Freeview - lack of channels

I've tried and tested the Freeview website to see what channels I should be able to access in my area and I'm getting far less than the websites make out.

Because of where I live, the television signal isn't the best - we get Tyne Tees' local news instead of Yorkshire for instance.

Is there a way that I can change my setup so that I can get more channels? I'm assuming an in house booster wouldn't work, but are there any settings I can change? Am I able to force my box to choose from a particular transmitter? Would a booster actually work?

Any suggestions and ideas would be gratefully appreciated.

Try a retune to see if that helps. Do you know if your aerial is actually pointing at the right transmitter?

I've tried retuning but it doesn't do anything.

I have no idea if it's pointing to the right transmitter - it all tunes from the same aerial as far as I'm aware.

First check which is the best local transmitter. Try looking at your neighbours' houses to see where theirs point.

Being a digital signal a booster may help.

Is there a relay transmitter nearby? If so it might be drowning out the signal from the main transmitter

A booster will help. We get nothing without our booster, but with it we get the lot, including s*dding CBeebies.

Although oddly the channel numbers for some channels are different on all 3 TVs even after retune.

Yeah I think next thing would be to have a look and see if your aerial is pointing the same way as the others on your street. If it isn't then you'll probably need someone to come out and move it for you.

Bayum said:

I've tried and tested the Freeview website to see what channels I should be able to access in my area and I'm getting far less than the websites make out.

Because of where I live, the television signal isn't the best - we get Tyne Tees' local news instead of Yorkshire for instance.

Click to expand...

These two sentences contradict each other. The reception websites are usually pessimistic so chances are you should be able to get what the website says you should get. This assumes you have a properly maintained outside aerial on top of your roof, pointing in the right direction, polarised properly (i.e. with the elements of the aerial horizontal or vertical as required by the transmitter), with good quality cable between the aerial and TV. It might, however, possible to get full reception without all these things being optimal, but if you are in a difficult reception area then the best set up you have the better.

If you can get a different region than the one you are supposed to get, that suggests that the aerial is a good one but is in the wrong direction. You might be getting marginal reception from a distant transmitter, so you don't get all the channels.

If indeed you are in a very good reception area, your reception may be entirely down to a poor aerial. You might even get full reception with an indoor aerial with a booster. There are a lot of possible factors.

radamfi said:

These two sentences contradict each other. The reception websites are usually pessimistic so chances are you should be able to get what the website says you should get. This assumes you have a properly maintained outside aerial on top of your roof, pointing in the right direction, polarised properly (i.e. with the elements of the aerial horizontal or vertical as required by the transmitter), with good quality cable between the aerial and TV. It is, however, possible to get full reception without all these things being optimal, but if you are in a difficult reception area then the best set up you have the better.

If you can get a different region than the one you are supposed to get, that suggests that the aerial is a good one but is in the wrong direction. You might be getting marginal reception from a distant transmitter, so you don't get all the channels.

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There are some areas, which for reasons beyond my understanding recieve a better signal from a neighboring region than their own, and therefore all the aerials in the area point the wrong way. This may not be picked up by the digital UK website, which may be presuming that the aerials point the 'right' way towards a main transmitter, and not towards the transmitter which they actually point at, which could be relay transmitter which do not transmit as many channels.
If this is the case it may be possible for the aerial to be turned, but it may also be the case that it is impossible to recieve a signal from the 'right' transmitter, and therefore impossible to get anymore channels than currently received.

radamfi said:

These two sentences contradict each other. The reception websites are usually pessimistic so chances are you should be able to get what the website says you should get. This assumes you have a properly maintained outside aerial on top of your roof, pointing in the right direction, polarised properly (i.e. with the elements of the aerial horizontal or vertical as required by the transmitter), with good quality cable between the aerial and TV. It might, however, possible to get full reception without all these things being optimal, but if you are in a difficult reception area then the best set up you have the better.

If you can get a different region than the one you are supposed to get, that suggests that the aerial is a good one but is in the wrong direction. You might be getting marginal reception from a distant transmitter, so you don't get all the channels.

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Please don't tell me what does and doesn't contradict - particularly when in my experience the situation is as explained above. Pointing out how the websites work does nothing to avail the fact that I do not get all the channels advertised that the website shows I should have access to in my postcode area.

I've been to my grandma who lives down the road from me by six houses, and she suffers the same rigmarole. In the dining room she has a sky box set up with a satellite dish which gets a better connection than the living and bedroom televisions. Is it possible to get a connection from my satellite dish at home to my non-sky box set up in my bedroom for instance?

Qwerty133 said:

There are some areas, which for reasons beyond my understanding recieve a better signal from a neighboring region than their own, and therefore all the aerials in the area point the wrong way. This may not be picked up by the digital UK website, which may be presuming that the aerials point the 'right' way towards a main transmitter, and not towards the transmitter which they actually point at, which could be relay transmitter which do not transmit as many channels.
If this is the case it may be possible for the aerial to be turned, but it may also be the case that it is impossible to recieve a signal from the 'right' transmitter, and therefore impossible to get anymore channels than currently received.

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The Digital UK website normally gives you all the possible transmitters you could get if you turned your aerial the right way. Some enthusiasts have multiple aerials to pick up different regions. Here is a link to the reception possibilities in a random Yorkshire postcode:

http://www.digitaluk.co.uk/coveragechecker/main/trade/LS12+1AA/3/0/NA

(you need to choose 'detailed' to get this level of detail)

Ideally the OP would want to point at Emley Moor if you want the maximum number of channels, including the newest multiplexes COM7 and COM8 (DVB-T2 (HD) tuner required) which are only available at the most important transmitters in the UK.

The digital TV site is not to be trusted. It claims that I can get a good signal from Mendip from my postcode, but that's so much bull. You only have to look at the aerials on surrounding houses to see that they're nearly all pointing at one of 2 local low power repeaters because the Mendip signal is almost non-existant. The few that point at Mendip are atop blocks of flats. Pointing your aerial at one of these repeaters is problematical too, because there's a high power transmitter in S Wales on almost the same bearing behind it.

If you want the maximum number of channels then get a satellite dish and a Freesat HD box. Then you can pick your own BBC/ITV region and get all the available free HD channels. About 10% of the population can only get 3 Freeview multiplexes as they are only served by relay transmitters, so in these areas you need to get a satellite dish (or cable) to get more channels.

Hi there,
I'm going to guess you live to the north of Leeds? If so, it's likely that you're receiving TV from the Bilsdale transmitter. This is one that has Tyne Tees stuff rather than Yorkshire.

This transmitter generally seems to use the lower frequency bands (25 to 37). The "standard" Leeds transmitters all seem to use the higher frequency bands.

What you may have is that your aerial is simply pointing the wrong way to get local Yorkshire TV but you've got an aerial that's designed for the higher frequency bands rather than the lower ones you actually need.

Your options would seem to be:
1. Get a TV signal booster.
2. Get a better TV aerial
3. Give up and get Freesat.

Hope this helps a bit.
Mr Toad

Is Free-sat the same as a Freeview box?

I'm not really willing to pay for a Sky recorder box - particularly as I should be able to recieve the channels without having to resort to such methods!

Right a few things to check,
1. Are you trying to receive a local 'relay' station or can you get a good enough signal from a main or main relay transmitter. A relay will usually only carry 3 of the usual frequencies (BBC A, D3&4 and BBC B) and so will not receive any of the extra commercial channels, only BBC, ITV, C4 and C5 (and most of their extra channels).

2. Have you got the correct Aerial? Whilst there are wideband aerials which cover the whole tv frequency spectrum they don't have the gain of an Aerial that only responds best to a select range of frequencies (called groups, which are A, B, C/D and for wideband or semi-wideband K, E, W). DON'T go down to the local DIY store to get an Aerial (if required) either look on eBay or if you need more advice look for a specialist online seller that can give advice such as ATV http://aerialsandtv.com/

3. Does your Aerial have enough gain/selectivity? The higher gain (generally longer) aerials are better for receiving longer distance stations and are generally better at rejecting unwanted signals from other directions. A decent Antiference/Televes 18 (or more if necessary) element yagi-uda Antenna in the correct grouping (some masts to get the full range of channels a wideband/semi-wideband Aerial must be used) would be ideal, don't go for a triboom antenna as they are no better than a multi-element yogi and have a higher wind loading.

4. Is it pointing in the right direction? An incorrectly positioned Aerial may be able to receive some of the stations (sometimes the PSB's are at a higher power) but not others. It could just be simple misalignment. For a map of all tv masts in the uk click here http://tx.mb21.co.uk/mapsys/google/uhftv.php

5. Can you actually receive a main station? RF is a black art and just a small distance in location/height can change from getting a good main signal to none at all.

Lastly 6. Is all the cabling from the Aerial to the TV's undamaged and is there an amplified splitter from the Aerial to all the TV's or just a passive splitter (un-powered). This can make all the difference both to signal level and quality.

If all this fails, get some freesat boxes for the rest of the TV's (basically bbc/itv's combined effort for promoting a free-to-view satellite tv service using the same signals the sky box uses just with a different interface) . You may need to fit an LNB on the dish (the bit on the end of the arm that sticks out from the dish) with more outputs (each box/tuner needs a separate connection to the dish) and just run the required cabling.

Bayum said:

Is Free-sat the same as a Freeview box?

I'm not really willing to pay for a Sky recorder box - particularly as I should be able to recieve the channels without having to resort to such methods!

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Freesat box pick up the signal from a satellite dish whereas Freeview boxes pick up signal from a terrestrial TV aerial that is typically on the roof. Freesat boxes can be had for £50 or less, but the main cost is the installation if you get it done by a professional. DIY installation is not impossible and you don't need to get on to the roof. You merely need a direct line of sight between the dish and the satellite. But pointing the dish in the right direction, and ensuring the mount is robust, can be a tricky business.

bangor-toad said:

Hi there,
I'm going to guess you live to the north of Leeds? If so, it's likely that you're receiving TV from the Bilsdale transmitter. This is one that has Tyne Tees stuff rather than Yorkshire.

This transmitter generally seems to use the lower frequency bands (25 to 37). The "standard" Leeds transmitters all seem to use the higher frequency bands.

Click to expand...

York seems to be split between Bilsdale and Emley Moor -- I'm set up for Bilsdale, but the house opposite uses Emley Moor, all the installations done at the same time by the same firm. There seems to be no difference in the number of channels we get, but there is a difference in HD availablity. I have no BBC local news on HD, and if I go for ITV local news on Channel 103 what I get is the programme from Manchester, not that from Newcastle.

There's a little to add to this excellent check list:

dgl said:

Right a few things to check,
1. . . .
2. . . .
3. Does your Aerial have enough gain/selectivity? The higher gain (generally longer) aerials are better for receiving longer distance stations and are generally better at rejecting unwanted signals from other directions. . . . Too much gain can overload ("saturate") a receiver and make some channels un-useable. In this case, a small 'attenuator' costing a couple of pounds will be effective.
4. . . .
5. Can you actually receive a main station? RF is a black art and just a small distance in location/height can change from getting a good main signal to none at all. . . . There are TV signal analysers which assist greatly in getting the best from an aerial; they show the parameters of the quality of a signal as well as the strength, and the frequency and transmitter group of each signal, to tell which transmitter it is comng from
Lastly 6. . . .

Click to expand...

It's a common problem (particularly in areas with good signal strength) that installations have too much gain. This can come from any combination of a high-gain aerial, a 'booster' or distribution amplifier which includes gain, and a location in a strong signal area. The receivers are overloaded with signal which becomes distorted and cannot be properly decoded. An attenuator of 6 to 12dB is often the solution - a cheap and simple solution too!

Without an analyser, most of this is guess-work, or at the least, will be informed guessing. If a TV aerial installer can be booked for 20minutes just to bring an analyser to examine the signal, then a lot of questions can be answered. It can indicate a variety of local problems: for example, if the signal strength may be adequate but there are reflected signals from a large building which are even stronger, making the digital signal hard to decode accurately; or, if there is a local transmission which is 'swamping' the receiver (such as a 4G phone mast), the spectral analysis function will identify this and the unwanted transmission can easily and cheaply be reduced with a '4G filter'; or, there is a fracture in the cable which is reducing the signal level to a negligible strength.

But these are all specific details pertaining to your property and your aerial, and the cause of the problem cannot be deduced accurately without an examination of the signal.

I can get most of the usual channels - BBC1 and the like, on a usual tuning I can get 121 channels.

The issue I'm having is that when I'm wanting particular channels - E4+, TruTv for instance - I'm unable to get them.

I know that I can just watch E4 at the usual time - but with work I tend to forget to set timers and recording, and I don't leave my classroom until seven most nights which means I tend to miss a lot of something that I quite want to watch. The same thing happens with channel 4 - I'm lucky if I get channel 4+ for instance. Silly little nitpicks I know but it would just make things so much easier.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
I've tried checking other televisions in the house and found some startling comparisons.

My television picks up 121 channels - it was connected to an old Skybox and is possibly still connected - the sky box is used upstairs now however.

My brothers' room only picks up 31 channels - so I've clearly got a stronger signal, just not strong enough to pick up the rest of the channels!

Bayum said:

I can get most of the usual channels - BBC1 and the like, on a usual tuning I can get 121 channels.

The issue I'm having is that when I'm wanting particular channels - E4+, TruTv for instance - I'm unable to get them.

I know that I can just watch E4 at the usual time - but with work I tend to forget to set timers and recording, and I don't leave my classroom until seven most nights which means I tend to miss a lot of something that I quite want to watch. The same thing happens with channel 4 - I'm lucky if I get channel 4+ for instance. Silly little nitpicks I know but it would just make things so much easier.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
I've tried checking other televisions in the house and found some startling comparisons.

My television picks up 121 channels - it was connected to an old Skybox and is possibly still connected - the sky box is used upstairs now however.

My brothers' room only picks up 31 channels - so I've clearly got a stronger signal, just not strong enough to pick up the rest of the channels!

Click to expand...

Channel 4 and Channel 4+1 are on the same multiplex, if you can receive 1 you can receive the other, if it a freeview signal, so presumably the signal is coming from the sky box?

Senex said:

I have no BBC local news on HD, ...

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Nobody gets BBC local news on HD. The BBC doesn't broadcast it, even in London.

The reason is a bit bizarre:
Firstly, as Freesat broadcasts UK regional TV to all areas in the UK, the BBC rents a separate satellite transponder channel for each SD service including the English BBC1 regions and NI, Scotland and Wales BBC1 channels. They also rent a single channel for each of the HD versions of channels, (BBC1, 2, 3, 4, News, CBBC and Cbeebies), but unlike NI, Scotland and Wales, there is only one HD channel for all the English regions, hence the red screen with the twittering birds or children playing when they are all broadcasting different local news. The argument for this is that the cost of 11 extra channels just to give HD for local news, (much of which is still shot on SD kit) would not be good value for money.

All this may seem irrelevant for Freeview, but the BBC has a 'platform-neutral' policy, so although it has a BBC1 HD network of UHF terrestrial transmitters, the received services should be the same whether terrestrial (Freeview), satellite (Freesat) or cable (via Virginmedia). For the record, the same data rates are also used for compression so in theory providing the signal is received correctly, the picture quality should be the same.

Bayum said:

My brothers' room only picks up 31 channels - so I've clearly got a stronger signal, just not strong enough to pick up the rest of the channels!

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For reading my post above, you'll see that the TV signal isn't clearly stronger if one socket can present you with more channels. Too strong a signal level can, and does, degrage quality to the point where some channels will not be recognised at all.

But now that you have explained a little about the house, you can do this experiment to narrow down where the problem might be:
Connect the same TV to the socket in both rooms and force it to do a complete re-tune (deleting all previously recognised channels). note how many channels it finds. Then do the same in the other room.
If either room gives you the full range of channels, then you'll know that the aerial is okay.
If just one room gives you the full range and the other doesn't, then you'll know that there is suspect wiring in the house. (There might be a distribution amplifier somewhere that splits the signal off to each room seperately and might have a bad connection. If not, there will be a limit to how many TVs you can connect to the one aerial without seriously impacting on the signal).

If neither room gives you the full range of channels but another TV set does, then you'll know that the TV is not operating correctly.
You could do the same test with the little link leads that connect the TV to the wall to see if one of them is responsibile for the restricted reception.
If neither TV gives you the full range of channels from any room's socket, then you should suspect the aerial.

Local repeaters often only give a limited number of channels. Most of the aerials round me point to Sutton Coldfield to get the most, but they also get West Midlands programmes. I use the local transmitter so I can get East Midlands and put up with reduced quanity and in any case I'm too low down to get a decent signal from SC. I'm told the commercial channels dont attract enough extra viewers for the adverts to justify the cost - in fact they had to have their arms twisted to join Freeview at all.

However Birmingham is roughly in the same direction so I can get some Sutton Coldfield channels in winter time. (I can also get Ambergate on the back of the aerial if the Chevin transmitter fails)

However again, my computer has a connection to the TV for iPlayer and I 've just discovered a website with more free channels than you can shake stick at:

http://www.filmon.com/tv/bbc-one

THere's always a very short advert when you first select a channel but it isnt repeated except on the commercial channels.

AM9 said:

Nobody gets BBC local news on HD. The BBC doesn't broadcast it, even in London.

The reason is a bit bizarre:
Firstly, as Freesat broadcasts UK regional TV to all areas in the UK, the BBC rents a separate satellite transponder channel for each SD service including the English BBC1 regions and NI, Scotland and Wales BBC1 channels. They also rent a single channel for each of the HD versions of channels, (BBC1, 2, 3, 4, News, CBBC and Cbeebies), but unlike NI, Scotland and Wales, there is only one HD channel for all the English regions, hence the red screen with the twittering birds or children playing when they are all broadcasting different local news. The argument for this is that the cost of 11 extra channels just to give HD for local news, (much of which is still shot on SD kit) would not be good value for money.

All this may seem irrelevant for Freeview, but the BBC has a 'platform-neutral' policy, so although it has a BBC1 HD network of UHF terrestrial transmitters, the received services should be the same whether terrestrial (Freeview), satellite (Freesat) or cable (via Virginmedia). For the record, the same data rates are also used for compression so in theory providing the signal is received correctly, the picture quality should be the same.

Click to expand...

Many thanks for that explanation. So ITV then does think it doing, at least in some areas of the country (though not this one).
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Wyvern said:

Local repeaters like often only give a limimited number of channels. Most of the aerials round me point to Sutton Coldfield to get the most, but they also get West Midlands programmes. I use the local transmitter so I can get East Midlands and put up with reduced quanity and in any case I'm too low down to get a decent signal from SC.

However it is roughly in the same direction so I can get some SC channels in winter time.

However again, my computer has a connection to the TV for iPlayer and I 've just discovered a website with more free channels than you can shake stick at:

http://www.filmon.com/tv/bbc-one

THere's always a very short advert when you first select a channel but it isnt repeated except on the commercial channels.

Click to expand...

That looks brilliant -- many thanks for the URL!

AM9 said:

Nobody gets BBC local news on HD. The BBC doesn't broadcast it, even in London.

The reason is a bit bizarre:
Firstly, as Freesat broadcasts UK regional TV to all areas in the UK, the BBC rents a separate satellite transponder channel for each SD service including the English BBC1 regions and NI, Scotland and Wales BBC1 channels. They also rent a single channel for each of the HD versions of channels, (BBC1, 2, 3, 4, News, CBBC and Cbeebies), but unlike NI, Scotland and Wales, there is only one HD channel for all the English regions, hence the red screen with the twittering birds or children playing when they are all broadcasting different local news. The argument for this is that the cost of 11 extra channels just to give HD for local news, (much of which is still shot on SD kit) would not be good value for money.

All this may seem irrelevant for Freeview, but the BBC has a 'platform-neutral' policy, so although it has a BBC1 HD network of UHF terrestrial transmitters, the received services should be the same whether terrestrial (Freeview), satellite (Freesat) or cable (via Virginmedia). For the record, the same data rates are also used for compression so in theory providing the signal is received correctly, the picture quality should be the same.

Click to expand...

The other reason I'm told is that realtime HD compression and DVB-T2 muxing equipment is expensive and they don't want to have to buy and maintain one per region!

Muzer said:

The other reason I'm told is that realtime HD compression and DVB-T2 muxing equipment is expensive and they don't want to have to buy and maintain one per region!

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Well, getting OT and on a non-broadcast forum I wasn't going to go into the full reason but yes it does involve the lack of landline circuits and statmuxing kit. At the moment, most T2 muxing is done in one place (still London I think) and the complete channel group is sent to all main transmitter locations. At regional centres, the HD streams are downres'd to produce the SD versions and statmuxed with locally generated opt-out streams. To statmux a different HD news stream into the other national streams would as you say increae costs and produce inconsistent datarates on HD which is designed to be the premium service, SD will gradually be abandoned.
Local equipment is also an issue, not just the capture kit (cameras, encoders etc.) but also studio wiring and even the quality of sets and furniture in front of the cameras.

Back on the main topic, a number of transmitters, (lower-power relays) have only 4 UHF transmission channels, i.e. in analogue days they never had Ch 5 and have no T2 broadcasts. This means that they offer a subset of the full DVB-T services, leaving out some of the +1s and lesser programmes. Maybe Bayum's problem is that his TV/STB has locked onto one of those. This is more likely in hilly areas where propogation can vary over a few metres enough to change a self-tune capture.

radamfi said:

Freesat box pick up the signal from a satellite dish whereas Freeview boxes pick up signal from a terrestrial TV aerial that is typically on the roof. Freesat boxes can be had for £50 or less, but the main cost is the installation if you get it done by a professional. DIY installation is not impossible and you don't need to get on to the roof. You merely need a direct line of sight between the dish and the satellite. But pointing the dish in the right direction, and ensuring the mount is robust, can be a tricky business.

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If your home has a Sky dish attached, then you've got a Freesat dish. When we moved to Kenilworth, the terrestrial (Freeview) signal was dreadful, so we just hooked a Freesat box up to the pre-existing Sky dish. It's a simple plug and play job (although the substantial instruction book looked a bit unnerving at first...).

BlythPower said:

If your home has a Sky dish attached, then you've got a Freesat dish. When we moved to Kenilworth, the terrestrial (Freeview) signal was dreadful, so we just hooked a Freesat box up to the pre-existing Sky dish. It's a simple plug and play job (although the substantial instruction book looked a bit unnerving at first...).

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Yes, the Sky channels come from the same satellites as the free satellite channels available through Freesat. If you are starting from scratch and need a new aerial, then you might as well put up a satellite dish with the right number of LNBs for the number of TVs you need and not bother with a terrestrial aerial. Satellite has so much capacity and does not discriminate against people in deep valleys or rural areas where terrestrial reception is marginal or non-existent. About 10% of the population cannot receive more than 3 of the 6 terrestrial multiplexes so do not get all the channels that the other 90% get, assuming they have a good aerial. Arguably terrestrial TV should be switched off so the frequencies can all be sold off for mobile phone reception. Everyone should be able to get TV through satellite, cable or over the Internet.