Netgem picture degrade

I’ve had an Netgem i-player for around about a year and I have to say I’ve been more than happy with it; unfortunately recently my picture (signal) has degraded really badly, mainly channel 4 and ITV but can be others. This seems to have happened at the same time the Top up TV change was introduced (which I haven’t subscribed to and to be honest don’t think I can not that I’d want to). Currently I am powering down or retuning my box at least once a day to resolve the problem.

Any one else experienced a similar problem or have a possible solution?

The aerial was upgraded to a large good quality digital aerial at the same time as the box was installed (all professionally done) and the cable is continuous, all leads are top quality (well I’m assuming the price I paid).

Having read up a bit further I found this little gem.The channels on TopDownTV are being broadcast on Muxs 2 and A (Mux listing). The only 'Freeview' channels of note that will be affected are ITV1, ITV2, C4 and five (.....and bid-up.tv!!). five broadcasts in variable bitrate so it's difficult to track the average, and I'm not sure what changes to their bandwidth quota have been made, but it seems to that the quality has dropped since TUTV has started broadcasting. And I'm sure you'll be delighted to hear that the TUTV previews (in what way is that looping rubbish a preview???) are mostly higher bitrate than the other channels on the Muxs!

Have to say that I'm less than happy that what is supposed to be a free to view package has been hijaked and the quality has been significantly reduced due to the TUTV package, that isn’t actually wanted by anyone that has purchased "FREE TO VIEW". Correct me if I'm wrong but should someone want extra channels one they wouldn't chose the ones on offer and two they wouldn’t chose free to view! The sooner TUTV dies on its arse the better!

The main reason a majority of people have select free to view isn’t due to financial constraints it’s simply because the quality of TV on pay for options simply isn’t very good!

Free to view doesn’t mean people are prepared to accept substandard quality. It certainly isn’t what I paid for!!!!!

[cerebros]

Put in a complaint to OfCOM... The more people who kick up a fuss about TUTV having a detrimental effect on Freeview reception, the more likely they are to do something about it - otherwise people will give up on Freeview and it'll be harder for analogue shut-off to happen.