The Freeview TV platform is less fatally flawed than it was ..?
Previous update 6th February 2024
Latest 17th July 2024
Good news- coverage in Essex has improved and been solid for the last couple of months, with only occasional outages. Nothing has changed at this end with the antenna or equipment, so maybe my efforts to draw attention to the problem have actually found the right people.
Most Freeview viewers will have seen reception problems often caused by high pressure over Northern Europe. All the more reas on to fume at those polticians and civil servants who ignored advice and still sold the crucial bandwith for mobile phone use.
So remember to check the European Tropo report page at ...
https://www.tvcomm.co.uk/g7izu/radio-propagation-maps/40-2/
The map is showing red lines for propagation on the 144MHz band (2m ham band) and Band4 UHF is 500-580Mhz - but the basic principles apply, and the ducting conditions that create extended range at 144MHz will also generally enhance 500MHz. If there is no tropo effect at 144MHz, there will be none at 500MHz.
The current solar activity peak is adding to the excitement, with a startling display of Aurora that was visible even at mid lattitudes on September 12/13 2023 - always a harbinger of challenging and complex radio propagation
Watch www.freeviewing.com for updates !
In
the good old days of analogue TV coverage, it was simple to see if there
was "atmospheric interference" by the patterning on the picture. And it
rarely ever got to the point where the whole program was trashed. The sound was generally barely affected ... and
viewers were prepapared to put up with a remarkable amount of patterning. Crucially, the clues that this was "obviously" co-channel interference were visible to all, and the process is very well described by Sheffield-based aerialsandtv.com, a specialist supplier of cures and advice...
 |
| Old analogue UHF TV picture with co-channel patterning |
But digital is a different situation, it either all works or it is unwatchable - and the sound can be brutally chopped up, frequently with a blank screen with an unhelpful message telling you your TV signal has disappeared - as if you didn't already know. There is very little degradation in the form of progressive loss between perfect reception and total FUBAR. You have to delve deep into setup of TV and STB to find the signal strength and quality reports – which are pointless for most users anyway. The broadcasters and platform operators are keen to avoid admitting any sort of potential liability.
A big irritant with Freeview (UK Digital terrestrial television - DTT) interference is the time being wasted by people wondering what happened to their TV picture when it breaks and disappears. Who or what is to blame? Nobody knows without checking the signals (and multiple channels) in multiple locations and posting results on a website in real time, where people can visit to see if they are wasting their time - because the fault is out of viewer and broadcaster control when due to "transient" atmospheric conditions.
These atmospheric conditions are known as tropospheric ducting, which is brought about in the UK by static high pressure weather systems over Europe. An excellent technical description for nerds by an aussie radio ham (VK3FS) is available on YouTube...
Pixelated Freeviewing....
Many users of the Freeview
digital terrestrial TV broadcast platform, and its derivative YouView,
have found reception broken sporadically over the past few years.
Currently (spring 2023), bad reception on Freeview and other digital
terrestrial TV services is mostly affecting the South East - as the
interference is being ducted across from the near continent by
atmospheric conditions. A detailed description of the process is
available on the excellent ATV Website
No one said this was easy, and whilst we
sympathise with the challenge facing Freeview and it's broadcasters, the
government was warned this was going to happen well in advance - and
chose to ignore. Pixelation
break-up will tend to affect all DTT channels during periods of
interference, although the broadcasts are grouped on transmitters in
blocks called '"multiplexes". These operate on separate frequencies in
band 4 UHF, which is the remaining radio frequency spectrum previously occupied by
analogue UHF TV, after the sell-off to mobile networks.
Interference from foreign transmissions can be on any frequency, and it
may be scrambled up with many other signals that make it difficult to
identify precise sources. Local interference arising from rogue PV inverters (and even dodgy phone chargers) is also possible, but the average TV viewer is not going to be able to diagnose this type of problem, and the BBC who are notionally responsible for helping viewers with Freeview reception issues, will not be able to assist in most cases.
Freeview and its partners are saying very little, since there is generally no cure other than "wait until it stops". The only other thing that is being said is "whatever you do, don't attempt to retune your receiver during these periods of interference"... as that can completely scramble the setup, and you will not be able to find out when normal service has been resumed. A full reset may be required.
Which does not impress the viewers denied access. Ofcom does not want a baying mob at the gate demanding their licence fees back. You can check the real time tropo propagation at...
(https://www.tvcomm.co.uk/g7izu/radio-propagation-maps/40-2/)
The simple reality for licence fee payer...
Hmmm... that reply seems suspiciously like the sound of a can being kicked down the lane; with any luck, the conditions that caused the Freeview signal to be trashed will have moved on by the time the viewers have been put to more inconvenience of fiddling about, and they won't have the energy to pursue it further?
So there have been days when Freeview simply does not work in affected areas. A brief warning posted on a Facebook group had a response within minutes: William Morrison said :- "Glad I saw this. All my non HD channels have been pixelating all week. Was going to buy a new tv today .."
The Daily Express:
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/science-technology/1736474/Freeview-bad-signal-weather-retune-TV
This was the first time we hd seen the Freeview problem mentioned in the mainstream press! Yes, it’s a bit nerdy and we imagine Ofcom is keen that public attention is not drawn to the problem - because Ofcom sold UHF TV bandwidth for mobile phones, and there is now no room to manoeuvre TV out of the way of the interference – despite being warned this would happen.
There was communication with government at the time of analogue switch off, warning that DTTV wouldn’t work, and suggesting all effort went into Freesat, to create a solution that would enable a whole house to be fed from a single single dish: a key benefit of UHF delivered DTTV, is that Satellite TV generally requires one dish feed and box per TV; so multiroom solutions for satellite still seem to cost from £500.
The future of TV delivery is IP (online) - as all UK broadcasting using wireless is being turned off and the radio spectrum sold.
The various World Radiocommunications Conferences that are held from time to time to coordinate the response of each national telecommunications authority to allocate frequencies that will avoid interference and set other standards, appear to be helping the WEF to establish the universal imposition of digital online spyware. The TV industry likes the idea, since it makes tracking and tracing audiences for the purposes of advertising possible - and it conforms with the world economic forum proposition that we "will own nothing and be happy", by forcing everyone to have a (rented) tracked and traced IP connection, and is a further step along the way towards digital currency laced with social scores.
So there is now a big effort to herd all users to online and get all radio and television via broadband, which obviates the need for Freeview digital terrestrial TV to work. So the message from Ofcom to the TV industry is "hang on chaps sooner or later television reception over UHF broadcast will be history anyway.
This also achieves the holy grail for the government, by enabling BBC services to be moved to subscription so the licence fee can be scrapped. But there is a green angle to consider...summing up all the options, someone has shown that UHF broadcast makes better use of energy than online. Don't tell Greta.
" The terrestrial distribution of television signals is currently more efficient and less energy-consuming than IP-delivered content, a report for the regulator Ofcom has found.
Although it does not have statutory duties to consider environmental sustainability issues, Ofcom’s report commissioned from Carnstone recognises the importance of understanding factors which affect the stakeholders.
For both OTT and DTT services, most of the energy consumption is within the home rather than in the distribution system – TV sets, viewing devices, and in-home networks account for 90% of the energy used.
This includes devices within the home such as Wi-Fi networks and set-top boxes that are usually left switched on, even if their power consumption is relatively low.
Outside the home, the network transmission uses six times more energy for OTT based on current viewing volumes, though this is relatively low, and TV viewing is deemed to be a relatively low source of emissions overall.
One hour of viewing TV via terrestrial networks has an energy consumption of 9.1Wh whilst for streaming, this is 54Wh. In other words, viewing TV for an hour is approximately the same as boiling water for around 3-4 cups of tea.
Networks have become more efficient overall, not by reducing absolute energy consumption, but by serving more data traffic with a similar amount of energy."
And perhaps someone should take note that 5G towers are consuming a lot of energy, so China Unicom is putting some of them to sleep overnight. China Unicom decided to put some 5G base stations to sleep between 9pm and 9am, prompting concern from users - 5G energy consumption is an environmental problem that’s being overlooked, some experts say...
5G towers are consuming a lot of energy, so China Unicom is putting some of them to sleep overnight | South China Morning Post (scmp.com)
Here are latest preview pictures of the low energy 7G iPhone 19
TV streaming players are a poor "upgrade" to a Freeview PVR
You lose the option to record off-air on a Freeview or Youview PVR, that enables you to play back PVR recordings and recover the 15% of your (carefully tracked and analysed) leisure time that is being confiscated by broadcasters, and sold to advertisers without your permission. Then those advertisers add insult to injury by delivering commercials that portray a fantasy society - that bears only a passing resemblance to the UK demographic makeup - one that seems mostly to exist in the minds of politically correct marketing and media industries. Even the endless "pay now for your cremation" ads are "fully inclusive" ... maybe the NHS will include a commercial for prepaid cremation with each vaccine booster shot for the over 60s????
Moreover, the online players that deliver these commercials (ITVx, All4 etc) do not seem to work in many situations. After viewers have suffered the tedium of setting up their accounts, they will be delivered a commercial they didn't ask for, and then this message appears after the service crashes and fails to resume playing the programme:
The various "help" addresses on Twitter and elsewhere for Freeview, Youview and TalkTalk are epically frustrating, and only seem to exist to politely shoo away all users, by grinding them down in a battle wills... I will not bother to repeat the threads here - but rest assured everything has been taken down and will be used in evidence.
Meanwhile, the UK government is preparing to turn off all analogue radio tranmissions (AM: LW/MW FM:VHF) so we will all be stuck with the unskippable online ads, unless all commercial players follow ITV's lead and offer users the option to pay to buy back their time that would otherwise be wasted on commercials. Ironically the UK government's reason for doing this is so that the BBC licence fee can be dropped and the BBC will fund itself with differential charging for content... and may well also introduce advertising.
We would suggest one way to sweeten an otherwise bitter pill would be for broadcasters to share the advertising revenues with those forced to suffer commercials by using a reward scheme such IncenTV… "we reward you for interaction and responding to commercials"
Next move?
It is in the nature of this type of periodic atmospheric interference that it can disappear as quickly and as randomly as it appeared. At which point many of those with responsibility for the broadcast delivery chain will attempt to kick the can down the lane, and insist that the viewers imagined it all; or there are additional local factors for which no broadcaster has any responsibility or any control.
And of course, this may all be blamed on "climate change"..? However, look here for an update on the present solar activity.
But rest assured, it can reoccur randomly when the atmospheric conditions are aligned, so the fundamental truth that the digital terrestrial broadcast platform is not fit for purpose, will not have changed. Maybe the 5 to 10 million affected premises should apply for the BBC licence fee to be returned? Plus the cost of antenna installations and hardware that has been bought?
Let's not allow "them" get away with this!
Are you a BBC licence payer and a user of Freeview or Youview?
You may be entitled to
join a class action claim for refund of the past 3 years licence fees, and costs you have incurred
buying equipment and antenna installation services for a Freeview service that is frequently broken beyond the ability of Freeview to fix.
Watch www.freeviewing.com for developments.
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