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We have decided to stop paying for cable TV and after much reading of reviews settled on Freeview and a Humax FVP4000T box and one week in we are very pleased with it. However I do have one question.
We live at the western edge of the East Midlands area and 90% of the aerials in our area are positioned to the west midlands transmitter, including ours which is about 15 years old. After watching East Midlands local programmes on cable I was pleasantly surprised to see an east midlands option when I first tuned the box which I selected.On the first day, much to my surprise and delight, we received perfect bbc local news on channel 1.
Since then however we can only tune in to that channel at about 10% of the times we select it, the other 90% of the time we get the message ‘The receiver is not receiving a signal or the signal is too weak’
I tried an aerial booster and re-tuned but with that in place we get the weak signal message 100% of the time. The strange thing is we get local ITV on channel 3 all the time with no problem and all the other channels including HD are perfect.
I am reluctant to get a new aerial as I’m not sure it will improve the situation, has anyone got any suggestions as to what the problem may be please?
Andy_K – 1 hour ago »
We live at the western edge of the East Midlands area and 90% of the aerials in our area are positioned to the west midlands transmitter, including ours which is about 15 years old. After watching East Midlands local programmes on cable I was pleasantly surprised to see an east midlands option when I first tuned the box which I selected.On the first day, much to my surprise and delight, we received perfect bbc local news on channel 1.
Since then however we can only tune in to that channel at about 10% of the times we select it, the other 90% of the time we get the message ‘The receiver is not receiving a signal or the signal is too weak’
At the risk of stating the obvious, if the aerial is pointing at the West Midlands transmitter, it is hardly surprising that reception from the East Midlands transmitter is marginal. To determine what ought to be possible with a properly aligned aerial I suggest using the DigitalUK Coverage Checker at http://www.digitaluk.co.uk/coveragechecker/main/index/dummy/NA/yes
Come back and ask questions if you need help in interpreting the data. If it looks as though reasonable reception is possible from the East Midlands transmitter then realigning the aerial yourself or paying someone to do it would be my advice.
Hi Martin, Thank you for your reply and the link. Having entered my details it shows that the transmitter we are aligned with (Sutton Coldfield) at good reception in every category whilst east of here (Waltham) has variable reception for BBC B HD, ARQ A and COM7 HD and good in the other categories.
Interestingly there is a transmitter in Derby, where we live, and the website says ‘The Derby transmitter supplies additional regional services to viewers of Sutton Coldfield). I presume that this is why we can receive intermittent East Midlands BBC, although BBC A, D3&4, and BBC B HD are all rated as variable.
Does this suggest that a re-alignment to Waltham would lead to too many compromises?
Andy_K – 26 minutes ago »
Having entered my details it shows that the transmitter we are aligned with (Sutton Coldfield) at good reception in every category whilst east of here (Waltham) has variable reception for BBC B HD, ARQ A and COM7 HD and good in the other categories.
Interestingly there is a transmitter in Derby, where we live, and the website says ‘The Derby transmitter supplies additional regional services to viewers of Sutton Coldfield). I presume that this is why we can receive intermittent East Midlands BBC, although BBC A, D3&4, and BBC B HD are all rated as variable.
Normally being tuned to more than one transmitter is a bad idea but maybe in this case it would work. Is there anybody else on the Forum who uses (or has tried) the combination of Sutton Coldfield and Derby?.
Does this suggest that a re-alignment to Waltham would lead to too many compromises?
I think it suggests that trying the combination of Sutton Coldfield and Derby is the most likely option but Waltham doesn’t look impossible to me (using a random Derby post code).
The first thing you need to do is understand which multiplexes your box is tuned to; I don’t have an FVP-4000T but try looking under Signal Detection. I think the correct list would be 48, 51, 52 (from Derby) and 39, 42, 45 from Sutton Coldfield (plus possibly 33 and 35 which carry the COM7 and COM8 multiplexes but are transmitted at lower power than other multiplexes and hence may be more difficult to receive). You may need to manually tune to get this set of multiplexes.
Thanks again Martin. I think I need to take this one step at a time. I can see where you have taken the 48,51 and 52 for the Derby list for BBC A, D3&4 and BBCB HD respectively but the corresponding multiplexes for Sutton Coldfield using my post code are 43, 46 and 40+ and therefore different to the numbers you have quoted. Is this because you have used a different postcode?
I can’t find ‘Signal Detection’ but I can find ‘Manual Channel Search’ which requires the following 5 things to be set, ‘Channel’, ‘Frequency’, ‘Transmission’ (DVB-T or DVB-T2), ‘Bandwidth’ and ‘Network Search’ (Set on or off).
Can I use the manual channel search to search the Derby channel’s and what settings should I use?
Andy_K – 1 hour ago »
I can see where you have taken the 48,51 and 52 for the Derby list for BBC A, D3&4 and BBCB HD respectively but the corresponding multiplexes for Sutton Coldfield using my post code are 43, 46 and 40+ and therefore different to the numbers you have quoted. Is this because you have used a different postcode?
No those are the duplicate channels from Sutton Coldfield and you don’t want duplicates or you will be in a world of pain.
I can’t find ‘Signal Detection’
It looks to me as though Signal Test may be the FVP-4000T equivalent of signal detection.
but I can find ‘Manual Channel Search’ which requires the following 5 things to be set, ‘Channel’, ‘Frequency’, ‘Transmission’ (DVB-T or DVB-T2), ‘Bandwidth’ and ‘Network Search’ (Set on or off).
Can I use the manual channel search to search the Derby channel’s and what settings should I use?
The general procedure is described in a rather ancient FAQ for the HDR-FOX T2 https://myhumax.org/forum/topic/transmitters#post-2336 but I am not sure how to delete all multiplexes before starting but that is certainly what you want to do before manual tuning. Maybe when you have done it you could write a FAQ for the FVP-4000T.
Before your last reply I went into ‘Manual Search’ and looked at channel 48’s details as it appears to be already tuned to that. The details are Ch 48, Freq 690000, DVB T and 8MHz but the strange thing is that the strength and quality levels appear to ‘pulse’? For a second or so they report Strength – 52%, Quality – 70%, then both go to 0, then Strength rises to 52%, Quality rises to 100% and both go back to 0 etc.
Could this be why it’s intermittently available?
Andy_K – 48 seconds ago »
Before your last reply I went into ‘Manual Search’ and looked at channel 48’s details as it appears to be already tuned to that. The details are Ch 48, Freq 690000, DVB T and 8MHz but the strange thing is that the strength and quality levels appear to ‘pulse’? For a second or so they report Strength – 52%, Quality – 70%, then both go to 0, then Strength rises to 52%, Quality rises to 100% and both go back to 0 etc.
Could this be why it’s intermittently available?
That isn’t good. You won’t get far with Signal quality that isn’t consistently 100%. What is the bearing of the Sutton Coldfield and Derby Transmitters from your home? This is given on the Digital UK web page you have looked at previously for each transmitter.
Sutton Coldfield – 45km, bearing 216
Derby- 6km, bearing 241
Andy_K – 10 minutes ago »
Sutton Coldfield – 45km, bearing 216
Derby- 6km, bearing 241
OK I don’t know enough about aerials (or your setup) to comment about whether 25 degree difference would be a problem. My advice is wait and see if somebody else here has some suggestions otherwise you will probably need to talk to an aerial installer and see what they advise.
Martin, OK thank you for your help.
An update on this for anyone experiencing a similar problem. Despite the fact that we live only a mile or so from Derby city centre and Derby is covered by East Midlands BBC an aerial installer came round and said that he couldn’t improve on our current set up which is aligned to the West Midlands transmitter at Sutton Coldfield.
I have therefore followed Martin’s advice and carried out a manual tune (very easy and explained in detail on the Humax website) and tuned channel 48 to the BBC B multiplex from the low power transmitter in Derby at the exclusion of the BBC B from Sutton Coldfield.
Since excluding the 800 series ‘duplicate’ channels the situation has been much improved and we are receiving local east midlands tv over 90% of the time.
Andy_K – 1 week ago »
the strange thing is that the strength and quality levels appear to ‘pulse’? For a second or so they report Strength – 52%, Quality – 70%, then both go to 0, then Strength rises to 52%, Quality rises to 100% and both go back to 0 etc.
Could this be why it’s intermittently available?
I had this issue for some time after I had to move my aerial to the other side of my house because of building work. I too was thoroughly frustrated by the whole thing and to be honest just put it down to problems caused by my tin roof on that side of the house. A neighbour who was moving out gave me a pretty much brand new aerial and, despite mine being a superior model and only about 6 years old, I climbed on my roof to replace mine to see if it improved things. Once there I discovered that there was a tiny split in the outer sleeve of the coax cable (it had been rubbing on the side of my roof) and further inspection revealed water in the coax. I replaced just the cable and now, even on the frequency that shows 45% strength and as low as 10% quality (cant remember which at the moment) depending on the weather, I get perfect picture.
Over my years of installing tvs for customers, I have encountered this problem of water ingress many many times as it usually results in rust or corrosion of the coax plug that goes into the tv/box, I have even seen wet plugs and wondered how the thing was working at all!
The two main reasons for this happening are damage to the cable (as in my case) or the little plastic box on the aerial, that the coax feeds into and contains the connections, can pop open and then, when it rains, water collects there and syphons down the cable. As mine was not showing evidence of this at the tv end I had ruled it out but I imagine that eventually it would have.
Interestingly I had the same problem with my car radio aerial, FM and AM signals were fine but DAB was intermittent. This was caused by water ingress.
Andy_K – 20 hours ago »
An update on this for anyone experiencing a similar problem. Despite the fact that we live only a mile or so from Derby city centre and Derby is covered by East Midlands BBC an aerial installer came round and said that he couldn’t improve on our current set up which is aligned to the West Midlands transmitter at Sutton Coldfield.
Glad you have got an improvement. Have you considered the possibility of having two TV aerials, onepointing at Sutton Coldfield and one at Derby? I have no experience of doing it myself but I have heard of other people doing it. A quick google turned up https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/85644/is-it-possible-to-combine-independent-digital-tv-antennas but there is probably better information out there.
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