From Newsgroup: uk.tech.digital-tv

On Thu, 04 Sep 2025 13:01:16 +0100, Roderick Stewart <rjfs@escapetime.myzen.co.uk> wrote:

I've been using nothing but online TV viewing for a couple of years
and have no issues with it.

Well bully for you.

They could switch the transmitters off tomorrow and it would make no difference to me.

It's a good job it's not all about "Lord Rod" then isn't it.

I still have a couple of Freeview boxes but I doubt
if I'll ever switch them on again.

It's not like you not to have flogged stuff you don't use any more and
bragged about doing so.
Though quite how much you'd make on such items is open to question.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.digital-tv

On Sun, 07 Sep 2025 08:04:31 +0100, Roderick Stewart <rjfs@escapetime.myzen.co.uk> wrote:

I've never had a power cut in 30 years,

Really? I find that very hard to believe.

and the longest (out of no more than 2 or 3) internet outage was about
an hour.

Well aren't you just the lucky one all the time, eh?
Other people aren't so fortunate.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.digital-tv

I've never had a power cut in 30 years,

Really? I find that very hard to believe.

The power is mostly very reliable in cities with buried cables, barring the odd transformer fire and aging distribution equipment.

We had two power cuts this year, both deliberate and notified, to fix a local problem in a street cabinet, did not effect the main road or broadband.

Before that, I recall only a couple of cuts since the 1987 storm.

Angus

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.digital-tv

Angus Robertson - Magenta Systems Ltd <angus@magsys.co.uk> wrote:

We had two power cuts this year, both deliberate and notified, to fix a local problem in a street cabinet, did not effect the main road or broadband.

Well it would be very clever for a power cut to create a road or a
broadband system. (effect != affect)
--
Chris Green
-+
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.digital-tv

In article <memo.20251002192537.5368A@magsys.adsl.magsys.co.uk>, Angus Robertson - Magenta Systems Ltd <angus@magsys.co.uk> wrote:

I've never had a power cut in 30 years,

Really? I find that very hard to believe.

The power is mostly very reliable in cities with buried cables, barring
the odd transformer fire and aging distribution equipment.

We had two power cuts this year, both deliberate and notified, to fix a
local problem in a street cabinet, did not effect the main road or
broadband.

Before that, I recall only a couple of cuts since the 1987 storm.

Angus

we are fed locally by an underground cable. A neighbour had a tree removed
to widen his driveway to access a new house. Unfortunately, in removing the roots, the supply cable was ripped out. This happened in the middle of the
day. At about 1am the next morning a generator was parked in our drive and
we lived with that for 4 days while the road was dug up and new cable installed. 5 houses affected and 4 generators. I don't think the builder's insuance co was very happy.
--
from KT24 in Surrey, England - sent from my RISC OS 4to#
"I'd rather die of exhaustion than die of boredom" Thomas Carlyle
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.digital-tv

On Thu, 2 Oct 2025 19:25 +0100 (BST), Angus Robertson - Magenta Systems Ltd <angus@magsys.co.uk> wrote:

I've never had a power cut in 30 years,

Really? I find that very hard to believe.

The power is mostly very reliable in cities with buried cables, barring the odd
transformer fire and aging distribution equipment.

I'm less than 10 miles from the centre of one of the UK's large cities, and it's all underground cables here.
We've had four outages in the month of September and the weather has been very benign recently. Three were very short glitches which upset a few things and caused my UPS to go to battery.
The fourth was nearly 12 minutes according to my monitoring logs.

There was a sizable outage in the centre of the same city a few weeks ago
which took out 1600+ properties and a broadcasting organisation.
That has had several notable mains failures in the last 35 years - I was
there for most of them.

Around 2007/8, there was an intermittent problem on the cable buried under part of my property, feeding a large proportion of the street, which caused lots of hassle. It eventually failed catastrophically. It took them about 8 hours to fix
it, well into the middle of the night, and a couple of weeks to clear up the mess.
(The only good thing about that was they removed some nasty pyracantha hedging which I didn't want, to get to the cable, and paid me compensation for the damage
as well.)

Just because it doesn't happen to you doesn't mean it doesn't happen to
others.
Rod would do well to learn that before he shuffles off...
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.digital-tv

On 02/10/2025 07:25 pm, Angus Robertson - Magenta Systems Ltd wrote:

I've never had a power cut in 30 years,

Really? I find that very hard to believe.

The power is mostly very reliable in cities with buried cables, barring the odd
transformer fire and aging distribution equipment.

We had two power cuts this year, both deliberate and notified, to fix a local problem in a street cabinet, did not effect the main road or broadband.

Before that, I recall only a couple of cuts since the 1987 storm.

As a kid in Liverpool, I don't remember any power cuts that were not
caused by our own actions (eg, blowing the main house fuse, not that it
took much to do that and it was easily fixed).

In the early 1970s, there were a number of industrial disputes that did
cause power cuts (nationwide, from time to time), but we lived more or
less adjacent to a large teaching hospital and never suffered a cut (presumably being protected with the hospital as a matter of policy).

I experienced power cuts when resident in London for a couple of years 1971-1973, but overall, I'd say I led a pretty charmed life in that
regard (yes, the 1987 caused a cut of a few hours) - until we moved to
the village where we've lived since the late 80s. Between around 1988
and 1997, power cuts were pretty regular and bloody depressing, with the
power often off for 24 hours or more. Luckily, we had a gas fire as well
as central heating. Although the heating wouldn't work without
electricity, the gas fire did, so we could at least heat that room.

Longer-term residents seemed to wear this inconvenience as though it
were a badge of honour and thought it not something worth asking the
suppliers to bother themselves fixing. Perhaps they were thinking back
to the 1930s and the days of DC power delivery.

Thinking back to my childhood, I saw it very differently and after
arriving home one December day at about 17:00 to find the village yet
again in darkness, I approached the local authority and the Chief Exec
wrote a stroppy letter to the supply company, pointing out that power
cuts due to inadequate supply chain were simply unacceptable. After
that, they did whatever they did and there were no more power cuts
except for one night when the police peremptorily got the supplier to
cut off the whole village because someone was supposed to be refusing to
come out of his house and was believed to have a firearm. I never heard
the outcome to that one, but power was restored after about four hours.
There have, though, been a small number of short interruptions of supply connected with engineering work on the line.


--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2