[mythtv-users] UK Reception note

[Mike Perkins]

Something UK users may like to bear in mind if you encounter any difficulties with reception.

As I have previously mentioned, we had to have a new aerial since the old one had been shifted by 
recent gales, and it also turned out the connection box was full of water, as was the down cable.

I thought that was the end of the story but it turned out not to be. On the TV, we were still 
getting massive breakups on certain channels - but not others. It was only SD, HD was fine. 
Curiously the myth system seemed to be more stable, even though there were occasional hiccups.

By substitution and some analysis, I determined that it was the single BBC transport that was 
causing the problem. The signal strength was good enough, the same as most of the other transports, 
but somehow the TV could not cope with the stream as it should.

Then I remembered something I saw when I rescanned recently, and that was the transmission mode. 
PSB1, which is the BBC transport, is mode DTG-3. PSB2, which contains ITV/Channel 4/Channel 5, is 
also DTG-3 but is received fine. The other SD transports are DTG-8 while the HD transports are DTG-6.

It looks like the BBC is doing something "new" to their transport which my oldish Philips TV cannot 
cope with. It may be that this is an edge case, but it is another thing to consider if you should 
have odd reception problems.

-- 

Mike Perkins