As you will know if you have read any of my previous posts I am currently playing around with Windows 7 Media Center with a short term goal of switching the family away from the costly SKY subscription model to free up some of our monthly outgoings.
So far it has all gone really well with the exception of the actual reception of Freeview mainly the MUX that transmits ITV and some other channels, I have been doing quite a bit of investigation and it appears this is a pretty widespread problem and the MUX that carries these signals is very low powered compared with the others, I receive all the BBC channels perfectly but ITV is poor with freeze ups and sound drop outs.
Apparently for my particular transmitter I am going to have to live with the problem until October 2012 when the full switchover occurs and the transmitter power is bumped up from 10,000 watts to 75,000 watts, not a great solution for me and now a major stumbling block to getting the family on board, I can see it now, “yes sorry your losing a lot of channels when we dump Sky and oh yeah ITV will be a poor experience too”.
So what has anyone else experienced, a Google search reveals lots of similar problems, all over the country, maybe Freesat is the way to go, they guarantee 99.99% uptime and HD Channels in Media Center but I just spent lots of money on my HDHomeRun.
3 thoughts on “Is Freeview DVB-T delivering a good enough service?”
I get a good signal since I changed aerial. Also I found that having lots of splitters caused problems so try experimenting with the cables and connections
I only have one splitter and it is through a booster, all my channels are good except the ITV Mux, its shows at 60% and with 60% quality, I have the correct High Gain Antenna to suit my location too.
So I spent some time in the loft and played around with a signal meter which comes as part of the HDHomeRun software and I have managed to improve things greatly and got the signal strength and quality up to 80% on the ITV mux, seems much better now, seems that trying to line up an aerial by degrees is nowhere near as reliable as just using a signal strength meter.
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So far it has all gone really well with the exception of the actual reception of Freeview mainly the MUX that transmits ITV and some other channels, I have been doing quite a bit of investigation and it appears this is a pretty widespread problem and the MUX that carries these signals is very low powered compared with the others, I receive all the BBC channels perfectly but ITV is poor with freeze ups and sound drop outs.
I get a good signal since I changed aerial. Also I found that having lots of splitters caused problems so try experimenting with the cables and connections
I only have one splitter and it is through a booster, all my channels are good except the ITV Mux, its shows at 60% and with 60% quality, I have the correct High Gain Antenna to suit my location too.
So I spent some time in the loft and played around with a signal meter which comes as part of the HDHomeRun software and I have managed to improve things greatly and got the signal strength and quality up to 80% on the ITV mux, seems much better now, seems that trying to line up an aerial by degrees is nowhere near as reliable as just using a signal strength meter.