Freeview, channel changes ... are you going to have to re-tune?

[#1]

It wasn't useless for a friend of mine.

Initially they sent him some filters to try and when that was unsuccessful they sent out an engineer who resited the external aerial which improved the signal to an acceptable level.

[#2]

@VileReynard, are you getting all the channels you should be getting from Crystal Palace?  After the 'reallocation' which took place in the spring of last year, I lost a number of channels, or rather the signal is too weak to make it reliable.  The channels in multiplex COM7 and 8 I think are the ones affected.

[#3]

I get lots of channels - I think some of the signal strengths might have decreased slightly - previously everything was a 10 but a few are now 7 or 8. I tend to stick with BBC mostly because all the adverts mess up programmes.

Since when did sticking an icon continuously on the screen become a thing? Seems to be removed for the adverts...

I wonder if this could be used to drive an automatic advert removal thing on my PVR?

Various Bit Torrents of Scandi-Noir TV series don't have the icons or the adverts.

[#4]

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Video requires more bandwidth than these people talking nonsense or sending tweets and cat pictures to each other.

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[#5]

In the early days of home video a device was advertised in the video-related press that claimed to cut out the commercials during recording.  I don't know how it worked but ITV, and possibly other channels (we didn't have that many in those days), did have two little vertical white bars appearing in the top (right I think) of the picture a few seconds before the ad break so that might have something to do with it.

Said device wasn't available for long so perhaps it didn't perform as promised, or perhaps it wasn't strictly legal.

[#6]

Yes - I remember thinking at the time that if someone invented a clever gadget to cut out adverts they would make their fortune...

Obviously, I wasn't quite up to speed with capitalist production modes.

Apparently, those vertical bars are called "cue dots" - see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cue_mark

In the good old days [sic] I remember seeing a green C briefly flashing up on films at the cinema, which was some kind of warning for the projectionist to load the next reel of film. In these digital days, it seems to be obsolete.

[#7]

I remember the cue dots on films which If I remember correctly was a white circle.I don't recall any bars on the tv screen but I do remember a flashing white bar across the top which apparently had something to do with the run up to teletext or whatever it was then called. 

[#8]

Yep, Teletext (ITV) & Ceefax (BBC).
The data was transmitted on a normally unseen part of the the picture but if the picture was out of alignment it was possible to see the data stream.

[#9]

It looks like the bars are still there, maybe I just don't notice them, and with additional moving bars on the left.  This picture is from 2012 I think: http://i.ytimg.com/vi/9lh-ZnwOTrA/maxresdefault.jpg

Before Teletext, the ITV text service was called Oracle, C4 had 4-tel, and I think C5 had 5-text (must have taken hours of marketing gurus' time to come up with that one).

[#10]

Note the ITV1 Logo [Yuck].

But I don't recall ITV+1 existing until the last year or two - possibly a repeat showing?

You can watch the last moments of Ceefax at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPv127VLsis

[#11]

ITV+1 was launched in January 2011 apparently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITV_(TV_channel)

[#12]

I'm pretty sure I've had ITV+1 as long as I have had digital TV; being a late starter I only got it in August 2011 which fits with @pjmarsh's post.

[#13]

I am new to Freeview (had multi satellite until wife wanted the house extending.....) and find it a pain only being able to access one transmission source. What is really aggravating is that Winter Hill defaults to North Wales.......  There seems to be no way to reset a default by wiping everything clean and retuning manually.

[#14]

@TeeGee  If you still have your satellite dish... you may find you have better reception on FREESAT... google it, and see what you need... or you may be able to find a "satellite tuner" box, that you can tune yourself into various other European satellites

[#15]

I get a choice of London or Reading (high population density) - but a full choice probably depends on which way your aerial is pointing.