Question
I’m in the Liverpool area and when I retune for Freeview, I get a lot of Welsh channels
Submitted online by Norman
Our Answer
Picking up TV channels from a second transmitter is not uncommon, and it’s only really a problem if that TV transmitter is from a different region. In your case, it sounds like your Freeview receiver is getting a stronger signal from a Welsh transmitter.
We did a quick postcode check, and ideally you should be getting your signal from the Winter Hill transmitter, but it looks like you’re getting a signal from Moel-y-Parc in North Wales.
In some cases, that could indicate that your TV aerial is not pointing at the correct transmitter. It could also be that your aerial isn’t “narrow” enough to get the desired signal, whilst rejecting the signal from the Welsh transmitter.
So, what’s the fix?
You may need to get some advice from a local aerial installer to get some suggestions for altering your aerial setup. There are some other things to try though.
Manual Tuning:
Most Freeview receivers allow you to tune manually. If yours does, you can set the channels yourself. Use the Wolfbane Website to find out which is your best transmitter, and find out what the channel numbers are.
Attenuate the signal:
The other option worth considering, is to try to “attenuate” your signal. This means reducing the amount of signal that gets into your receiver. Hopefully, by doing this, you will drop the amount of signal from all transmitters, and when you do a scan for Freeview channels, the receiver will only pick up the strongest. Assuming that’s the correct transmitter, you will ‘reject’ the weaker signals from the unwanted transmitter site.
TV Aerial Attenuator, for reducing signal
You can pick up a plug-in attenuator very cheaply: TV Aerial Attenuator at Maplin
The Crude Method:
This is one other workaround. You would need to find the channel number for the Welsh Freeview channels (using the Wolfbane Website). Each group of channels will have a number between 21 and 68.
When you get your Freeview receiver to do a scan for new channels, you should see the ‘Scanning in Progress’ bar go from 21 to 68, looking for new channels. Remove the TV aerial plug just as the Progress bar hits the offending channel number, wait, then plug the aerial back in.
Effectively, you’re fooling the Freeview receiver into not seeing a certain block of channels.