Excellent lunch with Dom + Nathalie, which the men did to help the very-pregnant and not-at-all-preganant-but-still-feeling-woozy wives.Whislt there we played around with TVs, leads and their Toppy, to confirm the diagnosis that our Toppy is working OK, it's just that the TV signal strength we get at home is very poor, and so we can't reliably get some channels. Looking at ukfree.tv shows that some of the multiplexes on the Ridge Hill transmitter are weak anyway in Cheltenham, and it's those that carry the More4, Five, and Five US channels which have the shows we most like to watch.
We got excited for a minute when we saw that the transmitter was getting upgraded from 2,000W to 15,000W on October 31st -- until we realised this wasn't 2007, but 2011, which is when the digital switchover happens round here. At that point all the analogue frequencies become clear and the digital multiplexes can move into them, which are currently broadcast at much higher power. We must be about the last in the country to get this switchover.So either we hike our aerial up another 30ft, like some big houses around us, or we have to get cable (not available down our street) or a satellite-based system from Sky. But then we'd need to change the Toppy, as you need a different one to 'understand' the Sky signals. Or just go for a Sky+ box I suppose. More investigation needed.