Eastbourne digital reception

We re in Eastbourne near Devonshire Park. I am told that the signal on our
communal aerial ( seven storey block of 56 flats) comes from Hastings. My
Humux box shows that my signal comes from Heathfield. Is this because the
Heathfield signal is relayed to us via Hastings?
The box shows our digital signal strength fluctuates at different times of
day from 49% to 70% and the picture quality varies from 70% to 100%. Should
signal and picture quality be broadly similar in all parts of the building.
It seems that not all people report the same reception problems but we do
have long periods of broken up/scrambled picture or the red no signal dot.
Not everyone has been connected to by the original installer. The connection
for each flat comes from a connection in a cupboard on each landing.
The buildings management are reluctant to bring the original contractors in
as last time we had no signal for 36 hours everything was fine by the time
the engineer arrived. How much does weather affect our signal? The excuse of
new buildings going up is often cited as a cause of the problem.
Derek.



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In article ,
DerekF wrote:
We re in Eastbourne near Devonshire Park. I am told that the signal on our
communal aerial ( seven storey block of 56 flats) comes from Hastings. My
Humux box shows that my signal comes from Heathfield. Is this because the
Heathfield signal is relayed to us via Hastings?

Yes, exactly.

The box shows our digital signal strength fluctuates at different times of
day from 49% to 70% and the picture quality varies from 70% to 100%. Should
signal and picture quality be broadly similar in all parts of the building.
It seems that not all people report the same reception problems but we do
have long periods of broken up/scrambled picture or the red no signal dot.
Not everyone has been connected to by the original installer. The connection
for each flat comes from a connection in a cupboard on each landing.
The buildings management are reluctant to bring the original contractors in
as last time we had no signal for 36 hours everything was fine by the time
the engineer arrived. How much does weather affect our signal? The excuse of
new buildings going up is often cited as a cause of the problem.
Derek.

Assuming your digital box is not broken in some way, new buildings being
built should not cause that type of fluctuation unless they are being
built very fast! Indeed multipath problems should be better with the
digital signal than the analogue signal - do you get a good analogue
picture?

There are some interesting effects that can occur where the transmitter
is on the other side of an area of tidal water, by the way, which I
believe is true in your case. This is due to multipath interference
caused by reflections off the surface of the water.

Nick

"DerekF" wrote in message
...
We re in Eastbourne near Devonshire Park. I am told that the signal on our
communal aerial ( seven storey block of 56 flats) comes from Hastings. My
Humux box shows that my signal comes from Heathfield. Is this because the
Heathfield signal is relayed to us via Hastings?
The box shows our digital signal strength fluctuates at different times of
day from 49% to 70% and the picture quality varies from 70% to 100%.
Should signal and picture quality be broadly similar in all parts of the
building.

You could reasonably expect so.

It is the signal quality that is important, but there is no standard way of
reporting this so different receivers give different results.

Further some receivers are better than others.

So I would say your options are to try a different receiver, complain to the
building management about the Freeview signal, or ask them to provide a
satellite signal, and use Freesat or Freesat from Sky.


--
Michael Chare

"Nick" wrote in message
...
In article ,
DerekF wrote:
We re in Eastbourne near Devonshire Park. I am told that the signal on our
communal aerial ( seven storey block of 56 flats) comes from Hastings. My
Humux box shows that my signal comes from Heathfield. Is this because the
Heathfield signal is relayed to us via Hastings?

Yes, exactly.

The box shows our digital signal strength fluctuates at different times of
day from 49% to 70% and the picture quality varies from 70% to 100%.
Should
signal and picture quality be broadly similar in all parts of the
building.
It seems that not all people report the same reception problems but we do
have long periods of broken up/scrambled picture or the red no signal dot.
Not everyone has been connected to by the original installer. The
connection
for each flat comes from a connection in a cupboard on each landing.
The buildings management are reluctant to bring the original contractors
in
as last time we had no signal for 36 hours everything was fine by the time
the engineer arrived. How much does weather affect our signal? The excuse
of
new buildings going up is often cited as a cause of the problem.
Derek.

Assuming your digital box is not broken in some way, new buildings being
built should not cause that type of fluctuation unless they are being
built very fast! Indeed multipath problems should be better with the
digital signal than the analogue signal - do you get a good analogue
picture?

There are some interesting effects that can occur where the transmitter
is on the other side of an area of tidal water, by the way, which I
believe is true in your case. This is due to multipath interference
caused by reflections off the surface of the water.

Nick
I assume that my Humax is OK as it is just three months old. The signal on
it is vastly better than on our two old OnDigital boxes. We get a really
good analogue signal much better than the one that we had when we lived in
Edinburgh with the same three TV's.
I took the 'New Building Syndrome' with two pinches of salt as it is a
typical engineers excuse. One neighbour told me that she keeps her old B/W
portable to hand for when her digital picture goes. Another said that she
never watches the 'high numbers Some people say that hot weather makes their
picture worse but we have actually found that our picture seemed better then
when using the OnDigital box last year. I have not noticed that the picture
gets worse in storms/rough seas apart from the time the aerial was blown
down:-)
Derek.



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"Michael Chare" wrote in message
news
"DerekF" wrote in message
...
We re in Eastbourne near Devonshire Park. I am told that the signal on
our communal aerial ( seven storey block of 56 flats) comes from
Hastings. My Humux box shows that my signal comes from Heathfield. Is
this because the Heathfield signal is relayed to us via Hastings?
The box shows our digital signal strength fluctuates at different times
of day from 49% to 70% and the picture quality varies from 70% to 100%.
Should signal and picture quality be broadly similar in all parts of the
building.

You could reasonably expect so.

It is the signal quality that is important, but there is no standard way
of reporting this so different receivers give different results.

Further some receivers are better than others.

So I would say your options are to try a different receiver, complain to
the building management about the Freeview signal, or ask them to provide
a satellite signal, and use Freesat or Freesat from Sky.


--
Michael Chare
Satellite was considered before the Freeview aerial was installed as at that
time (2005) only five people voted for Sky. Individual Sky dishes are banned
on the building.
The Sky option was raised again last year and Sky and another company were
asked to survey the building and quote. Freesat is an option that many would
now consider.
Derek.



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Nick wrote:
In article ,
DerekF wrote:

My
Humux box shows that my signal comes from Heathfield. Is this because the
Heathfield signal is relayed to us via Hastings?

Yes, exactly.

To be pedantic, that's not actually the case, most of the pre ASO DTT
transmitters, even those that are analogue relays, such as Hastings, are
fibre/satellite fed. The broadcasters for some reason choose to label
the streams with the name of the primary regional or sub regional
transmitter, in this case Heathfield.

Fairly intuitive in most places, but totally confusing for people in
North Wales for instance, who wonder how on earth they can be receiving
Wenvoe !

In article ,
Mark Carver wrote:
To be pedantic, that's not actually the case, most of the pre ASO DTT
transmitters, even those that are analogue relays, such as Hastings, are
fibre/satellite fed. The broadcasters for some reason choose to label
the streams with the name of the primary regional or sub regional
transmitter, in this case Heathfield.

I stand corrected - thanks for that. AIUI the identification information
is buried in the MPEG stream they are transmitting so it would probably
require some quite complex equipment to rewrite for a relay: hence they
don't bother?

Nick

Nick wrote:
In article ,
Mark Carver wrote:
To be pedantic, that's not actually the case, most of the pre ASO DTT
transmitters, even those that are analogue relays, such as Hastings, are
fibre/satellite fed. The broadcasters for some reason choose to label
the streams with the name of the primary regional or sub regional
transmitter, in this case Heathfield.

I stand corrected - thanks for that. AIUI the identification information
is buried in the MPEG stream they are transmitting so it would probably
require some quite complex equipment to rewrite for a relay: hence they
don't bother?

Indeed, AIUI it's at the SIPSI server, and there's one per sub-set of
BBC and ITV regions, about 29 I think ?

What would be better is to rename the tag with the region, or in some
cases ITV's regional name, so instead of 'Heathfield' call it 'Meridian
South East', instead of 'Wenvoe', call it 'Wales', and so on.

In article ,
DerekF wrote:
There are some interesting effects that can occur where the transmitter
is on the other side of an area of tidal water, by the way, which I
believe is true in your case. This is due to multipath interference
caused by reflections off the surface of the water.
[snip]
when using the OnDigital box last year. I have not noticed that the picture
gets worse in storms/rough seas apart from the time the aerial was blown
down:-)

Tidal fading isn't caused by rough seas, it just means that if there is
a body of water between you and the transmitter, there are two paths
available to the signal, one direct and one bouncing off the surface of
the water. These can interfere to reduce the available signal strength.
And the effect varies with the height of the water so it's dependent on
the tide!

There are some interesting diagrams on the net somewhere plotting packet
loss in a microwave link across a tidal estuary against the tide rise
and fall.

Stacked arrays sometimes give an improvement - see
http://www.wrightsaerials.tv/blllstackedhdelta.htm

Nick

Nick wrote:

Tidal fading isn't caused by rough seas, it just means that if there is
a body of water between you and the transmitter, there are two paths
available to the signal, one direct and one bouncing off the surface of
the water. These can interfere to reduce the available signal strength.
And the effect varies with the height of the water so it's dependent on
the tide!

There are some interesting diagrams on the net somewhere plotting packet
loss in a microwave link across a tidal estuary against the tide rise
and fall.

Stacked arrays sometimes give an improvement - see
http://www.wrightsaerials.tv/blllstackedhdelta.htm

I used to live in Plymouth. Tidal fading was so pronounced at my gaff, I
had to refer to the tide times, in order to predict which channel I
wouldn't be able to watch that evening ?