Sandy Heath Channel 45 Problems

[RangerBob]

Hello All,

I have a bit of an odd problem going on here today.

For some reason, all channels that run off of channel 45 on the Sandy Heath Transmitter (UK), are not working in either Live TV or Recording mode for me.

When trying to watch ITV, Channel 4, etc from the TV guide, the screen goes blank for a few seconds, then drops back to the guide. A 0kb live buffer file is created. This occurs on my MVP's, and using the client mode, except that it just stops dead.

The really weird thing is that BBC1, BBC2, and others all work fine. It just seems to be programs on CH 45. However, using the "map EPG to channels" window I can see ITV1, Ch 4 etc, and it seems to have no problem decoding them.

I have attached my logs, can anyone help? I am seriously confused!

[sub]

Maybe the signal strength is a bit weaker on that specific transmitter?

If you do channel rescan in the config app, are these channels found?

[RangerBob]

Thanks for looking Sub,

I think I've located the source of the problem.

Running the channel rescan on *both* of my Nova-T's show the following results:

Nova-T 1:
c42 -3000 100
c45 -3000 97
c43 -7000 100
c67 -7000 100
c40 -7000 100
c46 -3000 100

Nova-T 2:
c42 -7000 100
c45 0 0
c43 -7000 100
c67 3000 100 (?)
c40 -41000 100 (?)
c46 -3000 100

I guess this means I have a dying second Nova-T. Very weird for it to just die on one channel, but the dud results on the other channels I guess might be a similar symptom.

My fault in jumping the gun and not realising the second source is used first in the list for actions, and instead just testing the first source. Sorry, but thanks for the prompt in the right direction!

[bgowland]

Have you tried swapping the aerial cables over? I setup a Freview box for my mother-in-law last Christmas and it couldn't see 3 of the MUXs - I replaced the cable from the wall to the STB and it fixed the problem.

It's strange it's only one MUX in your case but it might be worth a try.

Cheers,
Brian

[seldomshaven]

Hello All,

I have a bit of an odd problem going on here today.

For some reason, all channels that run off of channel 45 on the Sandy Heath Transmitter (UK), are not working in either Live TV or Recording mode for me.

I'm using Sandy Heath as well, and what I find is that those channels will stutter every so often, as if reception has been lost, and that the DVB EPG fails to show any programs for them every now and again. Was your problem definitely one of your tuners dying?

[RangerBob]

According to the information I can find, the ITV, Channel 4, etc channel is a 64QAM mux which means it's naturally much weaker than the BBC ones.

I did double check my antenna alignment, cables and splitter, but they all seem to be working OK, so I cannot otherwise account for the sudden signal degradation. Sandy Heath has no currently outstanding engineering issues which would account for it.

I think that card is dying a gradual death, which means it cannot pick up this weaker signal as well as my second card. The second card is also stuttering a bit, but I'll put this down to the heavy rain we're having right now.