Lost a bunch of Freeview channels ?

[db298]

Anyone else found themselves losing Freeview channels recently ? I was away over the weekend, and my wife complained that the MCE machine had dropped a collection of channels - ITV, Ch4, E4 (although not E4+1 !)

I checked quickly last night, and sure enought there is no data on those channels. I did a quick rescan, but that showed up nothing - It had 44 channels in which seemed to be what it started with, then I ran out of time.

Today, I've had a call at work from her, and apparently we've now lost Cbeebies too.

Any reason why I might be losing Freeview channels, is anyone experiencing the same, and what should be my next steps to fix the problem ?!

[evolution400]

It maybe the transmitter in your area, this happened to me before ,they sometimes switch to lower power for maintenance which means you lose some of the lower signal strength channels until the maintenance cycle is complete.

[nigelbb]

Loss of channels is almost always due to a poor signal. You may need a better aerial or simply a 10 pounds signal booster from Argos.

[battle is mine]

Did you have a freeview box before MCE? If so it most likely has a signal strength test within the menu's. I can get a really good picture but I get really poor readings and I too lose channels now and again, even though the picture quality is really good. This has been solved with a cheap signal booster.

[db298]

I have a Televes Dat45 with a powered margin-raising device. I don't believe it's a signal problem I'll check the arial hasn't blown off the roof, but other than that I can't believe it'll be a hardware signal issue ?

[Reggit]

Blame it on the weather!

Seriously, it could be a phenomena known as 'FM lift'. This causes radio signals to travel much further distances than they usually would do. So your aerial could be recieving a signal from another transmitter on the same frequency as the Mux's that you've lost and therefore the tuner will not understand the 'mixed' signal and gets its nickers in a twist.

Another possiblitly is that you've got too much signal (again due to the lift conditions) this is as bad as not enough signal, it will overload the tuner and again will lose the signal.

If it is either of these two conditions, it will go back to normal when the current high pressure system moves off.