Cant get freeview, whats likely the issue?

MaxP779

MaxP779

MaxP779

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Glasgow
Just got a freeview HD box, never had TV in this house before but I thought it would be good to have.

Anyways connected it all up and it cant find any channels, its a DTR5520, I updated it to the latest firmware. Tells me the signal strength is zero :( Is it the aeriel? What do I do?

Notable things:
- Previous owner used cable TV
- I have no idea how long ago the aeriel and accompanying female coaxial ports on the wall were actually used, the cable TV ports and box are completely separate I gather? The cable box has been there a long time, says "NTL" on it.
 
Is the aerial connected, pointing the right direction, coaxial ports on the wall actually wired to aerial.

Got a loft, could always put a new aerial up there.

Even if aerial is out of alignment, you should get something.
 
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Interesting development!

The coaxial port upstairs works! So that's good. Means the box is definitely working and the aeriel is working too, its just the port downstairs in the living room that's not working for some reason. Could be broken or disabled somehow? Is this something I could have a bash at or should I call someone in?
 
DIY job, just remove coax face plate & have a look, cable is usually in conduit, so it's eay enough to pull down/ up a new cable.

If conduit runs from loft down to living room, just use a nut or two tied to a length of string lower down, then tie coax cable to it, & carefully pull it up.

Do the aerial cable run up to the loft, you need a spiltter, or amplifer to split the signal from aerial to the coax outlets, unless you have a real strong signal.
 
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Could be power. When we moved into our new house had the same issue. Upstairs very weak downstairs nothing. Turned out we needed to add a power box for the masthead amplifier. We just matched it to our aerial and got this one

Plugged it in at one of the tv points and everywhere works great now.
 
Nightglow said:
DIY job, just remove coax face plate & have a look, cable is usually in conduit, so it's eay enough to pull down/ up a new cable.

If conduit runs from loft down to living room, just use a nut or two tied to a length of string lower down, then tie coax cable to it, & carefully pull it up.

Do the aerial cable run up to the loft, you need a spiltter, or amplifer to split the signal from aerial to the coax outlets, unless you have a real strong signal.
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Ive had a look behind the face plate and theres a brown cable there, looks fine, I had a look behind the outlet that actually works and its the same deal. I switched the plates in the small chance that was the issue but no dice.

I conclude the cable to the living room is disconnected somewhere, possibly the loft as theres been quite a few people up there, installing insulation, disconnecting cold water tank etc. This is a small 2 bed semi near Glasgow so I doubt its just a bad signal right? I mean the signal meter on the freeview box shows absolutely nothing at all, not even a weak signal.

Im gonna have a look in the loft and see if I can see anything relevant, im hoping I find a cable lying on the insulation and an empty socket for it somewhere, please be that easy! :D Is there any way it could be disconnected externally, as in outside the house? I have no ladders to check unfortunately :(
 
Unless you find a cable lying unattached in the loft, a bad co-ax connection would be my guess.

Check both connections are made in line with this:

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This happened to me recently and the braiding was touching the core, meaning no signal.
 
Nope.

Coax would usually run in conduit from ground floor room to attic on inside wall of house.

Easy enough to fix a new aerial in the attic from one of the rafters, & drop a new coax down the conduit..
 
If all the cables are in order it could be an old analogue aerial instead of a digital compatible one installed. You say you haven't had tv before and the previous owners could have relied on sky or something so maybe it never got updated.
 
Bennie-Mac said:
If all the cables are in order it could be an old analogue aerial instead of a digital compatible one installed. You say you haven't had tv before and the previous owners could have relied on sky or something so maybe it never got updated.
Click to expand...

You should still get a few channels, even on a old analogue aerial, you would never get the full channel selection.
 
Bennie-Mac said:
The analogue signal has been switched off since June 2011 for Glasgow so it wont receive anything.
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Nothing to do with analogue signal being switched off, some analogue aerials have sufficient gain to be able receive some of the digital transmissions signal.

But, to get all the channels, you will need a aerial relevant to your transmitter to receive all the freeview HD channels.
 
Ah didn't realise that, my sister got freeview a few months ago and could receive nothing through the old aerial, replaced it with my unused digital one and it worked perfectly. Must depend on the aerial I guess.
 
Depends on the aerial group, if you have a wideband aerial, you should get something, but some aerial aren't large enough or too old for a digital signal if they are group aerials.
 
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It's less of an issue now since analogue has gone and the digital power at the transmitters has been ramped up 10 or 100-fold. But yes you will get limited multiplexes if you don't have an aerial with the right gain in the right bits of spectrum.

It's easy to say 'analogue' or 'digital' aerial but the antenna doesn't care what it's picking up - it's still RF.

In 99% of cases a £15 Antiference log periodic aerial and a decent powered splitter is all that's required to get perfect TV reception.
 
But post #4 indicates that the OP tried an upstairs port and that actually worked? So why would he need to replace the aerial?

OP, I would try and find out where the cable from downstairs is going in the loft and see if it connected properly. It could well be that it's just become unplugged. If it is plugged into some sort of splitter (along with the upstairs working socket) then try switching the connections around and see if that affects what is working.
 
memyselfandi said:
But post #4 indicates that the OP tried an upstairs port and that actually worked? So why would he need to replace the aerial?

OP, I would try and find out where the cable from downstairs is going in the loft and see if it connected properly. It could well be that it's just become unplugged. If it is plugged into some sort of splitter (along with the upstairs working socket) then try switching the connections around and see if that affects what is working.
Click to expand...

In my last place I had two aerials in the attic, one for lounge, other one for bedroom.

Back to the problem, as I said in Post 2, are coaxial ports on the wall actually wired to aerial, we know the bedroom is, but the downstairs cable could have been on a splitter, or amplifier & simply disconnected from the aerial in attic.
 
You need to get in the loft and check - someone might have decided they wanted to send the RF out of their cable box back up from the lounge and into another room and disconnected them from their splitter in the loft and just connected them together.
 
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