Freeview Retune & New aerial

[RSB]

My aerial was £99 fitted next day after the call and that was on my chimney and it is a steep precarious roof with tall stack’s. Think corri! 🙂 There are some great indoor aerials now. I have come across a few when searching for air band aerials.

Americans: Over Sexed, Over Payed and Over here, Wat Wat!

[Bob Williams]

When we first came to this village in April 2003, I was not aware of the reception problems and Digital TV was not on the horizon for the Belmont transmitter.  I had a guy from Mablethorpe booked to fit my aerial in the loft, told one of my neighbours and he told me to look at the aerials fitted around the Close and the rest of the village. They were all on unusually high masts and all secured with thick wire rope around the chimneys. A guy with a business based in the village had fitted them all, so I cancelled the Mablethorpe chap and relied on local knowledge. The local fitter now has a large business, still lives here, and carries out CCTV, IT and TV systems for lots of other businesses now. He still answers the call if a villager wants him though. He fitted only one type of domestic aerial, said it was best for the area, must be OK as we went seamlessly into digital once it arrived. When a certain tree was removed, that is. The setup cost me £60 at the time I think, and cost him a few years perhaps, as he was balanced on the ladder shoving a 20 foot scaffold pole in the air, with the aerial attached and checking his meter at the same time. Brave chap. In 2012 he carried the Olympic Torch for us.

I now have Freesat and a Humax STB, but the aerial coax is coiled up neatly behind the TV and Freeview can be had through the aerial anytime there is a Freesat, Humax or dish problem, as long as I can find the actual TV remote. (SWMBO “tidies up” such things, even when left in a specific drawer, batteries out) The mast is strapped so securely to the chimney that only the chimney falling off could fetch it down. Which is why I had the landlord ‘point up’ the brickwork a couple of years ago. I also had an FM antenna fitted on the same mast and that is doing double duty as a digital radio receiver. I actually prefer FM myself, glad the gov have put off FM switch off.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[blacklion1725]

Different firm just been and fitted the new aerial, did it for £200, a little heavier than I hoped but to be fair bloke was very thorough and professional, run a new cable very neat and hung around to make sure re-tuning went OK.

The TVs were fine, had a little bit of grief with my STBs (linux receivers). They scanned and found the new channels, but when I set them to create the TV bouquets (the channel groups like HD, Entertainement, Documentaries) – they grouped all the newly moved  channels correctly but wouldn’t tune to them. Manually scanning UHF band 55 again fixed this. This must be an issue with the box/software. In any case all working now.

[Bob Williams]

Glad you got sorted, BL. Happy viewing!

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

I have terrible TV reception for all channels as I live at the base of Harrow on the hill and it is directly between me and crystal palace. Some days I could get some channels and other days not. I have 3 different set top boxes and they are all the same. Then i signed up for Talk Talk TV and got their box. As if by magic I now get all the freeview channels, including the ones that moved last week, as well as the Talk Talk and You View ones.

I have no idea how it does it as if i remove the areal connection then i loose freeview so its not streaming from the internet.

[The Duke]

I’ve said before, being so close to the mountain (big hill), well 2/3s up it, we could never get an analogue signal. We did have new aerials pit I’m by the local drunken spiderman (sadly had a stoke 5 years ago), but even then we got next to nothing

So we opted for sky. The think was when the digital switch over happens will drop sky. Well we are in the 5 percent that got a worse signal than before. So sky stayed until FTTC turned up, 8 months late. I kmoe as i was waiting impatiently.

The day i got switched on checked my speed, 76down and 24 out of 20 up, sky was history. Never looked back and saving about £100pm today vs 5 years ago. And that is pay for mow tv ent package £7, Netflix £7 and bt sports £5. Plus £24 for bb and phone.

£1200 a year savings, animus say 10x £8 for the odd sky sports game, is a sweet deal. For a superior tv time.

Superior because now i have to decide what i want to watch, meaning  in the mood to watch, vs the old way of flicking until i ce across somthimg ‘that would do’. Also when you have live tv, you (well meat least) would watch something then get sucked into whatever crap was on next. Somtjong id never choose to watch bit did ‘just cos it on’.

My reading and work has gone up, i watch less but watch better now. I don’t miss live tv. My girl that is now 9 was 4 when we pulled the plug. She was the only one to miss sky, the other 4 kids 11,14,16,18 (about that) never even noticed for w good week or two.

The 4 yo wanted her Disney ch back, but we soon forums Netflix kids, which filled that void. Now my 4 year old, will go to her nans and has no underandimg of broadcast tv. She things that’s just a sports thongs (she knows sports are live, cos I’ve kicked her out the room enough times), can’t get her head around you have to watch what the tv says. Also she can’t grasp the radio either. She says why do i want to listen to someone else choice. Hit next dad.

So she has a google play music playlist on my phone for the days we lisnt to music. It’s not that often ad I’m not a fan of music, rather lisnt to talk sport if have noting ony phone lined up.

Welcome to the 21C.

[blacklion1725]

I think loads of people (especially younger people) are doing that – me certainly (although I’m old!). I never look to see what’s on (except sport) and just wait for someone to say “did you see that – it was really good” – then fnd it on catch up.

I’ve got my STBs set up with freeview and freesat (binned sky but getting rid of the dish and cabling was more aggro than keeping it). My STBs do catchup for BBC and ITV but not C4 or C5 – but I can get those direct from the TV apps or an Android box that is in reserve.

Sky haven’t stopped bombarding me with offers to go back. Best was £17.50 a month for everything except sport – for 18 months including multiroom and Sky Go extra. Never felt tempted, but the hundreds a year they are prepared to discount me is way more than the reason I left (I didn’t want to pay £99 for the installation of a second Sky Q mini box).

I’ve got Netflix and Prime, and the Linux STBs also run Kodi and all sorts of other goodies. Plenty for me.

[Richard]

BL, glad you have got it fixed and working as you want once more

I have found the PVRs with the latest software to be very useful. If I see there is an episode of something in a series I want to watch I just hit series record and get the lot without needing to make an effort to remember when it is on. I rarely, use the catch up services and though we have Amazon on a couple of TVs I find it hard to find anything of interest on there. Some of the catch up is time limited so you only have a month to catch up so recording it makes sense if it is something I really want. Since C4 and C5 are apparently playing silly blighters it makes sense to record anything I think I might want there. I wonder what their issue was with making stuff available on demand if they had a demand service?

I guess only listening to the things that you already know makes sense to some, but it sounds as boring to me as more normalised listing is to your daughter Steve. Mind you since I rarely listen to music, (except, a few not all slots on Keep it Country) I guess there is little overlap in lifestyles anyway.

Sky always left me cold, paying a fortune to watch adverts never appealed to me, though the parents in law tried to tell me that not having Sky was tantamount to child abuse. Sine that was their view it sealed Sky’s fate for me.

[PlaneMan]

All my viewing is done online. Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, iPlayer and so on.

Just trialling Sky Sports Mobile TV, free for 30 days. I only watch rugby so the basic package works for me, best bit is it’s a monthly subscription only. Having a 6″ phone helps a lot, the supported devices is a bit sparse though. My OnePlus 5T only got supported recently.

[The Duke]

If your only into one sport mostly. It’s makes more sense to just pay per game. Bt is 5pm so its worth the sub for me, it had a 3rd of pl football and all euro and fa cup. Sky only has its 3rd of pl games. And liverpool may play once a month on sky so ill pay them their £8

The issue with football is still this ancient rule of no 3pm Saturday game. So we all have to jump on an American stream.

I always get annoyed when you see these, ‘why do you have kodi?’ Polls come out, they never offer the option of zero access to saruray 3pm footy. Rather all answers lean towards some type of theft cos we don’t want to pay.

Most do, and i think if you can afford tou should pay. But in the PL 3pm sat case, i can’t pay. I’d love to have a sub to Bein sports. I did try once, its about £15, but couldn’t figure out a way to give them money.

Sky and sports really need to pivot quote quick, as my eldest lads generation, will not be big sky subscribers. All the numbers are already backing this up over the pond, where they are more advanced in IP tv and od than us.  Ironnic given 10 years ago they was almost 100% subscription tv.

[Ed P]

The new cable did not surprise me BL. I also had to have a new cable with Sky Q. The fitter explained that the old cable really only ‘just’ did HDTV as it was bandwidth restricted.

[blacklion1725]

Ed P wrote:

The new cable did not surprise me BL. I also had to have a new cable with Sky Q. The fitter explained that the old cable really only ‘just’ did HDTV as it was bandwidth restricted.

Think your right Ed – turns out the old cable was jointed in the middle too – the upper half was that horible cheap coax with almost no shielding and hollow insulation between the core and braid. The new one is the WF100 4K rated cable.

Duke you just know when they do make 3pms available they will charge something daft like £19.99 a game or a £500 season ticket for your team and therefore ensure that Kodi, IPTV and place-shifting continues at just about the same level. I’m sure if it was £5 a game or £100 season ticket they’d endup making more – but their greed won’t let them see/do that.

[Bob Williams]

Last night my No.2 gson made me a pressie of his 3rd. device NOWTV password, for my Lenovo tablet in hospital and after. Good lad! I also have UKTV Play and ITV Hub, might get more.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

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