Hoppy

I've got Freeview with a new aerial. Picture is mostly excellent, but breaks up and makes horrible noises all too often. Unwatchable. ITV-1 is worst. Switching over to analogue still works okay, but the picture is not as good as digital (and of course, you don't get all the other benefits).

I think it's atmospherics, in which case, would I get a more reliable quality picture from a sat dish?

Thanks,

Richard.

OllyK

Almost certainly maybe, but not necessarily

First you need clear line of sight to the satellite, any trees or something more substantial in the way forget it. Atmospheric conditions can also affect the signal recieved at the dish.

Have you had the Digital ariel upgrade fitted? that has made a big difference to some people I know.

bigsinky

depends what you want to do. a dish will not pick up freeview. get a large broadband aeriel with 50 or so elements. having said that some area still have poor reception for Freeview. a dish would mean a sub to sky or at least buying a box on non sub which can be costly. if you are a channel hopper then could i suggest a skystar1 card linked to the pc with a motorised dish. literally thousands of channels, as well as free $ky italia

cheers

sinky

Leslie

The Freeview box makes a lot of fizzing noises when it loses signal lock. This is due to a poor signal. Can be due to a lot of circumstances, my friend's problems were due to the aerial plugs being incorrectly installed on the tv coax cable. Could be a poor aerial or it may be incorrectly lined up with the transmitter station. Once it gets a strong constant signal you should have no more trouble.

Les

Hoppy

Thanks, guys.

I've got a new aerial and signal strength is not a problem, I'm assured. I think it's frequency related, as BBC1 is always good and ITV-1 has given problems about 30% of the time over the last month. I'm in the Anglia region, from Sandy transmitter. Late at night is worst. I know the weather has been wierd, but then, it usually is! It's a right pi55er when you've just recorded the F1 and its a mess, and too late to switch over to analogue.

I thought all Freeview channels were available via sat? Pretty sure they are. I'm told there's a Sky box deal coming next month which is just the box with no Sky subscription - ie just Freeview via the sat dish. Yes, it's a few quid but there's also a 20Gig hard-drive build in

Richard.