Is Freeview Easily Affected By Bad Weather?

Mr Cole

Established Member
Joined
Dec 4, 2004
Messages
557
Reaction score
46
Points
160
Location
Northampton
Hi all,
I've just had my Sony KDL-26S2010 LCD delivered yesterday with built in Freeview. I set it up okay and watched it for a few hours last night and the freeview was spot on. Watched it this morning for a couple of hours and again it was good but then all of a sudden I started to get very poor reception and digital blocking on the screen. I checked the signal strength on the affected channels and it was low for some strange reason. I have just tried it again and it's ok now & with good signal strength. :confused:

I'm wondering if there is a fault with my new tv as it's been okay for a good few hours before it went poor but it seems okay again now anyway. A friend of mine has a Freeview box and says now & again he's does the same, usually when the weather is bad.

Can anyone please confirm this before I return the tv when it's not really faulty?

Many thanks
 
Yes it is effected by the weather, usually heavy rain will attenuate the signal and cause the problems you describe. Luckily we dont get much of that do we!!:eek:
 
In my experience unless you are in a good strong signal area Freeview is quite susceptible to weather conditions. I would say your TV is probably fine. The quality of the receiver also has a bearing on this, some days I get very minimal break-up on my Panny Plasma but almost never when viewing via my Toppy PVR.
 
Bad weather without a doubt affects signal strength. I'm in a fringe area and while 85%+ of the time it works fine with a little help from a booster the rest of the time it is sorely affected by our weather patterns. This can be a rather heavy cloudy day, cloudy day with rain or a nice hot summers day when atmospherics start to play a role along with trees sprouting loads of large leaves and new branches hindering the direct travel of the signal.

On these days I experience poor signal strength which relates to much pixelisation and break up to total loss of channels/mux's altogether. At weather's most severe times I can lose everything and have to revert to good oll analogue.

So don't be to worried if your signal goes tits up every now and then unless you really do live on a transmitter doorstep. The signal broadcast is just not powerful enough in many areas to get 100% reception all the time. You'll just have to wait until analogue switch off in your area before transmission powers can be pushed up.
 
I'm 30 miles from the transmitter with a 14dB aerial and 6dB amp and my reception has never been affected by weather in the last 2 years.

Rain is more likely to have an effect if you have trees in the way.

Where and what is your aerial?

What is your cable? How's it routed and connected?
 
Believe it or not - if your aerial downlead is fairly old, it may well be that it is getting wet internally.
 
Yes and at this time of year I also find that flocks of starlings affect the signal as well. If my signal suddenly drops out it's usually because there are a couple of dozen of them sitting on the aerial while they congregate to fly off and find a roost. :( Old cable will probably not be shielded like the type recommended for digital and also the quality of any scart or fly leads can affect performance.
 
The SCART lead would affect quality at all times regardless of the weather - unless you have an outdoor SCART lead :D
If you have enough signal so that you are a few dB above required good signal levels, then weather shouldn't make any difference provided you aren't looking through trees.
One could also do a proper "link budget" calculation but this needs information on the local transmitter's radiated power level (EIRP) , gain of receiving aerial and coaxial cable losses as well as receiver sensitivity.

Chris Muriel, Manchester
 
I have a box on a portable aerial and it does get problems with bad weather. My other box on a loft aerial is fine all the time.
 
I have just bought a new aerial that is good for digital and have installed it in the loft. I have used new cable from the aerial and have fed it inside a cavity wall to my bedroom connected to a wall aerial socket.

The signal qaulity seems excellent (shows 10 on the TV) but the signal strength only shows around 6 - this drops to 5 or less with poor weather and then affects the picture somewhat.

I guess I'd improve on the signal if I put the aerial outside so will probably look at doing this sometime soon.
 
I have just bought a new aerial that is good for digital and have installed it in the loft. I have used new cable from the aerial and have fed it inside a cavity wall to my bedroom connected to a wall aerial socket.

The signal qaulity seems excellent (shows 10 on the TV) but the signal strength only shows around 6 - this drops to 5 or less with poor weather and then affects the picture somewhat.

I guess I'd improve on the signal if I put the aerial outside so will probably look at doing this sometime soon.

The wet roof will certainly affect the signal more than if the aerial was in the open air.
 
My aerial and Cable is near on 30 years old which didn't do the freeview any favours. So i bought a new Televes Dat 75 aerial and new ct100 cable. before i could only get the normal program like BB1/2 and so on, now i get all programs with an excellent picture, but still get some pixelisation, signal strength is just below normal. I think I've done all i can to Improve it, even so I'm not happy, buts I'll have to live with it !
 
Believe it or not - if your aerial downlead is fairly old, it may well be that it is getting wet internally.

After i had my aerial upgraded on my new house the guy managed to snap it if half just by bending it over his knee.

The cable, and this was a big surprise, had water, yes WATER, inside - between the outer and inner sections.

Didn't know that normal Co-Ax has been withdrawn from use by installers either.
 
I too have a great amount of interference on a day with bad weather.

This seems a pretty pathetic indictment of the supposedly 'Superior' technology that Digital provides when it can be so heavily effected by such a simple and frequent occurence as rain (!)....

Seems like if they go ahead with this Analogue Switch-Off when planned there will be one hell of an unpleasant 'adjustment period' :rolleyes:
 
Hopefully when analogue does switch off it will provide more available bandwidth to increase the digital signal strength considerably. That said they could easily do that now by just ditching all the unwatchable crap quiz, shopping and other rubbish already using digital bandwidth.
 
I too have a great amount of interference on a day with bad weather.

This seems a pretty pathetic indictment of the supposedly 'Superior' technology that Digital provides when it can be so heavily effected by such a simple and frequent occurence as rain (!)....

Seems like if they go ahead with this Analogue Switch-Off when planned there will be one hell of an unpleasant 'adjustment period' :rolleyes:

Well the superior technology manages to stuff 6+ channels into the same space occupied by 1 analog, and at 10% of the transmitter power....

The problem is that it is less tolerant of poor signal in that its a "yes or no" type thing. It's amazing how many people claimed to have a 'perfect' picture on analog with an appalling antenna...in fact they were watching a very noisy picture but got used to it.
 

The latest video from AVForums

Is 4K Blu-ray Worth It?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom