Signal strength is an analogue measure of the received signal power (or voltage) Signal quality is an internal display of the digital signal error rate of the demodulated signal.
Everything else being equal**, higher frequency signals are attenuated more in transmission through the air.
Waltham did move the BBC-SD mux down from 61 to 49 in May, suppose 4G rollouts could be starting, but AFAIK none of the 800MHz ones are launching proper until the autumn ...
Mismatch of your aerial to the incoming higher frequencies and/or worse losses in a poor quality UHF cable or iffy connector somewhere.
Signal strength is roughly how much of it - aim for 7/10 or higher.
Signal quality is how accurate it is again aim for 7/10 or higher and ideally 10/10. 9/10 is watchable. 5/10 is amusing 3/10 a joke.
Worth unmaking cleaning and remaking the connectors in case some corrosion is partially rectifying the signal. See recent thread here.
You could often see every possible mode of failure in Comet's wall of digital TVs with lousy shared aerial before they went bust.
With Panasonics it is always worth having a look to see what other channels it has hidden up in the 800's. It's algorithm for loading channels into low numbers is way too simplistic first found no matter how bad the quality may be. It is a real PITA near Manchester!
There is no standard way between manufactures of reporting the information. On my equipment 60% signal strength is OK but anything below 98% for quality in unacceptable
I've only noticed two channel changes recently, the spin of from Yesterday called Drama and the BT sport one. One assumes that Sky sports and Davejaview will now go to make the bandwidth usage the same.
As for signal quality, well in them good old days many folk had for example a lot of ghosting,one could say that such a signal was strong but not good quality. Its a rough measure of the error correction going on, and if too low is not watchable due to pixelisation or the set cannot resolve the data at all. Many other things can cause this, co channel interference, quite bad on Tuesday morning due to a tropo lift event, and interference from other services of course. also the higher the frequency of the transmitter, the less well it can get through obstacles and the range will be shorteer as the attenuation of the atmosphere will be greater, and of course one assumes the aerial gane curve ofver the bandwidth will also affect it. Bet you are glad you asked. brian
I find Freeview pretty unwatchable most of the time due to all the digital artifacts. DSAT is better but still suffers, the worst being the inabilty to reproduce a graduation in colour and level without banding.
I reckon that was deliberate because there was always one model (a different one every week or two) that looked perfect compared to all the buggered-about-with ones around it. Probably the model that was clogging up the stock room or was about to be replaced with a new version...
Talking of atmoshpere, does the heat (or other current conditions) make for an iffy signal? I've got one TV on freeview with a set-top aerial and signal strength/quality is usually pretty good. But for the last couple of months (and especially when it's hot like today), I get the "no signal" message on screen for a few seconds a couple of times an hour. It did it last "summer" too, but I don't recall it happening all through the winter. I've got two TVs on Sky and lose them sometimes when it rains so I wonder if there's a similar issue with Freeview and the weather?
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