Bad Freeview reception

[harryf]

Since the beginning of November my Freeview reception has been getting steadily worse to the point where many channels are unwatchable. Today I had an aerial installer check out the aerial and tried his own Freeview box and everything was ok, so now I know that the fault is with my system. I am using a Nova-T-500 card for Freeview and the fault also shows when using the Win2000 software. Could the card be faulty, as some channels are ok? Has anyone else had a fault like this?

My next move will be to re-install the card drivers to see if that helps, and I will post again later.

[taylormadearmy]

Are you using a signal booster? If not I recommend you try one before wasting time with drivers. It could be that the signal you are getting is now weaker than it was before for whatever reason - while being good enough for an external Freeview box it may be not good enough for your PCI card.

PC cards/USB dongles tend to need a far better signal than an external box due to the amount of RF noise PCs generate.

Where I live I have never been able to get reliable Freeview to my PC without use of a booster - though I recommend you get one with variable gain as those without can sometimes actually add too much gain.

T

[fac13]

Hi,

The fact that you can tune some channels suggests that neither your card nor its drivers is the problem. The fact that your reception has been getting steadily worse, rather than suddenly, suggests either your aerial or the cable/connection has deteriorated. Problems can also appear in Spring with tree leaves blocking line-of-sight to the transmitter, It is also possible there have been transmission changes in your area (see below) but that would be expected to result in a sudden change rather than a gradual one.

Did the aerial guy connect his box using the same cable you feed your Nova-T from, or did he plug it in somewhere else (nearer your aerial perhaps?). If he used the same cable, have you tried replacing it, checking the soldering/contacts in the co-ax plug etc?

You may want to make a list of which channels you can't receive properly (perhaps using scanchannelsbda) and see if they correlate with particular muxes in your transmission area - some are (much) weaker than others. You may also want to see if other people in your area are suffering from the same problem, because changes are sometimes made to the channel-to-mux mapping, to accomodate new channels etc.

Finallly, can you borrow a booster to see if this helps?

I was in the same position as you and found my reception problems were all on one notoriously weak mux. A combination of replacing my scabby old co-ax with higher quality stuff, and the addition of a booster, got me perfect reception on all channels again without needing to replace my (very) old aerial. At that time I was using Nova-T 500s too.

Edit: I completely agree with taylormadearmy's comment about the importance of a variable-gain booster, if I turn mine up to max I get worse reception than I do with no boost at all.

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by fac13

Finallly, can you borrow a booster to see if this helps?

Correct me if I'm wrong but a booster will not make a signal better. It will only be able to share the signal it recieves to multiple tv recieving equipment at a constant level.

Another way of looking at it is if I were to connect 5 boosters all in series would I then have a strong enough signal to receive channels being broadcast from the next county?

The answer is obviously No.

I had the same exact problem with Nova 500's until I tried a diffrent tuner. The Nova TD dual tuners sorted my issues out.

[fac13]

Originally Posted by jaminben

Correct me if I'm wrong but a booster will not make a signal better. It will only be able to share the signal it recieves to multiple tv recieving equipment at a constant level.

I used to think that, but my own experience is that I can tune channels using a booster which I am unable to tune without.

I actually have two - one close to aerial and the other immediately before the PC. The "upstream" one gives me the most benefit, but the one near the PC is necessary to get all channels.

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by fac13

I actually have two - one close to aerial and the other immediately before the PC. The "upstream" one gives me the most benefit, but the one near the PC is necessary to get all channels.

I still beleive a booster will not improve the signal from your aerial but will improve the degradation impossed by the resistance / quality of the coax cable.

[harryf]

I have already replaced my aerial with a high gain wide band one and replaced the cable with satellite grade stuff, with no improvement whatsoever. I have asked a neighbour if his freeview receptiion is ok, which it is. Also no one in my street has a roof aerial, which suggests a strong signal and the trasmitter is only a few miles away.

I have re-installed the card drivers, but no change. It looks like the DVB card is faulty.

[MCE-Refugee]

Originally Posted by jaminben

I still beleive a booster will not improve the signal from your aerial but will improve the degradation impossed by the resistance / quality of the coax cable.

That is just plain wrong. I have seen many installations (PC tuners & regular Freeview boxes) where a signal booster has made all the difference to receiving missing channels or even any channels at all. It's not like analogue TV where the ampifier will amplify the 'snow' along with the TV. Digital tuners can filter out extra noise. It i especially important when a single downlead from the aerial is supplying the signal to more than one tuner.

It could be that the tuner is OK but something else in the PC is causing a problem with signal interference.

BTW If you want to try a signal booster get a cheap one from Argos then if it doesn't help take it back for a refund under their 16-day no quibble policy.

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by MCE-Refugee

That is just plain wrong. I have seen many installations (PC tuners & regular Freeview boxes) where a signal booster has made all the difference to receiving missing channels or even any channels at all. It's not like analogue TV where the ampifier will amplify the 'snow' along with the TV. Digital tuners can filter out extra noise. It i especially important when a single downlead from the aerial is supplying the signal to more than one tuner.

Is that not what I said above? A booster will not improve the signal recieved from the actual aerial but will help with what little signal you have at the aerial lead and disperse it to many tv points at a constant level.

Oh there is also such a thing as having a "Too Strong a Signal" which can be fixed with the help of an Attenuator.

[MCE-Refugee]

Originally Posted by jaminben

Is that not what I said above? A booster will not improve the signal recieved from the actual aerial but will help with what little signal you have at the aerial lead and disperse it to many tv points at a constant level.

Wrong. A booster will improve the signal for a single tuner & I have seen several installations where without a booster there are few or no channels & with one all channels are received. It is especially important when splitting a single downlead between several tuners but can be just as important with a single tuner.

[motobarsteward]

A little theory...

What you need for reception is lots of distance between the signal strength (measured in dBm) and the noise floor. If they are close together and you amplify them, then you don't really increase the separation. On a domestic system, you have your aerial on the roof, a join in the little box on the aerial, a good long length of co-ax cable, a join in the back of the wall box, a join at the wall box and a join on the back of your free-view receiver. The cable and all these joins act to reduce the separation between your signal strength and the noise floor at your receiver. If you now try and amplify this right by your receiver then you will amplify the signal but also lift the noise floor!
The solution is to amplify the signals before all the losses are added. This is done with a mast head amplifier. The idea being that you put the amplifier before all your losses and amplify the difference between the noise floor and received signal. These amplifiers are normally on the bottom of your aerial support mast or where the cable enters your loft space. These amplifiers need a power supply. This can be provided in the loft space, normal from the top floor lighting ring, or more commonly, from a low voltage power supply by one of the TVs and injected onto the aerial cable. Because the amplifier draws current, any bad connections between the PSU and the amplifier mean that the amplifier may not get enough voltage this will effect it's operation. Another problem is that you might have forgotten about the PSU and turned it off/unplugged it.
We are assured that after the switch over, we will no longer need the amplifier or the high gain aerial. I'd suggest that, when this happens, you remove the amplifier from your system and get it completely re-wired as this will improve the reliability.

[John@TunerUK]

I too had issues with my freeview signal whilst living in a strong signal area. I eventually found the cause to be the way my aerial was fitted. I had fitted it horizontally, when my local transmitter requires it to be fitted vertically. Since doing that simple tweak my signal strength reads 100% all of the time, whereas before even a passing car could cause breakup.
I also fitted co-ax with a foam core into the loft, to ensure that no water was getting into the air gap found in normal co-ax. Once in the loft it goes into a launch amp, then off to the server using standard co-ax.
I don't even need a decent aerial. My aerial, mast, bracket, and fixings all came to £21.

I know the Nova T 500 has a built in signal booster, as you had to turn this on by altering a line of code when I was using linux. I suppose it's possible yours could be faulty.

[harryf]

My reception is now back to normal. A new TV card fixed the problem, but because I had to install new drivers with the card, I will now have to uninstall and re-install Sage as I am getting errors after Sage wakes from S3 standby!

Such is life, well Sage life anyway.

[John@TunerUK]

I've never been able to get sage to work after going into standby. I always get 'no signal' when trying to view anything when it wakes up.

[Slingshot72]

Jon - I notice your using a Nova-T-500. If its the PCI card then theres a known "issue" where when the PC wakes from standby. It takes a while for the tuners to become operational again after waking up (somethig to do with them actually being USB devices stuck on a PCI card) so you have to wait a bit before using them (found some details in this thread yesterday while trying to see if any progress had been made on the issue).

Ive been successfully using the Nova-T-500 for several months now with my server waking from Hiberantion to record shows. I got round the issue (as others on the forum have) by having a batch file that restarts the SageTV service whenever the PC comes out of Hibernation. Rename the attatched file to RestartSageTV.bat and use Hibernate Trigger to run the batch file on resume. Ive added comments to the batch file so people can see how it works.

[harryf]

I still have a problem. If the PC is starts from "cold", Sage works fine, but if it comes out of standby, when I try to watch Freeview TV, I get this error:

"There was a capture error in playback. Details: ERROR(-4,0x8007001f): There was a problem using the capture device. Please be sure you have the latest drivers installed for your capture device, and that they are installed correctly."

I have used the hcwclear utility and re-installed the drivers for the Nova T 500, no joy. I even tried to use the drivers for the old card but they don't work!

[harryf]

I tried using Hibernate instead of Standby and that solved the tuner problem! However, I now cannot get Sage to respond to remote commands after the PC has come back from hibernate If I do a restart, the remote works again!

This is driving me nuts, as I have spent all day on this.

[stryker]

In recent months I've had issues with certain channels skipping and with corruption etc which you'd associate with a poor signal... mostly channel 4 & ITV and what other channels are on the same band.

I fixed the problem by investing in another free sat card which has none of these issues, thus I now prefer the dvbs over dvbt cards.