Per l'ultimo 3 days I’ve had serious problems receiving Freeview. Until now I’ve had no problems, but as we’d had some very strong winds locally, I thought a likely candidate was the aerial being knocked off alignment. I carried out various other checks of cables, amplifiers etc. and couldn’t find any issues, and consequently decided to investigate issues with the aerial. I have a large high gain aerial spare, and as I’m currently in rented accommodation I decided to try my aerial in the attic space, rather than attempting to get onto the roof of the house. I lugged my aerial up, and thanks to a combination of aerialsandtv, google earth, e megalithia terrain was able to line up on the nearest major transmitter — Emley Moor. I connected the aerial directly to the TV carta nel mio TV server and used my laptop to check that everything was fixed. It wasn’t!After some cursing I decided to check the signal was strong enough — after all the roof could be impeding things. I retrieved a powered splitter with the intention of running a longer cable from it down to a TV which has a signal strength indicator built-in to the digital tuner. The next problem was a lack of socket — all 3 were in use! After some more cursing I checked what I had plugged in. The server couldn’t go, and neither could the network switch. tuttavia, il 3rd item could be temporarily unplugged. That third item is a Fonera Simpl which is connected into my network. By sharing my net connection with others, I can share theirs. Mainly this means I can use consumer BTOpenzone hotspots (but not the commercial ones though, don’t let BT mislead you!).
I unplugged the Fonera and connected up the powered splitter. Having done this I turned back, and noticed that the laptop was suddenly displaying a flawless stream! Problem solved, but how? The obvious test was to plug the Fonera back in, which I did. Freeview was once more a serious of coughs and hiccups. Così, the Fonera was breaking the TV reception. Now this is interesting because Freeview is broadcast in the licensed 400MHz — 700MHz range, whereas the Fonera is supposed to operate in the unlicensed 2.4GHz frequency range. I experimented with my normal wireless router but have been unable to get it to interfere with the TV signal at all, as expected. Così, the Fonera appears to have a serious fault. I will be RMAing it over the weekend. If you’re having Freeview reception issues make sure you check other devices are sources of interference — even if those other devices shouldn’t be operating anywhere near the Freeview frequencies. Cordless phones, microwaves, Bluetooth devices or various other household electronics could be at fault.
“Hi James I realise it has been a long while, but I just checked this on windows 11 (build 23H2)…”