Poor TV signal

[Mazzman]

Hi all,

Asking for a friend.

My mate has a Sony Bravia 55" UHD TV. He has a BT Box with Yourview and a sports channel. His broadband signal is good and he has no trouble accessing the Internet, nor does he have any problems watching You Tube and other Internet based media.

However, he has intermittent problems when he watches any terrestrial TV channels via his BT box. The picture will often either pixellate badly to the point where he has no picture. When we check the signal quality via the Sony's inbuilt diagnostics, it comes up at only 40% and less. If we watch the same channels, but skipping the box and watching via the TV aerial directly, everything is fine. The aerial is newly installed and the signal strength is good.

Has anybody here had similar problems with the BT Box? Incidentally, this is the second box from BT, and now they are going to send another, which I feel won't fix his problem.


Thanks.

[zulu17]

Two  possible causes  are 

A) too strong  a signal 

B) cable interference  .. ie  aerial cable and HDMI cable in close vicinity  and the shielding not being  good enough .

[Mazzman]

Thanks for that. I will pass this on to my friend in due course and let you know the outcome.

Mazzman

[JonMace]

Change the box to ip rather than aerial 

[Crimliar]

Check the Ariel cables, there are bad ones out there.  Also such streaming can boxes have Ariel In and Out sockets, wiring up backwards can kill the signal strength!  *Don't rely on the male and female connections for getting the right cable to the right socket!

[Paul608085]

I don't have BT TV any more, but ISTR that there was a setting on the box to turn Aerial Loop Through on or off?

I know that when the box went in to the power saving deep sleep overnight, the aerial loop through got cut off.

[TimCurtis]

@Mazzman 

As mentioned a too strong a signal is a strong probability in which case a variable attenuator between the aerial and the Youview box input is required and the signal strength - monitored via the BT box - adjusted to ,say, 85% by the attenuator should resolve the problem.

If he checks the signal strength via the BT box he'll possibly find it fluctuates wildly as does the signal quality. The tuners on the BT boxes have always struggled with strong signals and whilst you'd think that showing a high signal strength of 95%+ was good it's not as it's overpowering the tuners. Most TV tuners are substantially better than those on the BT boxes.

[Mazzman]

Thanks for all the helpful replies guys.

I will let you know of the outcome at the first opportunity I get to look at my friends set up, as he won't do it himself......a technophobe! :)))))

[TimCurtis]

@Mazzman 

Just had a thought about this.

If you're measuring TV signal strength on the TV and that is low then it's possible that there's a setting in the Youview box causing the issue. By default I think that passthru for the aerial feed is off so you won't get a full strength signal being passed to the TV so that's worth checking first.