Any digital TV experts out there? Something puzzling me..

[gordon s]

For most of my life we've lived in the London area and got used to receiving BBC London regional news.  For some reason this morning it had changed to BBC South East.  

 

On my Sky box, I can select any of the BBC regions and therefore have freedom to choose whichever I want.  

 

On my freeview set, I can't see all those channel options and therefore something must be deciding which region you receive.  I'm just outside Reading so we have London normally although others have BBC South even though they are close to our home.

 

Any ideas what controls which set of programmes you receive?

 

How can you reset the default so that you receive the region you want as BBC1 on freeview?

 

I did hear it was a software issue related to the entry of your postcode, but wonder if that is an old wives tale.

 

Done quite a few searches, but cannot find the answer and curiosity is now getting the better of me. 

[PhilH]

Try (if you can) entering a postcode from the area you want?

[Suzie]

Let me have your postcode and I can give you a better answer, but I think you are in a South East area, and the strongest signal will be South East, but for historical reasons you probably have an aerial pointing at Crystal palace in London.

 

It sounds like you have an auto-tuning receiver, but there are others available (not always expensive either) that let you choose which version you are watching. Also bear in mind that the HD version of some programmes is for a different region to standard definition version on the same transmitter, and the BBC news channel often carries the London version.

[The Stationmaster]

It basically seems to depend on which transmitter you are receiving from.  We used to get BBC (and ITV) South when we lived in Tilehurst and ideally wanted to continue with that that when we  moved here.  However when the chap was installing the aerial (the correct design for didigtal reception) he was getting a stronger signal from Crystal Palace transmitter off the back of the aerial than he was from the nearest South transmitter that the aerial was actually aimed at so he realigned the aerial on Crystal Palace and said 'hard luck'.

 

I do wonder f what has happened in your case is that a transmitter is off the air for maintenance and your aerial is taking the next strongest signal - it would be worth checking with the BBC (Caversham Park used to be very helpful in this respect) to see if that is the case.  If you are receiving the channels via Freeview they can also be quite helpful with details of transmitter downtime etc.

 

So I think it is basically down to the strongest signal and the way your aerial is aligned and if it is a sudden change it is something to do with maintenance judging by our experience.

[gordon s]

Thanks guys.  Did a bit more digging.  What threw me this morning is that without any reason the default changed from London to SE.  Of course it may have been a transmitter issue, but having gone into the menus, I did change our own postcode to that of my MiL in London and the next new section did go back to London.  Whether that was my tinkering with the postcode or a BBC issue or a satellite strength issue, I don't know, but strange how we got London one day and then for no reason at all it went to SE.

 

Of course that started me thinking and now I have to know the definitive answer.  This is what retirement does to you...

 

Edit:  Meant to say, Mike, we are the opposite of you.  We were brought up on London and didn't want BBC South as the default so I had another aerial put up on the roof pointing towards Crystal Palace or Wrotham and both feed into a multi outlet in the loft.  Satellite via Sky is an issue.  It's the feeds to Freeview that have started me thinking.

[mezzoman253]

This happen to us on re-tuning. We normally get our signal from Crystal Palace, but 2 other signals are visible form here, but at lower strengths. The Sony HD Freeview set gave me all the BBC channels from Bluebell Hill, I didn't realise this at first as all the commercial channels were ok, but the BBC ones had disappeared. After some digging I discovered the set up menu was now set to Kent/Sussex. On changing to London and re-tuning all was normal.

 

Rob

[stewartingram]

Freeview will set the local TV from your postcode via a lookup table. Due to the signal transmissions this is not accurate, just a prediction, so a fringe area postcode may go to the wrong TV station. Put in a postcode more central to the area of the local tv you want and it will work.

I had this problem recently, I live in Cambs (Anglia TV) and it stubbornly gave me Central TV. I changed the postcode to that of a relation nw of us,  and it worked ok. Was a bit of a fiddle resetting the postcode though, via factory reset and rebooting.

 

Stewart

[Del]

I believe there was an issue at the BBC's end this morning, which meant London news disappeared completely, especially during BBC Breakfast.

If you reset your postcode back, Gordon, does it come back?

[gordon s]

Thanks again guys.  I suspect you may be right Del, as that is when it went to another region.  I'll put our postcode back to our own.

 

Another of life's mystery's solved...

 

 

Just for reference though I found this on a TV forum. 

 

http://www.digitaluk.co.uk/postcodechecker/manual_retuning

[martin_wynne]

Just for reference though I found this on a TV forum. 

 

http://www.digitaluk.co.uk/postcodechecker/manual_retuning

 

Hi Gordon,

 

If you tick the Detailed View box below your postcode on the postcode checker ( http://www.digitaluk.co.uk/mytvregion ) you get a full breakdown of all transmitters available at your location, aerials, channel numbers, signal strengths and which MUXes are available on which transmitter.

 

There will be some changes later this year for the new 4G mobile phones, so we may have to retune often. The above trade page always has up-to-date details.

 

Martin.

[gordon s]

Thanks Martin.  I'm coming to the conclusion that it's the transmitter/aerial direction that controls everything and entering your postcode in the set is irrelevant other than from an ownership/security perspective.  I have used the same postcode in your detailed view as the one I entered into our TV which shows Meridian as the most likely signal yet we get London as our preferred station.

 

So in theory from that chart, with four aerials I could receive TV programmes from any of four transmitters, depending on which aerial was selected.  In our case we have two terrestrial aerials, one towards Oxford and one towards London.

 

I appreciate this is somewhat unusual, but bear with me.  With a TV receiving two strong signals, one London and one Central via two different aerials, who or what is then deciding which region I get to see as BBC1?

 

I'm now beginning to suspect our London aerial may have a higher gain than the Central one, so that is why it defaults to London and is nothing to do with entering your postcode into the set.  

 

Apologies this has nothing to do with modelling....

 

[Steven B]

Some Freeview boxes (& TVs) will do an automatic re-tune and will search the channels in numerical order. Doing this may find a different BBC or ITV region before your prefered on (I know in Leeds I get Linconshire BBC rather than Yorkshire BBC if I do an auto-search). You may find your "home" channels in the 300s.

 

Have a look on the Digital UK and it should tell you which channels to tune your TV/box to. Make a note of them and then do a manual retune.

 

Happy modelling.

 

Steven B.

[martin_wynne]

With a TV receiving two strong signals, one London and one Central via two different aerials, who or what is then deciding which region I get to see as BBC1?

 

Hi Gordon,

 

It depends which one the pigeon lands on.

 

I think the set will choose the stronger signal. If you go searching in the high-numbered program channels you may find that you can have both.

 

In truth your Central service from Oxford doesn't look very promising. Here are the results for your location:

 

 

Only the BBC A and D3&4 muxes look acceptable, but much poorer than Hannington. The BBC B HD mux is very marginal, SDN is only ok until later this year, the Arqiva muxes barely usable. Notice that there are several retune events on that transmitter this year.

 

A list of which program channel is on which mux is at: http://www.ukfree.tv/allchannelsmuxes.php

 

At the moment RMweb reception here is worse than all of them.

 

Martin.

[The Q]

Of course there can be another explanation, it is not unknown on free view for some bright spark somewhere to press the wrong button. and send the wrong signal to the wrong place, here in deepest Norfolk we have several times ended up with London or another regions local news.

the Q

[Steve Williams]

This may or may not be relevant to your issue, but some time ago, we lost a lot of channels. When my wife went to record something, most of the channels had disappeared. When I spoke to the chap that set the whole thing up in the first place, he advised than when you get the periodic message that new channels have been detected and you let the system search and update, information is sometimes lost. He advised to erase all channels and redo a manual set-up via the TV menu. Sure enough, that solved the problem.