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Freeview programme guide keeps disappearing
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Posted December 6, 2011 at 5:25PM
I've posted questions about several problems with our Freeview boxes, in the last couple of months. Mostly they appear to associated with the digital switchover which took place in our area (Tacolneston transmitter) on the 23rd November.
For the last three days neither of our Freeview boxes has been able to bring up the electronic programme guide. If you press the "Guide" button, you see the empty Guide screen for a second or two, then it disappears again. All channels appear to be normal, and can be watched by scrolling up or down with the P+ and P- buttons. But the lack of an EPG is a nuisance.
I've tried a full "first time installation" several times on both boxes, but this has made no difference.
The two boxes are different brands (both cheap). But they do have identical remote controls, which leads me to suspect that the innards may be the same, just packed into different badged boxes.
Has anyone else suffered this problem? Any ideas how to get the guide back, please?
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Posted December 8, 2011 at 12:38PM
Hmmm - that's an interesting thought, Woolwell.
My Freeview boxes both offer a choice of three EPGs: Teletext, Now & Next and 7-day. I can't believe a digibox would offer a programme guide that isn't digital, so perhaps Teletext have a digital programme guide as well as an analogue "Ceefax" service.
Just speculating.
The Teletext programme guide worked fine for a couple of weeks after analogue switch-off, and still works intermittently - usually just once, after I've done a programme guide update, before it collapses again.
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Posted December 8, 2011 at 1:37PM
Just checked my 2 stand-alone freeview boxes and neither has the option to configure which epg.
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Posted December 8, 2011 at 2:11PM
That's a surprise. My two boxes are both very cheap, bottom-of-the-range models!
Have you looked in Menu > Configuration? This gives me a list of various things like the choice of language, choice of picture shape, choice of programme guide, etc.
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Posted December 8, 2011 at 2:31PM
My SEG allows choice of 7 day or Now/Next only.
DION does not allow choice at all. Fixed on Weekly.
Both cheapies 4 and 2 yrs old I think.
I have had several other boxes over the years. Never seen a Teletext option for EPG.
Oh well. You're fixed anyway.
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Posted December 8, 2011 at 3:06PM
Sometimes I miss analogue, despite all the extra channels we have now - no random skipping in picture/audio or disappearing menus when the weather was very poor :( Id rather have a hazy watchable image, than a digital one with great picture and sound thats constantly skipping. I might be wrong about the the menus, but I dont recall teletext content disappearing on days of bad weather. Today has definately not been great regarding the weather here so I dont expect the television to be at its best, but I dont watch anywhere near the same amount of tv using freeview that I did when there was a mere 4 or 5 channels! Odd that. Im not sure what that tells you about the quality of todays content, lol. Along with all the casino/bingo/cash your gold ads, perhaps theres too much money grabbing content hogging all the space, whether reality tv or money making vote-in 'karaoke with mr cowell' shows. I hardly bother with it at all now.. or it could just be that 'go compare' advert forcing me to switch the tv off :)
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Posted December 8, 2011 at 4:02PM
theDarkness
Your just getting older
and becoming more discerning with age :0)
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Posted December 8, 2011 at 4:21PM
theDarkness wrote:
"sound thats constantly skipping"
Perverse though it may seem, I'm glad to hear that someone else suffers this problem, too! I thought it was just us, and I've asked so many questions about Freeview problems on this forum that I was too embarrassed to add this one, too!
One of our Freeview boxes is particularly prone to this problem. Sometimes the sound will disappear for two or three seconds; sometimes it just disappears completely, and will only return if I change channels and then change back again to what I was previously watching. And sometimes it will return a couple of seconds out of sync with vision.
Oh, for the days of 405-line black-and-white! When the picture started skewing or rolling you could fix it by giving the TV a good bash!
I think the phrase is "impact engineering"!
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Posted December 8, 2011 at 4:53PM
I'm still of a mind you have reception problems, in spite of you saying no.
Never get embarrassed about asking questions tho'.
Took me months to track down my dodgy bit of coax in the cavity when we went digital.
All fixed but live in a dip so always borderline.
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Posted December 8, 2011 at 6:12PM
Thanks for that RoL. In that case I will append this question:
If you have your antenna coax running into a two-way splitter, feeding two 'boxes', with one of the boxes on standby and the other one on, is the 'on' box getting the full signal from the antenna, or is the standby box still soaking up some of it?
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Posted December 8, 2011 at 7:19PM
The signal is split regardless of the state of the boxes which are connected.
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