News

Today, Monday the 6th of June and still there is no resolution to the on-going reception problems of the BBC channels via the Bromsgrove transmitter.

Although I have gained a lot more information regarding this problem I'm still at a loss as to it's exact cause.

The problem seems to have developed on Wednesday the 1st of June when households were requested via an on-screen message to re-tune their TVs on or after this date.

Going by the amount of calls I've received it would suggest that after the re-tuning was completed many people reported that they had either lost their BBC channels altogether or are now experiencing pixilation / picture break-up.

As I continued to receive more and more calls and with the weekend fast approaching I made a call to the BBC Radio & TV investigation Service to inform them of a possible transmission fault on multiplex 26 at the Bromsgrove transmitter.

Despite having received up to a couple of dozen calls from people complaining of the same problem I was absolutely dismayed with regards to their attitude. They informed me that there was NO fault with the Bromsgrove transmitter.
I also informed them that a local TV shop in Droitwich "Brown & Fincher" had received even more calls than myself but this just fell on deaf ears and made no difference, they just repeated the same blurb...."There is no fault with the Bromsgrove transmitter"

As I felt that I was banging my head against a brick wall I made an initial call to Worcester News reporter "Sam Greenway" who seemed very interested in running a story should the problem not get resolved over the weekend.

I thought it only fair that I try the BBC Radio & TV investigation service one more time, so calling them this morning (Monday) I asked to speak to a manager and despite the fact that after a very long wait I did eventually get through to a duty manager the response was the same..... "There is no reported fault with the Bromsgrove transmitter" I suggested to them that, I, on behalf of a few dozen customers was reporting a fault, but as before I felt like I was wasting my time.

Speaking to Sam Greenway again from the Berrows newspaper group this afternoon proved much more successful as an article regarding this problem has now appeared online on the Worcester News website as well as going to print in many of Berrows newspapers. See that story HERE

The image above shows the display on my meter but a similar sort of signal condition display is often seen on many makes of TV, especially in the case of Panasonic as they also display signal strength and signal quality reception bars.

Interestingly the display above is taken from my customers Aerial/incoming signal which initially looks excellent until you notice the ERR 999 display at the bottom of the screen, also a glance at the unhappy face indicates a major signal corruption problem. The signal strength indication on most if not all TVs will only normally indicate, at best just two parameters and with this particular fault any signal indication on a TV screen will also suggest that the signal for the BBC channels from Bromsgrove is good, possibly making some people unwittingly think that they are in need of a new TV or TV Aerial.

I will keep working on trying to find out the cause and resolution to this fault until resolved but in the meantime remember that if you have a TV made in the last 3 years or so there is a chance that it's a HD receiving TV and the two most watched BBC channels are broadcast from an unaffected multiplex 30 on the Bromsgrove transmitter. For BBC1 punch in 101 into your remote and BBC2 - 102, if your TV just bounces back to the channel your watching then it's more than likely your TV is not HD.

Should the fault not get resolved in time for a particular programme you want to watch and you don't have a HD receiving set then please give me a call as there are sometimes things I can suggest over the phone that you can try that may restore BBC to your TV, failing that there is always a solution to the problem by making a rooftop adjustment to your TV Aerial either by re-positioning or re-aligning onto another, more reliable transmitter, but please don't try this yourself and end up making the same mistake as Rod Hull.

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