Weak tv signal strength through box, fine directly into tv

[JennyD76]

Hi there,

I am hoping some clever clogs can help this very perplexed you view box user before I lose my mind.

A brief outline, I use a communal aerial, the plate on the wall has two outlets. I have one going to my tv and the other to my box. My signal strength has always been unstable through my box but is fine through my tv alone. 
through the box my signal strength Is low, about 40-50% but usually watchable but it’s temperamental, today is is in a right old temper. Usually adding a signal booster sorts it, but for some strange reason the tv isn’t happy when I do this and it plays up despite not being connected to it at all. I lose several channels and all HD ones. So I blame the booster and buy new ones, I now have 4 so it’s not the booster at fault, I assume.

At this moment I have the booster back off so I can watch HD on my tv. I went on to YouView to watch a subscription channel, the signal strength on most channels is low and this part is really odd, if I stand up from my chair the signal goes completely, comes back if I sit down. I am losing my mind with this situation, it’s like I have a ghost!
I have had no end of bother, this is my second youview box in 6 months, this is also a new TV so the problem spans both. I can go months where all is calm and then all goes mad again. I had thought I’d fixed the issue when I removed old Sky cables  that were running near the box. Removing the cables instantly improved everything despite them not being connected to anything. I’ve had months of blissful and seamless TV viewing until now.

i hope someone can help, so many things are influencing my signal it’s hard to explain it clearly. I’m seriously considering leaving BT for a cable service just to save my sanity. 
Thank you in advance, 
Jenny

[SaltedCaramel]

Is there a reason why you can’t connect a booster for BT TV and just not plug an aerial in to your TV. You’ll be able to get all the channels you watch on your TV through the BT box. 

[JennyD76]

That is my usual set up but for some reason the signal became unstable yesterday and I had to retune both. The effect of the retune meant  I lost several channels on the tv. The only thing that returned them was removing the booster from the box. This is despite the booster not being connected to the tv at all. Last night I spent hours changing cables and changing boosters trying to fix things in the end I finished back where I started with a booster connected only to the box but when I had this set up I ended up with the bizarre situation where if I moved close to the box my signal dropped out only to return if I moved away again. I can’t get my head around why this could possibly happen. The only thing that I can think of is that I turned my heating on yesterday so the air would be drier, could this be a static electricity thing? Why does the you view box need a booster and the tv doesn’t? Why does every retune give different results even when I don’t change anything? It can be fine for an hour or two and then signals start coming and going. As I mentioned I had this situation all last winter and I had thought that removing the redundant sky cables had fixed things, certainly doing so had an instant effect.
I sound like a crazy person, the situation is driving me crazy. 

[SaltedCaramel]

The YouView box needs a stronger signal as it has the potential to record one Freeview channel while watching another. The higher atmospheric pressure over the summer may have meant that you were able to watch TV without a problem as it leads to radio wave signals travelling further. 

It sounds to me that you’ll need to speak to the company that manages your block of flats and tell them that there’s a problem with the aerial and that it needs someone to look at it as you’re unable to watch TV.

[JennyD76]

The company just replaced the aerial and all the wiring etc, I doubt they will come out again. I think I will have to move to cable, I can’t be dealing with this all the time. If I can’t move around my living room without the YouView box dropping signal then it’s not really performing as I need it to. I’m gutted as I find BT’s broadband is the best but I need a service that performs all year round not just the 4 or 5 months when the weather is ok. 
thanks for your help!

[TimCurtis · Accepted solution]

@JennyD76 

It's very strange that moving around the room affects the signal. This perhaps suggests that there's some interference that's affecting things.

Do you have any other electrical equipment that might be causing this?

Also it can happen that there can be interference between the cables that feed the TV & Youview box. You could try ensuring that all the cables - power , aerial & HDMI - are as far apart as possible.

In my case I had a poor quality ethernet cable running next to the aerial cable that caused terrible signal problems. Replacing the ethernet cable cured all those. I was losing the HD channels because of this - sound familiar?

[JennyD76]

My broadband box is miles away so I have a WiFi extender and Ethernet cable running next to everything else at the TV. That’s a good suggestion I have loads of Ethernet cables so I will swap one out. I called BT but the best they suggested was to factory reset and if that didn’t work a new box. I’ve been through that already about 6 months ago. I can’t leave BT until October next year so I need to solve this myself by the sound of things!

[JennyD76]

It worked!!! All channels have returned. I actually couldn’t be more grateful. I’m disabled and live alone in these lockdown times, the TV is my only company so fixing it means so much to me. I genuinely felt like I was losing my mind, the tv changing depending on my position in the room was maddening. I swear the poor engineer I was just chatting to thought I was making things up. So it was the old sky cable a few months ago and the Ethernet this time. Surely they can make boxes that are not so sensitive. Such a simple solution, thank you!

[TimCurtis]

@JennyD76 

So glad I've been of help.

Hopefully all will be ok from now on.