O
organica
Guest
Hi folks -
I'm fairly clueless about Freeview, don't even have a television. I just got my Dad a DVD recorder w/ freeview (Panasonic DMR-ES20) and he is having intermittent trouble with the picture from it (i.e. the direct reception rather than recorded material), and wondering if he needs to take it back to the shop. The manual for the ES20 seems to have approximately zero info about the built-in freeview receiver, so no help there.
The interference is not lines or artefacts on the screen, it's more time-based, the picture and sound will kind-of jitter in and out or "hang" before continuing. This only occurs on certain channels - BBC 1, 2, ITV1, Ch4, Ch5 are all fine. The problems seem to occur with channels like 18-22, and some further on - when I tried accessing them via a dedicated freeview box, it just seemed to skip these channels completely.
From this I'm guessing that the problem is not with the unit, but with the signal reception - but before I start reading up on that and messing around with it, I just wanted a second opinion.
In terms of setup, he is using an internal loft aerial that has always been fine for analogue from the same transmitter, but I guess digital may be more demanding in some respects? There is only one TV socket in the house AFAIK. I checked the reception lookup at www.dtg.org.uk, and it is just a long line of YESses for his post code. So my thinking is he needs to get an external roof aerial, or perhaps some sort of booster box.
My Dad is pretty happy as he gets nearly all the channels he's interested in - all he really wants to know right now is whether there might be a fault with the Pana...
I'm fairly clueless about Freeview, don't even have a television. I just got my Dad a DVD recorder w/ freeview (Panasonic DMR-ES20) and he is having intermittent trouble with the picture from it (i.e. the direct reception rather than recorded material), and wondering if he needs to take it back to the shop. The manual for the ES20 seems to have approximately zero info about the built-in freeview receiver, so no help there.
The interference is not lines or artefacts on the screen, it's more time-based, the picture and sound will kind-of jitter in and out or "hang" before continuing. This only occurs on certain channels - BBC 1, 2, ITV1, Ch4, Ch5 are all fine. The problems seem to occur with channels like 18-22, and some further on - when I tried accessing them via a dedicated freeview box, it just seemed to skip these channels completely.
From this I'm guessing that the problem is not with the unit, but with the signal reception - but before I start reading up on that and messing around with it, I just wanted a second opinion.
In terms of setup, he is using an internal loft aerial that has always been fine for analogue from the same transmitter, but I guess digital may be more demanding in some respects? There is only one TV socket in the house AFAIK. I checked the reception lookup at www.dtg.org.uk, and it is just a long line of YESses for his post code. So my thinking is he needs to get an external roof aerial, or perhaps some sort of booster box.
My Dad is pretty happy as he gets nearly all the channels he's interested in - all he really wants to know right now is whether there might be a fault with the Pana...