I heard about the recent Freeview upgrade and thought my Sony
Trinitron TV bought in 1998 and my Thomson set top box would go on
working together fine. It's only a secondary TV but useful. However,
around ten days ago the Thomson stopped working and I assumed that the
upgrade had finally filtered through to me. I bought a TVonics MDR200
as the Which report gave it as best buy for a basic box. Having tried
to set it up with the Sony, however, it doesn't work. I'm beginning
now to think that it wasn't the upgrade that was the problem. I can
use the Sony TV as analogue but not with a set top box. Is this
something I should just accept, or should I try another stb?

Check the simplest things first ...

Has anyone been fiddling in the menus of the TV?  I'm not acquainted
with that model, but perhaps an input option has been changed.

Presumably you are connecting the two via a SCART lead?  Check it has
no bent pins, is making a proper connection, etc.

If either STB has RF out via the aerial cable, tuning the TV to it
will tell you whether that STB is working or not (though of course
it's not the recommended way to connect them for best quality).  See
the Instruction Manuals involved for how to connect the boxes this
way.

Also, what else, that doesn't require DTT (Freeview), could you
temporarily connect to the input socket on the TV?  VCR?  DVDR?  If
you get the same problem with another non-DTT box, then that would
suggest the TV has developed a fault somewhere between the socket and
the display circuitry.

On Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:36:40 +0100, stardust@mmford.plus.com wrote:

> I heard about the recent Freeview upgrade and thought my Sony
> Trinitron TV bought in 1998 and my Thomson set top box would go on
> working together fine. It's only a secondary TV but useful. However,
> around ten days ago the Thomson stopped working and I assumed that the
> upgrade had finally filtered through to me. I bought a TVonics MDR200
> as the Which report gave it as best buy for a basic box. Having tried
> to set it up with the Sony, however, it doesn't work. I'm beginning
> now to think that it wasn't the upgrade that was the problem. I can
> use the Sony TV as analogue but not with a set top box. Is this
> something I should just accept, or should I try another stb?

How are you connecting the set top boxes?

Try them on another set.

Brian

-- 
Brian Gaff - briang1@blueyonder.co.uk
Note:- In order to reduce spam, any email without 'Brian Gaff'
in the display name may be lost.
Blind user, so no pictures please!
 wrote in message 
news:3opla494n30k70bjck886h5m038ilpqj3c@4ax.com...
>I heard about the recent Freeview upgrade and thought my Sony
> Trinitron TV bought in 1998 and my Thomson set top box would go on
> working together fine. It's only a secondary TV but useful. However,
> around ten days ago the Thomson stopped working and I assumed that the
> upgrade had finally filtered through to me. I bought a TVonics MDR200
> as the Which report gave it as best buy for a basic box. Having tried
> to set it up with the Sony, however, it doesn't work. I'm beginning
> now to think that it wasn't the upgrade that was the problem. I can
> use the Sony TV as analogue but not with a set top box. Is this
> something I should just accept, or should I try another stb?
>

Hmm, some years ago, I probably foolishly offered to sort out a problem 
which had occurred with a video. Turned out that one of the family pets had 
chewed the scart lead, and it had obviously been doing it for a while, and 
eventually it died.

Brian

-- 
Brian Gaff - briang1@blueyonder.co.uk
Note:- In order to reduce spam, any email without 'Brian Gaff'
in the display name may be lost.
Blind user, so no pictures please!
"Java Jive"  wrote in message 
news:qhqla4t7lt0cfg5kkfihsrspalaar1jfrt@4ax.com...
> Check the simplest things first ...
>
> Has anyone been fiddling in the menus of the TV?  I'm not acquainted
> with that model, but perhaps an input option has been changed.
>
> Presumably you are connecting the two via a SCART lead?  Check it has
> no bent pins, is making a proper connection, etc.
>
> If either STB has RF out via the aerial cable, tuning the TV to it
> will tell you whether that STB is working or not (though of course
> it's not the recommended way to connect them for best quality).  See
> the Instruction Manuals involved for how to connect the boxes this
> way.
>
> Also, what else, that doesn't require DTT (Freeview), could you
> temporarily connect to the input socket on the TV?  VCR?  DVDR?  If
> you get the same problem with another non-DTT box, then that would
> suggest the TV has developed a fault somewhere between the socket and
> the display circuitry.
>
> On Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:36:40 +0100, stardust@mmford.plus.com wrote:
>
>> I heard about the recent Freeview upgrade and thought my Sony
>> Trinitron TV bought in 1998 and my Thomson set top box would go on
>> working together fine. It's only a secondary TV but useful. However,
>> around ten days ago the Thomson stopped working and I assumed that the
>> upgrade had finally filtered through to me. I bought a TVonics MDR200
>> as the Which report gave it as best buy for a basic box. Having tried
>> to set it up with the Sony, however, it doesn't work. I'm beginning
>> now to think that it wasn't the upgrade that was the problem. I can
>> use the Sony TV as analogue but not with a set top box. Is this
>> something I should just accept, or should I try another stb?

In article , 
Stardust@mmford.plus.com wrote:
> I heard about the recent Freeview upgrade and thought my Sony
> Trinitron TV bought in 1998 and my Thomson set top box would go on
> working together fine. It's only a secondary TV but useful. However,
> around ten days ago the Thomson stopped working and I assumed that the
> upgrade had finally filtered through to me. I bought a TVonics MDR200
> as the Which report gave it as best buy for a basic box. Having tried
> to set it up with the Sony, however, it doesn't work. I'm beginning
> now to think that it wasn't the upgrade that was the problem. I can
> use the Sony TV as analogue but not with a set top box. Is this
> something I should just accept, or should I try another stb?

What exactly do you mean by "doesn't work"? Have you established a video 
signal from the box to the TV and can see the setup menus but no 
programmes, or have you been unable to see anything at all from the box?

I have a TVonics MDR200 and it works just fine from Winter Hill, which I 
understand has had the "upgrade", so it won't be that.

If you are connecting the box to the TV using a SCART cable, have you 
checked that you have the correct input selected on the TV? Have you 
tried setting it to both composite and RGB in case it can only handle 
one type of signal?

You say this is a secondary TV - does this mean it is in a different 
room from the main one? Does it use a different aerial feed? If so, have 
you checked this aerial feed by plugging it into the aerial socket on 
the TV to see if you get good analogue reception? If this aerial feed is 
defective, does it come from the same aerial as the main TV through a 
splitter or amplifier, or is it from a completely separate aerial? If 
the latter, go outside and have a look at the roof.

"Doesn't work" doesn't mean very much. You have to eliminate 
possibilities one by one till there's only one left.

Rod.
-- 
Virtual Access V6.3 free usenet/email software from 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtual-access/

Brian Gaff wrote:
> Hmm, some years ago, I probably foolishly offered to sort out a
> problem which had occurred with a video. Turned out that one of the
> family pets had chewed the scart lead, and it had obviously been
> doing it for a while, and eventually it died.

The scart lead or the pet?

(kim)

I never checked on the pet after I found the problem. If it had chosen the 
mains lead instead of the scart, then I doubt the pet would still have been 
around. It was a dog as it happens, a spaniel thing with ears that swept the 
floor.

Obviously a comment on the  content viewed in that house.

Brian

-- 
Brian Gaff - briang1@blueyonder.co.uk
Note:- In order to reduce spam, any email without 'Brian Gaff'
in the display name may be lost.
Blind user, so no pictures please!
"kim"  wrote in message 
news:sNOdnXqON7ymljbVnZ2dnUVZ8qPinZ2d@giganews.com...
> Brian Gaff wrote:
>> Hmm, some years ago, I probably foolishly offered to sort out a
>> problem which had occurred with a video. Turned out that one of the
>> family pets had chewed the scart lead, and it had obviously been
>> doing it for a while, and eventually it died.
>
> The scart lead or the pet?
>
> (kim)
>

In message _tCqk.45077$E41.31558@text.news.virginmedia.com,
Brian Gaff  Proclaimed from the tallest tower:

> Hmm, some years ago, I probably foolishly offered to sort out a
> problem which had occurred with a video. Turned out that one of the
> family pets had chewed the scart lead, and it had obviously been
> doing it for a while, and eventually it died.
>
> Brian

What died? The video or the pet??

Ah!  Now that takes me back ...

In my former career as a 'General Farm Worker', which title bears
about the same relation to 'dogsbody & yokel' as 'vehicle operative'
does to 'car mechanic', I worked on a farm that had a particular
problem with rats and mice.

There were some farm cats, but I think their endeavours were swamped.
A cat can only eat so much ...

There was an old fashioned L-shaped barn where grain was stored on the
floor in one wing, and conveyed via a system of augers into the other
wing where there was a milling system to provide home-grown feed for
the intensive pig unit.

Leave a pile of feed bags on the floor for a week, when you next came
to move it tens of mice would scamper away.  After all, paper and
hessian feed bags are prime nesting material.

There were always mice in a dressing machine used to 'clean' oats
before they went into the feed.  I could guarantee that when I first
arrived in the morning that if I approached sufficiently quietly I
could kill a few just by karate chopping the hessian sack attached to
the output shoot for the 'gleanings'.

The rats were just as bad, they too were everywhere.  Once I did my
karate chop trick, and opened up the sack to find I'd killed a rat
with (almost) my bare hands.

One day the hammer mill for the grain broke (worked like one of those
coffee mills that smash into the beans rather than grind it).  Muggins
here takes it to bits, to find bits of rat congealed on the blades.
Sorry, did I put you off your meal?  Don't forget that pigs ate the
result and humans ate the pigs.

But what particularly prompted this outburst of misty-eyed nostalgia
(not) was that the rats just loooooved the insulation of electrical
cables.

They'd got into the habit of chewing the electric cabling of the
circuit used to drive the fan for a couple of weeks every year to dry
the grain after harvest.

The year I was there, I had to crawl into the tunnel to sweep out all
the cobwebs, dust, and ratshit, and repair all the wiring in time for
harvest.  Unintentionally, I left the circuit live.  There were two
dead rats in the tunnel next morning!

On Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:04:46 +0100, "kim"  wrote:
> 
> Brian Gaff wrote:
> > 
> > eventually it died.
> 
> The scart lead or the pet?

Java Jive wrote:
> Ah!  Now that takes me back ...
> 

Some years ago I was asked to investigate an intermittent 'Network' 
fault on a CATV system.

Now, I was always suspicious of alleged 'Network' faults that only 
affected one customer - usually with good reason! (Network 
responsibility ended at the roadside cabinet.)

This was also the case here but, having tracked down the problem, I 
could fully understand why the service techs had given up!

The complaint was of intermittent patterning and channel changing but, 
of course, when I checked on the customer just after lunch, everything 
was perfect.

A little bit of history will help understanding of the rest of this post:

This particular CATV network used the Switched Star sysyem which HMG 
wanted to be used by all cable operators in the UK; the period of early 
licences was about 50% longer for Switched Star than for Broadband 
systems. Unfortunately, the technology was new and troublesome, which 
did little to promote CATV in the early years.

The trunk network of a Switched Star system is identical to a Broadband 
system - the difference is how the subscriber is connected.

With a broadband network, the entire RF spectrum is fed to a Set Top Box 
in the subs premises. With a Switched star Network, all the intelligence 
is in the street and only the channel requested by the customer is fed 
to the home on a single frequency (two, if a dedicated VCR feed is 
required.) Depending on vendor, frequencies of 40 & 56MHz or 64 & 72MHz 
were used. One advantage is that drop cable lengths can be much greater 
than where signals up to 750MHz are fed to the home (Cable attenuation 
more than trebles between 64 & 750MHz). One beauty of the system is that 
no scrambling is required - if the customer doesn't subscribe to a 
channel it is blocked at the switching point, thus there is no 
possibility of signal theft using a hacked STB.

The STB is a simple device comprising a simple upconvertor to UHF and 
electronics to transmit channel selection data back to the roadside 
cabinet (at between 6 & 11MHz, typically.)

Now back to the story:

I parked next to the cabinet and set up a Honda genny under my van, with 
a VHF TV inside and inserted a 20dB directional coupler into the sub's 
drop cable to monitor the feed directly. The sub watched tennis and I 
read a book, while keeping  an eye on the TV via the rear view mirror - 
positioning the TV in the back of the van facing forward served the dual 
pupose of keeping the sun off the screen in fine weather and the rain 
off me when wet!

Time passed and the picture was perfect. Then suddenly, the tennis was 
reolaced by TV5. A few seconds later it was back to the tennis, then TV5 
again. The picture quality was perfect, however, on both channels, yet 
when I 'phoned the customer, she said it was awful at her end of the 
same cable! My monitoring activities were obviouly a waste of time 
(though I had absolved the network of responsibility) so I packed 
everything up and went back to the customer, on the 10th floor of a 
tower block.

The picture was indeed awful with severe RF patterning - yet I knew that 
the subs equipment had already been eliminated - I was puzzled! On a 
whim, I called Customer Services and asked how many customers we had in 
the block. Only two, it turned out, so I asked for details of the other 
one and went off down to 3rd floor where I found a french speaking arab 
women watching a cookery programme on TV5 - and the picture there wasn't 
up to much, either!

Intrigued, I phoned the lady upstairs and switched of the STB on the 3rd 
floor. Instantly, the picture upstairs improved - so what the hell was 
happening! (I'm sure some of you Sherlocks out there will have sussed it 
already!)

In fact, I found the cause by accident. When I got out of the lift on 
the ground floor, I turned the wrong way and ended up at the rear 
entrance. I did a U-turn and came face to face with the problem. Our 
duct emerged from the ground next to the doorway and the drop cables 
went through the wall into an internal riser. There should have been a 
cover between the duct and the entry point but, in this case, there wasn't.

I found myself looking at a chop bone wedged in the top of the duct and 
two drop cables stripped bare for about 15 - 20 cm. The only thing that 
had defeated the rats was the copper plated steel inner conductor (1mm 
dia. in RG6 cable). The 2 bare wires were only about 10mm apart and, as 
the cables carried different RF signals but both at 64MHz, that was the 
cause of the problem. There was even enough coupling of control signals 
back to the switch to randomly allow each STB to change channels on both 
subs line cards at the same time!

I eased a little slack out of the duct and bent both cables away from 
each other as far as possible - which produced a vast improvement - and 
arranged for an install crew to do a re-pull the following day and 
protect the new cables properly. (The adjacent bin chute obviously 
provided the rats with plenty of food.)

The UK CATV system uses Harmonically Related Channels - all analogue 
carriers are an exact multiple of 8MHz and locked to a comb generator. 
The means that all distortion products fall precisely on the carriers 
and alows amplifiers to run 3dB higher than would otherwise be possible 
using Incrementally Related Channels (like the broadcast channels) - a 
very useful benefit!

It always struck me as odd that the synthesiser in each of the sub's 
line cards (there could be up to 64 in each switch) all had their own 
crystal reference oscillator. One master oscillator would surely have 
cheaper? In this case, the LF beat between the two carriers completely 
obscured any clues that might otherwise have been present.

Terry

The message <_tCqk.45077$E41.31558@text.news.virginmedia.com>
from "Brian Gaff"  contains these words:

> Hmm, some years ago, I probably foolishly offered to sort out a problem 
> which had occurred with a video. Turned out that one of the family pets had 
> chewed the scart lead, and it had obviously been doing it for a while, and 
> eventually it died.

 Copper poisoning, maybe? OTOH, it might have been lead poisoning from
the lead foil screening layer in the cable (assuming it was an early
example of chinese manufacture).

-- 
Regards, John.

 Please remove the "ohggcyht" before replying.
The address has been munged to reject Spam-bots.

The message <NfPqk.45323$E41.25616@text.news.virginmedia.com>
from "Brian Gaff"  contains these words:

> I never checked on the pet after I found the problem. If it had chosen the 
> mains lead instead of the scart, then I doubt the pet would still have been 
> around. It was a dog as it happens, a spaniel thing with ears that
> swept the 
> floor.

> Obviously a comment on the  content viewed in that house.

> Brian

> -- 
> Brian Gaff - briang1@blueyonder.co.uk
> Note:- In order to reduce spam, any email without 'Brian Gaff'
> in the display name may be lost.
> Blind user, so no pictures please!
> "kim"  wrote in message 
> news:sNOdnXqON7ymljbVnZ2dnUVZ8qPinZ2d@giganews.com...
> > Brian Gaff wrote:
> >> Hmm, some years ago, I probably foolishly offered to sort out a
> >> problem which had occurred with a video. Turned out that one of the
> >> family pets had chewed the scart lead, and it had obviously been
> >> doing it for a while, and eventually it died.
> >
> > The scart lead or the pet?
> >

 That last sentence quite clearly, and unambiguosly, indicated it was
the pet that had died. However, the top posted response seems to
indicate otherwise. One has to assume that that last sentence was rather
carelessly constructed which nicely demonstrates the value of proof
reading your own missives.

-- 
Regards, John.

 Please remove the "ohggcyht" before replying.
The address has been munged to reject Spam-bots.