Freeview users

Are you weary of bad Freeview TV signal reception that comes and goes during periods of random atmospheric disturbance ??

It's not Free - and you can't View it ..?

Last updated 17:40 SEP 13th 2023

This page will help explain why your Freeview TV picture is being broken up at random - and why Freeview, the BBC and Ofcom cannot provide advice and a simple cure. And why you should ask for a refund of your TV licence fee.

It's necessarily nerdy in places, but science isn't always simple...

But the news that Ofcom auctioned off the spectrum required for Freeview for 5G cellular is not nerdy, it's technically short-sighted and financial expedient. The earlier 3G auctions are described in great detail.

But using the online players is not an adequate alternative

Since recording commercial TV programmes "off-air" means you can skip up to 20 mins of tedious adverts and credits per hour.

BBC iPlayer is ad-free, the others are not!

So there is no escape from tedious advertising with commercial players - if they work, and many do not, due to bugs in the way commercials are delivered and inserted in the programme streams at your set-top box or smart TV. But even when it works as it should, up to 25% of your precious leisure time is confiscated and then the broadcasters, sell it to advertisers.

An enhanced and enlightened approach to TV advertising called InCenTV proposes that you should get a share of the advert revenue for your time, to offset the imposition.

More details of IncenTV will emerge here in due course.

Here's what happens

...and why Freeview, Ofcom or the BBC cannot fix it...
>> an evolving story <<

The UK is in the spring "tropo ducting" season through February/March/April.
Yes, this is nerd stuff, but if you want to understand why your Freeview reception is broken, then there is no simple explanation. Which is probably why FreeView, YouView, Ofcom and the BBC don't want to take ownership of the problem that began when bad decisions were made around 2002 when Patricia Hewitt was the DTI minister responsible, and advice that the proposed UK Digital TV format would not be fit for purpose was "overlooked".
Useful extra insight by IPK here.
And here is an excellent primer from Wikipedia on Tropospheric Propagation

Sun Spots

It is additionally complicated in 2023 by the fact we are at the 11 year sunspot cycle maximum - which means the solar flux that creates the reflection layers within the ionosphere, is peaking.

Interference

Interference from the continent seems to have increased in recent years as the digital TV broadcast bands have become more congested on both sides of the channel - but it's been absolutely diabolical for long periods recently.
So now when two signals want to occupy the same frequencies, there is no space and no way to separate them.

Looking for a fix

Yes, if you have wasted hours chasing around looking for a fix that will never come, you are entitled to be seriously annoyed to learn the truth! You might even be interested to join a legal class action being considered to get compensation for the time and money we have all wasted on equipment and antenna installations. (watch here for further info)

So are you facing a lost cause that will never be fixed?

There are some helpful suggestions at TV Answers, but they only confirm the intractable nature of the problems of digital Terrestrial Television (DTT). There are various resources around the web that monitor and report on radio propagation, notably G7IZU's brilliant site covering global propagation with tropo and Sporadic-E charts - a snapshot from which is above this block...

The red lines here indicate the paths that signals are using to reach well beyond the usual 30-40 mile range of VHF and UHF transmissions.

https://www.tvcomm.co.uk/g7izu/radio-propagation-maps/40-2/

Ofcom is generally unhelpful, and cannot wait to pass the buck. Some people there understand that bad choices by Ofcom have allowed this situation to arise. But no one wants to face the reality that DTT was always going to fail when too much spectrum was sold off for cellular operations.

We'll be publishing more information in due course - but we cannot defy the laws of physics and fix it. So the DTT broadcast services of Freeview and YouView have fundamental limitations, and we can't see any long term workarounds and alternatives. You may get some improvement by repositioning the antenna - but that might only be temporary, and you should not have to pay since the government made many billions from TV spectrum sales - and can afford to compensate victims.

Register your interest in learning more on the contact form here, or on our twitter timeline @freeviewing