Signal strength from 2A/2B down?

[anton]

I have been having problems with the reception of some channels. The worst was Tuesday night when I temporarily lost everything except Five and ITV News. The next morning Ch4, Sky News and some others gradually came back, however started pixelating or disappearing completely again at aroud 8 pm, then came back again this morning.
I also seem to have lost BBC R2&4 for good as well as the whole bunch of radios from transponder 32 (Virgin, Core etc...)

Has anyone else experienced this recently, Have you noticed any changes in signal strength for some transponders from 2A/2B?
Will welcome any comments.

 

[PaulR]

Have you had any thunderstorms around at the same time?

When we had a storm here on Wednesday evening the signals totally disappeared and we had to go back to terrestrial TV for few hours.

Normally our signal quality is well over the 80% region, what quality do you normally get? If it's already marginal then moderately heavy rain could cause your problem.

PaulR

 

[geoffreys]

I have been having problems with the reception of some channels. The worst was Tuesday night when I temporarily lost everything except Five and ITV News. The next morning Ch4, Sky News and some others gradually came back, however started pixelating or disappearing completely again at aroud 8 pm, then came back again this morning.
I also seem to have lost BBC R2&4 for good as well as the whole bunch of radios from transponder 32 (Virgin, Core etc...)

Has anyone else experienced this recently, Have you noticed any changes in signal strength for some transponders from 2A/2B?
Will welcome any comments.

Well we suspected they altered the 2A/2B footprint slightly during Euro2004, I wonder if they are doing/have done similar for the Olympics? Here in Cyprus I am getting slightly stronger signals on all 2A/2B transponders than is usual.
This would mean some places would get slightly weaker signals of course.
Geoff

 

[anton]

@PaulR
No storms, just perfect weather all this week. The fact that the signal drops most in the evenings reminds of the experiences described by some fringe 2D catchers though I don't quite understand the geo-orbital-satellite-adjustment-whatever factor that is supposed to be causing it.
@Geoffreys
After three days of observing I am now almost sure the signal has been altered, just surprised more people don't report it.
Do you think a change of LNB could help. I am on the fringe of 2A/AB with 90 cm dish and 0,7 dB Strong LNB. It was just the cheapest stuff I could get at the time of installation, but I never cared as the signal has for years been perfect (showing at least 75% quality on dodgybox) without a single case of a drop-out.
And are BBC radios2&4 still there or have they been moved to 2D? What about the other radios-Virgin etc..
Thanks

 

[anton]

@Geoffreys

... I forgot... no changes/problems noticed during Euro 2004.
And if you don't mind me asking- what is it with Cyprus anyway- so far away and yet signal provided -is it to keep the British soldiers happy ?
I have always wondered at this, I think other governements just wouldn't go to such lengths (if it is the case)

 

[geoffreys]

@Geoffreys

... I forgot... no changes/problems noticed during Euro 2004.
And if you don't mind me asking- what is it with Cyprus anyway- so far away and yet signal provided -is it to keep the British soldiers happy ?
I have always wondered at this, I think other governements just wouldn't go to such lengths (if it is the case)

Nothing special about Cyprus Anton, we have a very weak signal here. Nothing special provided by SKY for the British forces here, although they have BFBS TV the same as at most British bases. BFBS is coded, we who live here cannot decode it! The reason you see many messages about SKY reception in Cyprus is because many thousands of us Brits have decided to retire here. For same reason you see many from retired Brits in Spain, Turkey, Canary Is, etc.
Cheers
Geoff
Cyprus

 

[Zorba]

Nothing special about Cyprus,the smallest dish we need for BBC is 2.7m in the west and up to 4.2m in the east.

 

[anton]

@geoffreys
Well, what I meant of course is some guys living a good thousand km closer to UK than Cyprus is would be so happy if they received 2D on 2,7m or even bigger, yet they don't, which hints towards the side-lobe theory and the question then is whether that is just random or intentional (if sidelobes can be designed in such way I don't know)

..btw I seem to have sorted my original problem with a bigger dish for the moment

 

[geoffreys]

@geoffreys
Well, what I meant of course is some guys living a good thousand km closer to UK than Cyprus is would be so happy if they received 2D on 2,7m or even bigger, yet they don't, which hints towards the side-lobe theory and the question then is whether that is just random or intentional (if sidelobes can be designed in such way I don't know)

..btw I seem to have sorted my original problem with a bigger dish for the moment

Well Anton, it is true that on the west end of Cyprus (Paphos area) you can receive 2A, 2B, and 2D on a 2.7m dish. But most of the island needs a 4.2m dish. Sky does not give any preferential sidelobes for Cyprus.
It is true that the footprints have sidelobes, this has all been well discussed in other threads previously. 2D is a particular problem for everyone outside of the UK because it now uses a spot beam (onto UK) for BBC, ITV, etc. This makes it very hard to receive ANYWHERE away from UK, whether Cyprus, Italy, Spain, Mediterranean area generally, and it always needs a bigger more expensive dish than one needs when receiving 2A/2B. As I said before a lot of us Brits live in Cyprus keen to still receive BBC etc for our favourite programs, and hence all the discussion (on-going).
Geoff

 

[ameolive]

I have been having problems with the reception of some channels. The worst was Tuesday night when I temporarily lost everything except Five and ITV News. Has anyone else experienced this recently, Have you noticed any changes in signal strength for some transponders from 2A/2B?
Will welcome any comments.

I'm in Rome and coming back from my summer holiday yesterday ( it was sunny and temperature over 30 deg ) I have also noticed a deterioration in CH4 signal ( occasional pixelation and picture freezing ).
I have immediately checked the signal strength on 12.168 ( the CH4 frequency ) and everything was fine, I mean I had the usual 100% strength and 30% quality : values with wich I always received CH4 even in moderate rain conditions here in Rome ( 80 cm dish)
To fix the problem I appllied the same procedure that I used when 2 months ago I experienced the same odd behaviour : I accessed the 'MANUAL TUNING' menu and added CH4 from 12.168 then I selected CH4 from the 'OTHER CHANNELS' menu and surprise surprise all the pixelation and image freezing disappeared !.

In light of the above, in my humble opinion, rather than a change in the 2A/2B footprint I think that the CH4 that we are currently receiving on program 104 of the EPG is being sent from a weaker transponder the reason for this are of course totally obscure to me.

Hoping that helps .

Ciao

Ameolive

 

[anton]

I think that the CH4 that we are currently receiving on program 104 of the EPG is being sent from a weaker transponder

Ameolive

Thanks for that info but to me that doesn't make sense and it really is strange if it works like that for you. If the same channel was being broadcast simultaneously on two different frequencies that would be obvious
(the tuner being more sensitive to one of the two frequencies) but as you say, you just manually tuned in the same frequency.
(I don't think the signal for one particular channel is being sent from two transponders -superfluous-on the other hand, if it was, then it should be two different frequencies-otherwise how would the tuner discern?)

Anyway, desperate as I was then, it was the first thing I tried too, but adding manually then selecting via other channels didn't help in my case.
And Ch4 wasn't the worst either- during the one week I observed the situation the radios from tp32 were the first to go, reality TV was the second most affected, then BBC R2&4 etc..
Every evening they would start disappearing in the above order.

I since then tried a bigger dish for one week during which there were no problems and I am now back to my original smaller dish which I spent a lot of time finetuning and so far the problem hasn't reappeared.
But the signal readings are not as good as they used to be- before I had 100/80 (strenght/quality and that is on the default transponder) now it is still 100 for strength but with only 50-70 quality)

 

[PaulR]

Both C4 and Five have regional variations which differ only in the advertising content. Which one your card gets is dependant on your (or the card's original owner's ;) ) postcode.

It's possible that there is a slight difference between the different variations although, as C4 is all on the same tansponder, I would have thought it doubtful. Five is transmitted on a few transponders and if the effect is there I would have expected Five to show it more.

PaulR

 

[ameolive]

I fully agreed with you ; it is an apparent no-sense but I can ensure that in my case it just worked as I described.
By the way since yesterday, the situation here in Rome is back to normality (I mean no freezing pictures or pixelation at any hour ).Of course when i select frequency 12.168 still have the usual values of 100s/30q .
Anyway where are you located ? In principle signal quality may be affected by hight temperatures, that, under extreme conditions, can lead to a considerable degradation but I believe that one can start appreciating this phenomenon for temperature above 40 and for very weak basic signal ( 20 % quality or lower ), and I don't think it is your case.
Sorry for not having been of much help
Ciao
Ameolive

 

[anton]

Both C4 and Five have regional variations which differ only in the advertising content. Which one your card gets is dependant on your (or the card's original owner's ;) ) postcode.

It's possible that there is a slight difference between the different variations although, as C4 is all on the same tansponder, I would have thought it doubtful. Five is transmitted on a few transponders and if the effect is there I would have expected Five to show it more.

PaulR

I didn't realize that. So, actually, I wasn't right. Can I tune to any of these
variations at will ? (If yes,presumably with a non-Sky receiver only)(but then no, any other receiver wouldn't get any of C4 or Five as they are scrambled)
So could ameolive possibly have tuned into a different variation of C4 (other than the one assigned to his card) via other channels?

As for Five, I only know of the 12 304H frequency from tp31, where can I find the other ones?
Btw when I had the problem, Five was the strongest of all and it stayed even when everything else had gone (and that would be the London or South East variation with my card)

@ameolive
No, just as you say, I don't think either high temperatures could have been to blame. They weren't that high, and the problem was usually after 7 pm when it cooled down anyway.

 

[ameolive]

Anton

I'm not sure about this C4 regional variant theory, again when we tune on 12.168 we get several C4 ( the cited regional variant ) but all of them are coming from the same transponder trasmitting on 12.168. So I cannot see any reason why they should have a different signal strength/quality.
Again when I had the pixelation problems on EPG program 104 I could receive perfectly any C4 selected from 12.168.
Another possible explanation for this oddity could be that in both occasions something was going wrong with my digibox soft/hardware.
If I well understood you have presently a quality signal level above 50% that should ensure a perfect vision even during a storm, the fact that you lost the signal indicate that you have experienced such a radical signal degradation that I still see unlikely to have been caused by a shift of the satellite footprint.
Such a change should have been noticed by many other people.

Anyway now it seems that everything is fine let's hope to not discuss any more about these issues in future !
Ciao
Ameolive

 

[PaulR]

Five is transmitted on a few transponders

Well, after saying that I checked up and things seem to have changed.

When I last looked about a year ago there were defintely about 5 or 6 variants on 3 different frequencies. Now I can only fiind 2 variants on the same frequency (12.304 H 27.3 2/3 on 2B North). What happened to the rest?

Just for information, there are C4 variants for London, South & East Midlands, North, Northern Ireland and Scotland on 12.168 V 27.5 2/3 on 2A North. No Welsh variant of course as officially this is supposed to be the domain of S4C.

When I get back to the UK I'll try to remember to look through some old magazines to see if I am/was right or if senility really is setting in.

PaulR

 

[anton]

Again when I had the pixelation problems on EPG program 104 I could receive perfectly any C4 selected from 12.168.

ciao ameolive, when you say you could receive ANY C4, would that mean manual tuning via 'Add channels' offered you multiple choice for C4?

and @PaulR
the same question really again. Is it possible that a different variation is tuned into via the manual/add channels route as opposed to going to 104 direct?
My logic says no as it is a circle: no matter which way you tune in, all variants of C4 would be scrambled, thus only viewable via the card, while the card should supposedly only give you the variant alloted to it by the postcode, i.e. the same you would get through 104

 

[PoloMint]

...no matter which way you tune in, all variants of C4 would be scrambled, thus only viewable via the card, while the card should supposedly only give you the variant alloted to it by the postcode, i.e. the same you would get through 104

Channel 4 is not blocked at a regional level, that is if you have a card that can receive one region it can receive them all (like ITV is now, and unlike the BBC1 regions when they were encrypted). The postcode of a card ties the 104 EPG slot to a particular region, but it still unscrambles all regions if you add them manually.

Of course this still doesn’t explain why that helps improve reception if all regions come from the same transponder.

 

[ameolive]

ciao ameolive, when you say you could receive ANY C4, would that mean manual tuning via 'Add channels' offered you multiple choice for C4?

Yes I meant that.
Anyway most important I repeat is the fact that while I was experiencing pixelation on EPG 104 the signal strenght on 12.168 was good ( for my .8 dish in Rome ) as usual.
So unless I had erratic readings of the Signal strenght due to a digibox fault ( and I concede that this may be the case ) the only explantion I gave for such odd behaviour was that EPG 104 was transmitting ( for obscure reason ) from a transponder not located on 12.168.

All the best to the participants of this ( in any case )interesting discussion
Ciao
Ameolive

 

[PaulR]

Can't explain why 104 should be giving a pixellated picture but AFAIK C4 is only on one transponder.

PaulR