When you tune in our telly in the morning, the signal strength on everything is around 80%, and we get a full selection of channels. However in the evening, about 2/3 of them don’t work. Ok, so something atmospheric perhaps has weakened the signal.

But the signal strength isn’t just lower, it’s *zero*, the quality is zero and the error rate is fluctuating between low and high.

What the hell?

Similar happened to me. Turned out I was living next door to a giant metallic octopus. You should check.

It’s just above the threshold at which the amplifier gives up?

Dodgy HDMI lead giving you interference?

Only in the evening?

If I may add to this thread I have an issue as well. conventional rooftop aerial, flat screen led telly. Transmitter is visible about 20 miles away. I had a small aerial – the picture breaks up and pixellates now and then then recovers. Sometimes its once an hour, sometimes its once a minute. I tried putting a much bigger aerial in – no difference. replaced the cable and plug – no differnce. No octopuses on the roof! Its just the aerial plug into the telly using built in freeview

Only in the evening?

It’s only in the evening your next-door neighbour switches on *their* TV, with *their* dodgy HDMI lead!

OnP – not a bad idea, interference from next door.

tj – that’s normal digital noise, like ghosting or snow on an analogue telly. It’s squares because of how the picture is encoded and compressed. Your TV probably has a feature to check signal strength – if it’s samsung, hold down the info button for 5 seconds. Probably noise from something or just low signal.

molgrips – ta – but it seems odd as I can actually see the transmitter not too far away

Try a different transmitter direction?
Maybe it needs a retune after channel updates? My digibox always became flaky if it hadn’t been updated for new channels.

cbike – that for me? I have two choice of transmitter – one less than 20 miles away easily visible and one more like 30 miles away hidden behind hills. Everyone on this side of edinburgh uses the fife one and its been retuned.

the only thing I can think of is the line of sight is over the scottish office which has a big metal and glass roof maybe thats causing issues. I also have an aerial designed for low signal areas but did try one meant for high signal strength areas – made no difference

I’m presuming this is digital Freeview direct into the TV tuner and not a Settop box?

Is it a direct connection between the aerial itself and the TV with no amplifier or splitter in between, my only thought being maybe a faulty powered splitter or amplifier is present that maybe is not getting power in the evening because of some electrical mains problem in your property?

Ask your neighbours if they experience the same
Make sure that if you have duplicate channels you select the best for you, you might need to do this manually

I looked at this recently and there are 2 things at play – signal strength and signal quality. You can have a strong signal but of poor quality which will give a dodgy picture or good quality weak signal which would give the same.
If you live in a good signal area (quality and strength) it probably comes down to your aerial, cabling and connectors.
Good quality satellite type cable (RG6/CT100/WF100) and wall plates with shielded connections have transformed my picture – I have also made up any internal cable runs with good quality cable and screw on connectors as pre-made cables seemed to be a big source of signal loss due to the small copper cores that most use.
I also fitted a 4 way splitter and get great signal to 4 TVs now.
I was on the verge of getting a new aerial fitted but doing all that has saved me the work, and was a whole lot cheaper.

I’d blame Wiggle street lights. 😉