Poor ITV, Channel 4 signal etc

My ITV, Channel4 etc signal has rapidly deteriorated even though my BBC signals
are perfect. Why is this - I thought Digital was meant to sort this kind
of problem out?

Any ideas?


IMHO the Digital capability has a long, long way to go. At best the performance
is patchy and at wrost the ADs on TV and Radio are grossly misleading. They
imply that Digital is significanly better, but I get much better performnace
form my analogue radio for example. Long live analogue.

Andrew

"andrew inwards" wrote in message
. uk...

My ITV, Channel4 etc signal has rapidly deteriorated even though my BBC
signals are perfect. Why is this - I thought Digital was meant to sort
this kind of problem out?

Any ideas?


IMHO the Digital capability has a long, long way to go. At best the
performance is patchy and at wrost the ADs on TV and Radio are grossly
misleading. They imply that Digital is significanly better, but I get much
better performnace form my analogue radio for example. Long live analogue.

Andrew


You will not notice on the BBC channels until the aerial is hanging off
because they use far greater power than CH4. With digital it's either on or
off and the power output is a fraction of what normal TV is. If they would
just boost the power up it would solve the problem.
I only use a freeview box as so long as I have a signal, it guarantees a
sharp picture. With normal TV the worse the signal the worse the picture.
It does have some uses!

"andrew inwards" wrote in message
. uk...

My ITV, Channel4 etc signal has rapidly deteriorated even though my BBC
signals
are perfect. Why is this - I thought Digital was meant to sort this kind
of problem out?

Any ideas?


Andrew,

The BBC channels transmit using a much more robust digital transmission than
do ITV, Channel4.

The BBC uses 16QAM to broadcast its digital terrestrial channels and this
results in much more reliable reception compared with ITV / Channel4 who use
64QAM. Basically 64QAM is less robust and this results in ITV and channel 4
being the first channels to be affected when signals become weaker. Thats
why you are losing your ITV and channel4 signals whilst the BBC channels are
still OK. Most likely reason for you experiencing weaker signals is tree
foliage between you and the transmitter site. It happens every year and
many lose the 64QAM channels. (Your signal loss is likely to be at its worst
in wet weather conditions, due to further attenuation of signals by wet tree
foliage).

Why do ITV choose to transmit using this poorer less reliable 64QAM system?
Mainly because 64QAM allows a digital muliplex to hold more channels,
compared with 16QAM. This is of course at the expense of the signal being
less reliable. I personally believe that at the launch of freeview, the
regulator should have made all transmissions 16QAM only, but they decided to
leave it up to the broadcaster to decide which system they used, which now
results in variable reception between the BBC and ITV channels. Its all a
big mess Andrew.

Hope that goes some way to explaining why your ITV and Channel4 have become
much less reliable now the trees are full of leaves again.

Brian

"Brian Blunt" wrote in message
...
Most likely reason for you experiencing weaker signals is tree
foliage between you and the transmitter site. It happens every year and
many lose the 64QAM channels. (Your signal loss is likely to be at its
worst
in wet weather conditions, due to further attenuation of signals by wet
tree
foliage).


Too right - every year you see this question pop up at this exact same time.
For some, the trees with no foliage during winter/early spring allow for
that much less interference, that people are simply inclined to think they
have a good signal. Come summer though, and the leaves, they realise they
don't have a good signal after all. The interference creeps up quite sudden
and one is often inclined to think something has suddenly gone wrong with
their set-up, when it hasn't. Happens to me very year too.