All posts by Phil
Below are all of Phil's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Oh right?? So are you saying the projections don't work if the area is below 30m asl?
Anyway just to let you know, the areas it says aren't covered in the town are and TV can be received on a piece of wet string in the town itself :) Briantist: Excellent. Great site by the way. Extremely useful. Hi Brian, just a note to say how much I appreciate your site. Thanks for all your hard work on this extremely useful resource. Hi Brian, not sure how accurate that Virgin Media coverage map is. It indicates they cover Scarborough, when they most certainly don't. Hi Brian, yes I just looked on Virgin Media's site and they have the same map.
Thinking about it years ago one of VM's predecessors Cable & Wireless cabled the town and then decided not to offer any cable services. They were digging the roads up from months and gridlocked the whole town. Maybe that's where the mistake is coming from?
When they completed their cable laying and then didn't offer any services there was a rumour that it was all a ruse just to get cable up to the Middlesbrough area. Not sure if there's any truth in that though?
Oh right. Well it was only a rumour at the time. It is very strange.
They didn't just lay the cable in the town they did it in a lot of outlying villages as well. There was even an article in the local paper at the time saying we were about to get cable, but after months of traffic gridlock it never happened.
At a guess I'd say they are missing out on around 70,000 potential customers. Oh right. Any idea why they'd dig ducts and not offer the service? Maybe they ran out of money half way through?
What would VM have to do to start offering their service then? Yes, you could be right. Just a shame they half did the job and then gave up.
I have just emailed the VM cable my street department to ask. Obviously they know about it at some level, as their coverage map shows. We'll see if they get back to me.
Thanks for all the info. You have taught me a few things I had no clue about regarding cable. Hi Brian, got my reply back from VM. Just thought I would share it.
Thank you for your enquiry regarding Virgin Media providing digital services at your home.
Unfortunately this area is too far from our existing network to be cabled by our infill activity.
To cable this area would require a major network extension. At this time, there are no immediate plans to extend the network into new areas if this requires main build - as this is very expensive. As we find new ways of serving areas such as this that are outwith the existing network, we will look at your request further and may be able to include this in build programmes in future years. However at this time, we will not be able to provide cable service to this area.
I appreciate this is not good news, but be assured our team have investigated this and will continue to look for other solutions that may help us achieve this in the future.
As far as I know the D1 and BBC transmitters are both 2kW, the BBC tx definitely is according to the BBC themselves.
Coverage is much much more than the map. For example I can receive BBC and D1 miles outside the shown coverage, indoors, without even putting the aerial up. Yes, that looks more like it.
Great new feature by the way. Oh right. Didn't know there were two masts in use. This one's 500W as far as I know Brian. BBC are 250W and YCR is 625W to the best of my knowledge. Yes maybe it's a BBC error? All literature over the years has had it listed as 500W, but then again they were probably taking their data from the BBC. Yes, sorry. I meant to type all literature I've read. Radio Listeners Guide has it at 500W and some other books I've seen over the years.
FM Scan also has it at 500W
http://fmscan.org/ml.php?…1173
As I say though, if they are getting their info from the BBC and the BBC info is wrong then that could explain it. (YO125PU) Not sure Brian. I've been up to Row Brow where the tx is several times and the MW aerial is a single sloping wire from the top of the mast. So it would have both vertical and horizontal properties.
The aerial is not long enough for the wavelength, so it's probably quite inefficient. Maybe this could be where the confusion is coming from. The power at the transmitter could be 500W, but the inefficient aerial means only 100W is being radiated, i.e. 100W erp?
That would make both the BBC and Ofcom right. 500W at the transmitter and 100W being radiated, which would mean they were at Ofcom's limit? I thought I might have problems when Oliver's Mount switched over.
I'm only a mile or so from the transmitter (line of site) and was getting full signal before the switch over. My TV (Sony Bravia) seems to be coping fine though. No problems at all. Works great on my Orange San Francisco. I read elsewhere that the first box being offered is a Humax PVR for £299. Apparently the box doesn't even have built in wifi. Seems like madness to me to offer a box for an internet connected service such as Youview and then make it difficult to connect the box to the internet?
Until we start seeing boxes with built in wifi it seems like a bit of a non-starter to me. Congrats on 10 years. Great site, very useful, very interesting. ^^^^^
Ignore me. Just realised the transmitters on the map are the full Freeview service and the areas shown in blue are the Freeview light areas. 
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