Some of you are probably wondering what's happening since we had the internet line speed doubled after switching to BT.
One of the main aims with this was to source almost all channels from freeview (aerial) as well as the current freesat (satellite) so when satellite channels break (bad weather) then you could switch to the backup.
The local freeview transmitter only carries approx 10 channels as it is a repeater mast, not a main one with all 70+ channels. To try and receive a signal from the main transmitter further away, I fitted a high gain aerial on top of a large pole in the garden but unfortunately it still won't pick up the main freeview transmitter. Very disappointing! I'm going to attach a second pole and try with the aerial 12 feet in the air but I don't have high hopes for this working much better.
Due to this annoyance I decided to spend more time looking at ways to restart a channel once the audio and video go badly out of sync (this is the main issue we face with channels breaking. It is always caused by bad weather or signal interference on a few troublesome channels (Blaze, Talking Pictures and a few more) but it can also happen on the most popular channels from time to time. I think I have managed successfully to have our software detect a broken channel much, much quicker (until now it could take 10, 20, even 60 minutes before a broken channel restarts).
So fingers crossed this will make channels restart very quickly once they break, so they wont be offline for very long.
However, as with everything since the start of this TV website project, every time we make a significant change in the hope of improving things, it opens up a whole load of new issues! So, we'll monitor it but it might need more tweaking in the future.
So if we have lots of spare internet bandwidth (speed) as we might not have duplicates of every channel, we can however add a lot of regional variations of the main channels.
We also have the off-site backup computer which carries 5 of the main channels but we are close to installing more hardware to take this up to 10 channels or so.
So yes progress is slow but is happening. Also we haven't yet built the new computer to add more channels, so bear with us. It will be weeks, not days, before we ad a lot of regional variations.
Any chance of S4C?
S4C: maybe if we have enough computing resources spare. We’ll see after other improvements have been made.
Are these the reasons you have stopped accepting new members?
New members: due to us not having an on-site payment system, I do not want to accept new members. Things are working OK for now and allowing randoms to join could jeopardise everything. If you know someone who wants to join then contact us to nominate them. or if it was you who opened a support ticket about that, please follow up on it.
What about the Goldbergs?
Like every day up to now at this time?
once again a big thank you for all that you do.
Do not understand all the bits and bobs just happy that it is all working and you do the best you can,
Thanks again
You literally saved me from going demented…………………….thank you for all your hard work, I for one greatly appreciate it…..you have achieved so much in such a short time through sheer determination. Well done!!
I so appreciate all work you undertake to keep ‘on the air’ and improve the quality of your broadcasting despite all setbacks.
Also, the fact that you update your members re. problems or changes is reassuring.
I’d be lost without the British TV Club !!
Keep up the good work.
I think you are doing an amazing job, establishing the issues you have, the expenditure and hoping to satisfy all the consumers. This past year I have experienced a lot of issues with channel stops, no file found, buffering etc but I am not going to make a single complaint because I know what you are working at in the background to improve the service for the long run.
So how many channels can you shove in? How much can you provide from Freeview, satellite etc? Surely there is a limit.
Folks should be content with the availability of the multitude of channels in my opinion. There will be a limit to the bandwidth you can provide, especially for a reliable service.
More poles in the back garden may help but for some it’s not enough!!!!
I am 61 now, I hope this continues for the next let’s say 30 years. I am German, but British tv club saves my day, thank you for that