[mythtv-users] UK: managing Freeview and Freesat

[Simon Hobson]

Richard Lainchbury wrote:

>>Asking for the region would make sense here. Depending on which way you
>>decide to point your aerial, we can receive either Winter Hill (Granada)
>>or Wrekin (Midlands). Either would be valid for our post code, but the
>>correct answer  would depend on which way you decided to set up your
>>aerial. Even this excludes people who choose to have two aerials, so
>>they can get both regions.


>Does anyone know how current digiboxes decide?


Now there's a thing - and it applies to people with a local infill tx 
who can also see the main tx, as well as those who can see txs from 
different regions.

The TVs and boxes I've set up (for a friend) simply add channels as 
they find them, using the Freeview channel numbers. When they find 
duplicates, they put them up at 800 onwards. At my friends house, 
they are pointed at the main transmitter (Winter Hill), but being 
close they also get a signal from the local infill (the town is in a 
dip).

Winter hill has it's muxes right at the very top of the band, so the 
infill muxes are lower down. Predictably the boxes start from the 
bottom, pickup barely watchable channels from the infill, and then 
stick the real main channels up at 800+. Some system designer 
somewhere would have had sizzling ears when I found that out !
If you are (as a lot of people were it seems) in a situation where 
you get (for example) Welsh regional variants picked up before the 
local ones you want, this is going to be even more annoying.

One trick to deal with this is to unplug the aerial until the box has 
scanned past the stuff you don't want - and then it only gets the 
main channels. I picked this up while following stories of people 
having exactly this problem when their area went into switchover. 
People weren't very happy at "moving" to Wales.

-- 
Simon Hobson

Visit http://www.magpiesnestpublishing.co.uk/ for books by acclaimed
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