analogue on panasonic

maddladd

Hi all my parents recently got a 32" lcd panasonic viera tv but cannot get rte1 and rte2 tuned onto it via rf aeriel. Have tv3 and tg4 and also satellite channels via freesat no problem. Rte channels appear on dtt but no picture just sound. Someone told me it could be a problem with vhf in tv which was bought in the north. Can this be rectified or will the set have to be returned ?
Thanks in advance LM

coylemj

1. Where are you located? Be reasonably specific without giving your exact address

2. Were you previously able to get RTE 1 & 2 off the aerial and if you do have an aerial, do you have one or two of them?

3. Is there a 'country' option on the TV setup menus and if there is, have you tried 'Ireland'?

maddladd

Based in Kilkenny had reception no problem on old tv but nothing on new one had a couple of aeriels on it but to no avail tv3 and tg4 fine though. If i were to change the country to a european one would that help (read somewhere here about that) at the moment its set to ireland.

John mac

is it scanning vhf?
does it have a vhf tuner ?

maddladd

It doesn't seem to have a vhf tuner as its not getting rte at all only tv3 on analogue which is uhf. I think i'll have to ring panasonic tomorrow and get their take on it hopefully can sort it over the phone or download some software or something.

John mac

have you got an old vcr ?

you can tune through that.

whats the model number?

TheDriver

my freesat pana doesn't do vhf, only uhf on analog. can you pick up some dtt maybe? Or else a vcr or dvd recorder
P.S. Pana won't care beacuse you have a UK model and they don't have to help you at all as we have seen from others when DTT went
P.P.S. Is it a freesat Pana as that was my presumption?

coylemj

maddladd wrote: »

Have tv3 and tg4 and also satellite channels via freesat no problem. Rte channels appear on dtt but no picture just sound.

What you appear to have is a TV with Freesat, Freeview (UK DTT) and a UHF tuner, in other words you have a decent UK telly - the DTT sound with no picture indicates that the TV supports MPEG-2 but not MPEG-4.

All things considered it would be expecting much for this unit to also come with a VHF tuner since it's obviously manufactured specifically for the UK.

Sorry but I think you'll need a set top box to pickup Irish DTT and as another poster pointed out the easiest way to get VHF channels will be to route the aerial though an old-fashioned VCR and get RTE1 and 2 via the SCART connection from the VCR. You should be able to pick up one of these no bother in a car boot sale or similar secondhand outlet.

TheDriver

the only thing is if it is a freesat TV, then it should pick up dtt no problem as like mine, it has a mpeg4 tuner chip decoder thingy which is originally meant for the hd Sat signal

John mac

DTT from Mullaghanish,

you may have to rescan,

I remember a thread around here about it ,some talk about it here.




,

coylemj

Mulliganish from Kilkenny - you have got to be kidding. Two words - Galtee Mountains.

winston_1

Panasonic make their TV's country specific. A UK Panasonic does not have VHF tuning or MPEG4 decoding for DTT.
You will get no help from them if you phone, all they will say is it's a UK model.

Return it and get something else. My suggestion is an LG with Freesat. These have VHF tuners and MPEG4 decoding. Learn from your mistake and avoid Panasonic especially if buying from NI.

winston_1

coylemj wrote: »

All things considered it would be expecting much for this unit to also come with a VHF tuner since it's obviously manufactured specifically for the UK.

Don't agree with that comment at all. We are all in the EU now and the majority of manufacturers make their TV's to work anywhere in the EU. Why are Panasonic so dammed awkward?

coylemj

winston_1 wrote: »

Don't agree with that comment at all. We are all in the EU now and the majority of manufacturers make their TV's to work anywhere in the EU.

Sounds great in theory but try telling that to the French who, to protect their manufacturers from the evils of free trade have their very own TV standard - SECAM.

winston_1 wrote: »

Why are Panasonic so dammed awkward?

Look at it from their perspective, if you were manufacturing TVs for a market of 60 million, would you bother including a VHF tuner in every TV you sell into that market just to cater for a few people (us lot) from a country of 4 million who drive to Newry to buy their TVs? That and the fact that the UK and Ireland use different standards for DTT means that Panasonic are well within their rights to leave out the VHF tuner in models destined for sale in the UK.

If the different countries can't agree on a common standard for TV transmission, it's hardly the fault of the TV manufacturers if they don't ship TVs that support every type of TV transmission. If Panasonic were to include a VHF tuner in their UK TVs it would mean that people in the UK would be paying for a component that none of them would ever use.

winston_1

coylemj wrote: »

Sounds great in theory but try telling that to the French who, to protect their manufacturers from the evils of free trade have their very own TV standard - SECAM.

.

I don't believe it is anything to do with protection. The French invented Secam before PAL and they are too proud to admit PAL is better. I was in Calais just before Xmas and all the sets there are PAL/Secam capable and MPEG4/2 capable, so no free trade problem there.

winston_1

coylemj wrote: »

Look at it from their perspective, if you were manufacturing TVs for a market of 60 million, would you bother including a VHF tuner in every TV you sell into that market just to cater for a few people (us lot) from a country of 4 million who drive to Newry to buy their TVs? That and the fact that the UK and Ireland use different standards for DTT means that Panasonic are well within their rights to leave out the VHF tuner in models destined for sale in the UK.

.

In a word YES.

Before I retired one of the jobs I frequently did was to modify UK TV's to VHF/UHF working. This was to enable them to work on a large distribution system in a place in London which distributed 65 channels using VHF and UHF. Interestingly dual band tuners were cheaper as a spare part than UHF only tuners, probably due to the economics of supply and demand. I believe it would be cheaper for Panasonic to manufacture one model for the whole of Europe, which other manufacturers seem to have now realised. The real reason they don't is to protect their official agents in various countries from grey imports from cheaper countries, or as you so rightly put it "the evils of free trade".

John mac

coylemj wrote: »

Mulliganish from Kilkenny - you have got to be kidding. Two words - Galtee Mountains.

ooops thought it was Killarney !!!:eek: didnt read it right. :P

coylemj

winston_1 wrote: »

The real reason they don't is to protect their official agents in various countries from grey imports from cheaper countries, or as you so rightly put it "the evils of free trade".

Agreed, the major driver for differentiation is to ring fence markets to kill off the grey market in unofficial imports. You can't do this with products like cameras or iPods but different TV standards across Europe facilitates market segmentation which allows manufacturers to set different prices in different countries.