UK TV

[Ray Barrington]

Hi,    Can anyone advise me as to what the future holds regarding UK TV channels. I understand all channels will be in HD format as from 2024. As my second home is in the southwest of France, reception is dependent on my Humax freesat box, a 1 meter dish tuned to the Astra satelite and good weather, even then we only receive TV channels in SD format.

Anyone with technical expertise that can advise would be greatly appreciated.

[Hectorsdad]

I can’t give you any predictions about how UK TV is planned to change. We have a secondaire in Central France and last year the reduced footprint from the Astra satellite made it impossible get an adequate signal so I changed from a 80cm dish to 1m and everything improved very well. This year we returned to the start of the new era of HD as the predominant channel signal. All I needed was a standard retune and all is well.

Our system is much the same as yours andI hope that any near future changes will not affect us. You are more likely to be working a5 the limit so good luck.

[Ray Barrington]

Hi Hectorsdad,    Thanks for your reply, we have a secondaire in southwest France, and with the 1 m dish all has been well

up until now, I have managed to get a couple of regional HD channels but no others, I am reluctant to fiddle with the dish as the HD channel I can get shows 100% good signal,so I am puzzled as to what to try next.

                   Ray.

[AnOther]

My experience with my 2x Freesat receivers is that it's all in the post code.

I'm set to my old address in Essex which gives me BBC East HD as 101 in the EPG

Others I know using other areas are not so blessed!

Here's a code you can try, CO11DU, it's Lloyds Bank in Colchester so should produce BBC East.

TBH I'm on the verge of cutting the satellite cord altogether and going with a combination of IPTV and a Firestick, 600mb FTH internet helps in that regard!

[Lehaut]

We are not allowed to put sat dishes up here.  VPN and FFTH sorted that out too. 

[Hectorsdad]

On 13/04/2023 at 16:44, Ray Barrington said:

 

up until now, I have managed to get a couple of regional HD channels but no others, I am reluctant to fiddle with the dish as the HD channel I can get shows 100% good signal,so I am puzzled as to what to try next.

After the retune I found our regional BBC 1 South was showing signs of a weak signal. It also applied to Drama and a few obscure others. They all used the same transponder and I assumed that signal was selectively reduced. I had a long list of other regional BBC 1s to choose from at full strength but we wanted South. The solution was to climb the ladder again and tweaked the horizontal direction with my wife shouting the result. We quickly determined that the dish needed a slight adjustment which I fixed in a few minutes. All channels are now running at 100% strength and quality.

Maybe you should readjust your dish. Do you have a dish alignment tester? I bought one from Brico for about 15€ and it has been excellent.

[Ray Barrington]

Hi Hectorsdad, 

Thanks for your info,  Although I have a 1metre dish and a Humax HD Freesat decoder I have very little HD channels.

The general feeling is, as you say, I may have to " Tweek " the dish a little to receive all the HD channels.

Yes, I do have an alignment tester that I used to set up the original installation and on some channels I get a full 100% signal, but zero on BBC 1, BBC 2, ITV, etc etc;

I am returning to France next month so armed with as much info as possible, I hope to solve this annoying peoblem.

                   Thanks again all the help. sorry for the delay in responding.

[Harnser]

6 hours ago, Ray Barrington said:

Hi Hectorsdad, 

Thanks for your info,  Although I have a 1metre dish and a Humax HD Freesat decoder I have very little HD channels.

The general feeling is, as you say, I may have to " Tweek " the dish a little to receive all the HD channels.

Yes, I do have an alignment tester that I used to set up the original installation and on some channels I get a full 100% signal, but zero on BBC 1, BBC 2, ITV, etc etc;

I am returning to France next month so armed with as much info as possible, I hope to solve this annoying peoblem.

                   Thanks again all the help. sorry for the delay in responding.

I have just spotted this thread, we had the exact same problem a few months ago. We can't get up to our dish so employed our local reliable satellite expert who replaced the 20 year old LNB and realigned the dish, all good now.

[hairyarsedpeanut]

Hi all, i see this post was a while back but just wondering if you still require any help? thanks Dave

[Ray Barrington]

Hi Dave and all that have followed this post,

            Well, I am back in France now until the end of October. Yesterday, as advised by "Hectorsdad" I set up my signal finder and TV monitor and slightly Tweaked my 1metre dish to try and get the missing HD channels, unfortunately, as soon as I moved the dish the signal disappeared, I tried the tweak both horizontally and vertically,     but the signal was lost by any slight movement in any direction. 

          What is confusing, I can receive some HD channels but only a few and not the ones I want (ie; BBC ONE SOUTH WEST and ITV )  BBC TWO OK!

                          Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

                                         Regards   Ray Barrington.