Re: Sunday Herald yesterday

Richard L wrote:
In message <4q9Zh.1976$u92.467@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Richard Evans <R.P.Evans.NoSpam@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Well it has now been about 10 years since I've actually been abroad, and even longer since I've been abroad with a SW radio. So if it has become more difficult in recent years then I wouldn't know about that. In the past however I've listened to the World service from Italy, to the south of Naples, and from the Costa Blanca in Spain. I generally found it 2 or 3 different frequencies, one of which was usually reasonably stable. If that is no longer the case then that is a shame, but as you say DRM could make it all a lot easier.

It's become much more difficult ever since BBCWS lost those classic
out-of-band frequencies. In places I've been to lately, you'd be lucky
to find three good frequencies now.

I've also had many holidays in the past in the South West of France, but I don't think I actually listened to the World Service there, as back then I could get Radio Luxemburg on MW instead :)

Along the Mediterranean coast, it used to be possible to get clear
reception all day, good enough for listening to the Proms in the
evening.

I presume you are not talking about Radio Luxemburg broadcasting the Proms. Radio 4 perhaps.


I can't quite remember whether or not I could get Radio Luxemburg in the South of France, but it does seem highly likley that the 1.3 MW signal would have carried that far. In fact in the South West of France I even used to manage to receive I favourate (at the time) Capital Radio on MW, and Radio 4 on LW was just about receivable.

Both of those (well, the FM version of R4, at any rate) are easily
receivable in the south of France using a 40cm dish. About Fabulous
208, the transmitter carried English only during the evenings; by day
it mostly carried RTL in German, ISTR. My recollection is that they
used a directional antenna for the UK service (you could hear the
signal strength leap up at 7pm), so you might not have heard much of
it in SW France despite the power.

Well I only used to listen in the evenings. During the daytime I would be on the Beach :).

If the TX was directional in the evenings, it still didn't stop the signal being very usable in South Wast France (On the coast west of Bordeaux). In fact trying to remember that far back I think it did also reach the South of France, but I'm not certain.

No reception at all however on the Cost Blanca in Spain however. Perhaps that was one skip to many for a good signal to get through.


So I take my LiDL plastic dish, if I can
-- speaking of which, my mini-Dreambox DM600 arrived today :-)))
Does the Dreambox only receive Satellite or is there a Freeview version?

The more recent models can accept plug-in tuners (in the twin-tuner
models, you can mix satellite/terrestrial/cable tuners) and indeed I
bought a DVB-T tuner for my new DM600 to experiment with. Haven't got
around to trying it yet, because I can see it's going to be a bit
fiddly to insert -- there's not much space in there. But while it will
provide full access to the Freeview transport streams, it isn't going
to support the 'digital teletext' and red-button services that you get
with a Freeview box. If you want those, a better solution might be the
Topfield PVR, http://www.toppy.org.uk/

Well since I have a couple of weeks off work, I'll probably get around to having a look at this. However it still seems to be essentially a satellite receiver with an add on to accept input from other devices, rather than a device designed for Freeview. So I suspect that that would end up being a rather expensive way to get Freeview on my LAN.

I would at least be worth a look though. For me the ideal system would probably be something that works in a similar way to the Dreambox, but receiving from T-DVB rather than from Satellite.


Thinking loner term, it could be a great idea to be able to store and transport digital TV from Freeview via my local network. It ought to be possible to feed every TV digitally via Cat5 rather than by analogue via an aerial lead, but so far I can't see any signs of such a system being developed. Perhaps it will happen some day.

Well, I can watch TV from my Dreambox on any computer connected to the
network, in high quality, using VLC. For example, yesterday I had it
networked via a Wi-Fi travel router to a laptop PC. And I've an idea
that some of those multimeeja home entertainment client boxes have
SCART or s-video ports for feeding a TV direct, so you could do it
right now.

That might be the sort of thing that would interest me. Some device (preferably small) such that I can plug in a Cat5 cable, plug the other end into a TV and watch digital TV via my network.


It doesn't appear to be possible to stream TV direct from the Topfield
box, but there's a recipe on the above site for networking it, which
would enable you to access recordings on it from another computer.

Sounds like quite a bit of reading to do, hopefully I get around to in over the next few days.


Richard E.
.

Quantcast