"Big Les Wade" wrote in message
...
Bill Wright posted
Big Les Wade wrote:
I have had exactly the same problem as him, and my set is showing 100%
signal strength from the nearby transmitter. The picture was fine for a
couple of years, then for a few months it was awful, and now it's fine
again. No LOS obstructions have appeared or disappeared and we've
changed nothing in the setup. It can only be the transmitter.

An interesting assertion. How many times have such people as Charles Hope
(ex BBC) heard people blame 'the transmitter'?
Let's take your words above, "The picture was fine for a couple of years,
then for a few months it was awful, and now it's fine again." Without
thinking too deeply, I can remember all of the following occurrences:
1. A kite attached a bit of itself to the aerial. Eventually this blew
off.
2. Yes it really was the transmitter! Or actually it was one in another
town on the same channel which had gone ever so slightly off tune, and
thus was putting coarse horizontal lines across the picture.
3. A bloke moved in at the top of the street and parked his big van in the
back alley every night, and it just happened to obstruct the signal of
someone at the bottom the street. After a while he was promoted so he got
a car, or maybe he died, or moved away, I dunno. But the van disappeared.
4. The aerial was slightly loose and swung slightly off beam, then back
again.
5. Trees. Over and over again I've seen this sort of thing caused by
trees. No rhyme or reason quite often. They don't need to be in the signal
path.
6. A connection behind the TV was disturbed, then disturbed again a few
weeks later.
7. Ditto under the carpet.
8. Ditto in the loft.
9. Ditto on the roof.

And hey presto, just to make me a liar, tonight the problem has returned.
The BBC 1 signal is suddenly unwatchable. After months of 100% signal
strength and 85% signal quality, we are down to 70% signal strength and
40-50% quality, with the associated picture blocking and audio twonking.
Other channels are not affected nearly as badly (thank God because it's
Downton Abbey any minute now and I'd be sure to get the blame for it being
unwatchable - well it's always unwatchable but you know what I mean).

Absolutely *nothing* has changed in my set-up. Absolutely nothing. We've
been out all day so it can't be the wife hoovering and knocking the
cables. It can't be trees, because they don't grow that much in 24 hours.

The one thing I suppose it might be is high barometric pressure, which
we've got at the moment.

Or you have a crap joint somewhere or water in the cable.