amp/picture up?
jb38 especially, thank you for your help with this. I must say I am thankful that I've found this website. jb38 thanks for the info! Lordgeous, thanks for the contact. Kevin was a big help! 
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