Why has our Freeview reception suddenly degraded?

Up until recently we have had excellent Freeview (terrestrial) reception in Clevedon, South Auckland. In the last 2-3 months Prime, Choice, Sommet have become almost unwatchable and Ch 1-3 have less regular (but still annoying) pixellation. My neighbour has had the same degradation over this period.

We have both had professional help and changed out our antennae on the advice of separate accredited installers. No real change.

Today we were visited by a Radio Spectrum Management technician who was very thorough and helpful. He advised that there is no interference problem and that we simply have a poor reception problem, possibly brought about by seasonality and multi-path reflection off nearby bush-covered hills. He advised that we would either have to try raising our aerials, replacing our cabling, or going to satellite. Or all of the above. I really don't want to go to that expense without some assurance that it will solve my problem (let alone the fact that the tuners in my smart TV and Hard Drive recorder will then be useless).

Something has changed. I have had good Freeview for over 2 years. Any ideas about what this could be? What (if any) recourse do I have to get this sorted out?

Thanks

Steve

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Permalink Reply by Bel @ Freeview on September 20, 2013 at 10:41

Hi Steve,

I would second the advice of the RSM technician - have you done a coverage check with your full street address prior to the installation? If so - what's the result?

I can tell you that there've been no transmission changes in Auckland over the 2 years, so what's more likely to have changed is the environmental obstructions around the aerial (e.g. have the bush cover become more dense? is there tree cover in front of the UHF aerial?) - these will create reception problems (you want as clear and uninterrupted signal path as poss!!!).

For more info about why reception issues occur, please see http://freeviewforum.co.nz/forum/topics/on-off-pixelation-across-al...

And for some measures that you can take to ensure as reliable an installation as possible if you do extend your UHF aerial, please see this tip about the digital cliff effect & testing for adequate ..., might be worth asking the installer about :)

Permalink Reply by Stephen Inglis on September 22, 2013 at 7:16

Thanks Bel.

The bush is on hills about 500m away and not within line of site of the transmitter so it could only be multipath.

The reception coverage check showed us as fringe but neither we nor our neighbours have ever had issues until recently. Extremely frustrating and expensive to rectify.

Thanks for your help.

Permalink Reply by Steve J on September 22, 2013 at 7:24

Similar down here . I had to raise my antenna by around 4 m to get above rapidly growing tress in the path about 500m away . Made a huge difference . I expect in the future will need to go higher . I also tried different antennas and found the WISI Phased Array gave me the best sig level and MER in my location

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