Does anyone with a crystal ball know how many HD channels might ultimately be available on each system? E.g, Is there a bandwidth restriction on Freeview HD that maybe Freesat HD doesn't have? Freeview HD doesn't roll-out here until September and the wombles will be active at the end of June. TIA.
Nope...
Yup, there is a practical upper limit on the HD content on freeview - especially if ultimately they plan on selling of some of the current UHF TV spectrum after DSO as seems to be the plan.
Freesat is obviously not as limited in terms of available channel space. However whether the powers that be will want to give away too many free HD channels is another matter!
We have a tv that does Freeview HD and Freesat HD. We have a tv aerial but not a sat dish.
Connecting the set to Freeview gave a good reception and subsequent investigation showed that Freesat only offered a few extra channels that were not really worth the bother, even though a dish costs a few pounds to install.
However since analogue was turned off we get a lot of channels from another area bleeding over. For the last week we have got up every morning to find the set announcing it has found new channels and asking to set them up. Declining this results in the set constantly reminding us about this. Accepting it produces dozens of unwanted channels that take an hour to clear, every day so far.
If we had the Freesat working and binned Freeview we would not get this tedious problem, so we are considering this option as Freesat appears much more static and stable.
For us a good Freesat signal is therefore much more desirable than Freeview.
Sorry to be stating the obvious, but is there no way you can tell you (Panasonic is my guess?) TV to not search for channels as it pleases?
Cheers,
Kostas
Ericp explained on 15/01/2011 :
There are in fact lots of extra channels on freesat, which are simply not available on freeview. You would miss out on maybe 2 useful channels without the freeview option.
The dish is exactly the same as the Sky one and aimed at the very same satellites - so if you have a working Sky dish, then it is plug and play.
Dave for one. Sad person that I am I watch Dave quite a lot.
I don't know the truth of it for certain but I'm sure I read over in = uk.tech.digital-tv that Freeview HD actually gets more bandwidth than = Freesat HD TV (contrary to what you might expect).
Tim
Just to point out you don't need FreeSat or Sky for satellite reception. All the free to air stuff is available with a cheaper satellite receiver. What it will lack is the Freesat EPG. I use mine for BBC HD, BBC1 HD and ITV HD. I also have a dish rotator. Giving a choice of some 10 satellites and thousands of channels. All showing mainly rubbish, of course.
It rather depends on whether 'they' allocate more muxes to FreeView. The 'system' is capable of many more channels than are currently available.
Satellite suffers from the same restriction. Unless they add an extra satellite or replace one with a 'larger' one.
Tim Downie pretended :
I don't know the truth of that, but we have both and despite a strong freeview signal I notice regular glitches in reception, where the bandwidth is not adequate. That never happens on sat and in addition to the freesat channels, there are hundreds more free channels plus many more of the +1 hour channels. I only tend to use freeview for Quest and History, as everything else I watch and more, is available on the sat.
Away in the caravan we usually have no choice but to use the sat.
Then you have a crap TV and/or aerial.
Firstly you should not e directionalgood.
Secondly you should not have to switch of messages about them, since largely it would not be aware unless it has some autoscanning set up.
Dave is on Freeview.
uk.tech.digital-tv that Freeview HD actually gets more bandwidth than Freesat HD TV (contrary to what you might expect).
Only if you can turn off the automatic scan that, I assume is causing the problem. Even so, manual scans will be needed from time to time.
The problem seems to be an obvious oversight in the Freeview specification. It should have given the user the option to select which channels are scanned and, therefore, which are ignored. (Transmitter idents would have been even better but individual idents don't exist.)
The worst problems occur where the unwanted signals are on lowere channels than the wanted ones. When the scan starts (at Ch. 21) it pickes up all the unwanted ones and gives them the corect LCNs (Logical Channel Nunbers) 1,
2, 3, etc.When the wanted signals are found, the correct LCNs are already taken, so the 'extras' are numbered above the normal range. The crude solution is to unplug the aerial, strart the scan and plug the aerial back in when the progress bar indicates that the wanted range is about to be scanned.
A better way would be to fit a filter for the wanted channel group in the aerial feed. Whether such filters are easily and cheaply available, I don't know (my local transmitter is in Group A, so I don't have any problems or expect them in the future).
A worse problem is if the wanted and unwanted channels are interleaved. This will be a particular problem in those areas where the freeview allocations cover a much wider range than the normal 10 channel span.
This requires individual channel filters which can be expensive ...
This has recently been discussed on uk.tech.digital-tv.
Follow the thread from here:
There is almost certainly a setting to prevent this (something like 'automatically check for new services' which you need to set to 'off'). Also, modern Freeview+ HD TVs (i.e. with the Freeview+ logo) *ought* not to do this, because you should be able to specify which region you wish to receive.
Richard.
Might be just the reverse Of that where the aerial might just be too good. Around where we live in East Anglia not really a problem unless you live somewhere like Downham market where Taccy, Waltham, Belmont and Sandy heath are all around usable levels off the back/side of a good aerial;!..
There are real problems in other parts of the country where overlaps in service areas are far more commonplace than the flat lands here odd as it might seem. Even with decent well installed aerials and the settop box quality doesn't matter..
The -root- cause of the problem is a shortcoming in the specification where you ought to be able in the software of your box to input the serving transmitter ident for your area or location!.....
In article , Tim Downie scribeth thus
Shouldn't believe all you read;!..
Indeed. Despite recently having installed Tacolneston channel filters as the 'ultimate' solution to the problem, my brand new HDR-Fox T2 PVR still managed to get a sniff of Belmont and offer me a choice of Yorkshire or East Anglia! This is at just about the highest point in Downham Market.
Richard.
Anglywold isn't all that hilly too;)..
Suppose a trimmer attenuator on the HDR boxen is called for;!..
Did you mean to uncloak at that particular moment?
Ah, but then one can do a manual scan on the specific channel as and when (and if) and that's it. That's what I do anyway (though with the Toppy I have various other options too).
Kostas
That's what I used to do but it was a real pain! For a start we have eight TVs and one PVR, all of which needed a manual scan whenever a new channel appeared or an old channel moved. On some it was relatively easy, but quite time-consuming. On one particular TV (a Sony) it was near impossible to do a manual scan, because it was necessary to enter the LCN individually for every station! On another (a Toshiba) the automatic scan could not be disabled.
So I recently decided to do the job properly; I've fitted a set of channel filters to eliminate all but the wanted transmissions from Tacolneston. That will solve it until August, when the first pre-DSO channel change happens. DSO itself happens in two stages in November, and then sometime after that there will be a (hopefully) final change because of the UHF sell-off.
Whether I'll replace the filters with new ones at each stage (quite an expensive option), fit a programmable filter (also expensive) or dispense with the filter altogether until the channels are stable again I haven't yet decided. At least I've got seven months or so of bliss when I can enable the automatic scan on everything!
Richard.
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