TV signal missing from Oxford Beckley transmitter

Thu 24 Sep 2020, 11:51

Welcome to my world! The BBC 1 and BBC2 signals (same transponder) from the Walcot transmitter are awful and have been for months, whatever the weather or season. The other transponder for the ITV C4 etc that was swopped out in the spring following my and others' complaints now has a rock solid signal. I am just gearing up for another campaign!

Thu 24 Sep 2020, 11:30 (last edited on Thu 24 Sep 2020, 13:43)

no probs with Aris box just as good as the Humax i had, i am on Freesat

Wed 23 Sep 2020, 12:00

My freeview has been fine over the past few days. Top of town. Not far from The Green.

I think there were some station changes last week, including the introduction of Sky Arts on Freeview. It might be worth checking that you have updated the channel list.

I looked into changing to Freesat. But Humax and Freesat parted company last year, and the new Arris freesat boxes have pretty poor reviews on trustpilot. 

Wed 23 Sep 2020, 09:09

yes we lost all chanels early on monday morning ,just before it went off the picture was breaking up & a sound like eggs cooking in a pan then a message to say `NO Service.

Sara from Talking pictures chanel 81 told me that it could be a local mast interfereing

with the tv signal,who knows.....Chris wastie

Tue 22 Sep 2020, 20:13

Thanks everybody.

I did wonder if the high pressure was the reason for this but didn't realise that it was so extreme.

One of our TVs shows signal strength in the info bar when we change channel and at no time has that dropped below 72%, in theory that is "Good" according to all the information that shows when I rescan all the channels, which incidentally is necessary very often as the channel mapping changes.

All is good now, with the normal excellent picture but who knows, tomorrow it may be all gone again.

Tue 22 Sep 2020, 19:28

Yes, Charlie, trying to hose snow off the dish a few years ago wasn't much fun, but hey, nowadays I'd just stream it from the router.

Tue 22 Sep 2020, 19:23

The signal is back now so hope it was just due to the high pressure.  

Tue 22 Sep 2020, 19:21

Agreed Jon, except if it rains very hard or snow gets on the dish receiver.

Tue 22 Sep 2020, 18:34

Agree Freesat is the better option. Trouble free.

Tue 22 Sep 2020, 16:59

Just to add to this, in recent days my mother has been having erratic reception from the Oxford Beckley transmitter, and she just to the west of Aylesbury. The symptoms are that either some or all channels are lost, but it's inconsistent. Usually the signal quality is fine, but then it just goes with an error message about the signal being to weak or poor quality. Not much between an excellent signal and none as is often the case with digital.

That there are reception issues in two entirely different directions would point to some sort of transmitter fault or some very strange atmospherics. There are some status reports suggesting that high pressure atmospherics are causing problems in south England and parts of Wales.

One other thing to note is that the presence of 4G (and 5G) telephone masts can cause problems if you have older masthead amplifiers without the appropriate filter as signals can overwhelm those.

Personally I moved to Freesat a few years ago as I got fed up with the highly erratic re reception from Oxford Beckley.

Tue 22 Sep 2020, 14:17

Same here. Last night I was trying to watch the BBC1 Panorama programme by Richard Bilton on Russian money laundering in London and donations to political parties. 

I wondered whether Boris had pulled the plug!

Tue 22 Sep 2020, 13:45

We have lost our free view signal on The Green, who can we contact?

Tue 22 Sep 2020, 10:53 (last edited on Tue 22 Sep 2020, 12:00)

Yes, we've had problems several days in Rochester Place but this morning was ok. Whether we pick up the Beckley signal I don't know.

We've had a visit from Banbury Aerials this morning, to fix a different problem; they said that there's been a lot of trouble with reception recently because of the  foggy weather.

Tue 22 Sep 2020, 10:31

Both yesterday morning and today we have lost all of our TV channels from Beckley.

I can find no other reports of problems  when I look at the transmission reports from BBC or free view but wondered  if anyone else in Charlbury has this old, recurring problem over the past couple of days?

Last evening all was OK, but this morning, nothing.