Weird freeview signal issue

[jep]

The O/H has my old Panny TX-32D70LX LCD which gets its freeview signal straight from the aerial. It's developed an issue where certain channels are now blocky as though they are not getting a strong signal and others are not affected.

She's had an engineer round who has replaced her aerial and when it didn't fix the problem, told her it's the inbuilt tuner and she needs an external box / new tele... I've done a bit of a search and can't see anything similar, and anyway, surely if the digital tuner's borked, then she wouldn't get any signal coming through would she?

Any thoughts from the experts, or is it simply a case of stumping up and getting a new digi box?

[jep]

Oooohhh, good shout... I'd completely forgotten about this

I shall check to see if anything's dropped through the post about this... Ta!

[jep]

megaphone said:

It could be too much signal, this can overload the tuner and cause issues, you can buy attenuators that go inline. Or if it's a made up cable, take a couple of strands from the braided screen and short to the pin of the connector, this will knock about 15dB off, worth a try.

Or, Do you have a wall socket? Then a fly lead to the TV? If it's a pre-made lead then some can be poor quality, try changing this.

Or 4G could be an issue as above.

The feed is straight from the aerial, with the cable coming through the wall. This has an extension cable plugged in, taking the feed to the TV which I understand was checked and passed. I'm happy to have a little play with the connectors, and will try your shorting trick when I'm next round there. It can't hurt while we're waiting for a 4G filter to arrive...

There's been some buggering around by the previous owners in that there are further cables exiting the wall and going to other rooms via external cable runs (I'm hoping that the TV engineer has tidied that all up, given he charged her a good £100 and has left her in the same position as before but having shelled out for a new aerial) but this doesn't impact the incoming feed.

VEX said:

Where abouts are you in the UK.

I carry 4g filters and attenuators in the truck all the time, if local happy to pop round and have a look for you.

V.

Thanks Chris, that's very kind of you, however she's in Cheadle (Stockport), which is in my opinion, a little bit too far to ask!

marshalla said:

OP - you can run a quick check and get free filters via : https://at800.tv/

Yes, thanks pal, I spent a few mins on that last night, and it turns out she does live in an area that has apparently had postcards put through letter boxes.

The more I think about this, the more I'm leaning towards the switching on of a 4G mast somewhere around her. The signal loss started after an automatic re-tune was prompted that also saw her getting S4C for a while a few weeks back. Prior to that, everything was hunky-dory with good signal/picture/sound quality. Nothing else hardware wise has been changed, and as I mentioned previously, a number of channels are perfectly fine....all of which I guess is pointing towards interference as a likely cause.

I will keep this thread updated

[jep]

Right then, the good people at at800 were as good as their word and a filter dropped through the post this morning. Having fitted it, it's improved things a little, but, and here's the rub, it has not totally resolved it. There is certainly an improvement in those channels that have been affected, but it's not back to where it was.

I've also tried megaphone's little hack, also with no success.

The next step is to go back to at800 and see what they suggest now.

[jep]

She's off Winter Hill, with Stockport being the nearest alternative.


Eta, Emeye, yeah I know a digi box is buttons these days, but I'm just a bit miffed something's changed and she has to revert to a 2-box solution... (Unless of course the tuner in the tele's borked in which case fair enough!)

Edited by jep on Tuesday 3rd February 18:15

[jep]

ITV/ITV+1/ITV2/ITV2+1/ITV3/ITV3+1/ITV4/ITV4+1/ITV Be/
C4/C4+1/More4/Film4/4Music/E4 (funnily enough E4+1 is fine)
QVC/Yesterday/Drama/Viva/Ideal TV/Dave ja vu/Quest & +1, and a host of other really crap channels.

All the Beeb channels, Food Network, some of the +1's , and random others such as movie and music channels are fine. Some of these more random channels have come back since adding the filter on, but the Beeb's have always been ok.

[jep]

Cheers Nick, I'll do a retune next time I'm at hers.

[jep]

Just to put this thread to bed, the O/H tried the channel reset which didn't work. The at800 engineer came round, double checked all the frequencies/signals and noted the filter cut the interference by nearly 50%. He left satisfied that all was now right with the aerial and filters, however the issues with certain channels still remained...so she got a digi box and lo-and-behold, everything is now back to normal.

Fair play to the original engineer for identifying the problem, and thanks to all for the thoughts and suggestions.