A pixelating, freezing or breaking-up picture almost always comes down to one thing: the signal arriving at your TV has gone wrong somewhere between the aerial and the screen. The good news — most causes are quick to diagnose. Here's the order an engineer actually works through.
1. A storm-damaged or rotated aerial
High winds in Stockport will twist an aerial off-axis or knock the rods out of true. If the picture started after bad weather, that's the first thing to check. A visual inspection from the ground will often spot it — the aerial points away from Winter Hill instead of broadly south-west.
2. A dead amplifier or power supply
If you've got a powered amp in the loft or a splitter with a PSU, those fail. The TV shows "no signal" or pixelates on every channel. Unplug it for 60 seconds, plug it back in, retune. If it comes back, the amp's on its way out.
3. Water in the cable or connector
Aerial cable is supposed to be sealed. Older installs often aren't. Water tracks down the copper inner, corrodes the connector, and the signal collapses — usually worse in wet weather. Replacing the F-plug or the whole down-lead fixes it.
4. A retune issue after a transmitter change
Winter Hill changes channel allocations every now and then. If your picture broke up overnight on certain channels — particularly the HD ones — a full retune (not a "quick retune") will usually clear it. Menu → Settings → Channel scan → choose "First-time installation" to wipe and rescan.
5. Overload from too strong a signal
Counterintuitive but real. Too much signal can be as bad as too little — particularly in Cheadle and the lower-lying parts of Stockport. A 6dB attenuator on the back of the TV will often clear it.
When to call us out
If you've tried a full retune and an aerial reboot and you're still pixelating, it's almost certainly hardware — and worth getting a meter on it before you spend money on a guess. We carry a Promax spectrum analyser on the van and can tell you in five minutes whether it's the aerial, the cable or the TV.
Call 0161 399 1757 or send a quick clip on WhatsApp — sometimes we can diagnose it without coming out.
Free survey & quote, no callout charge. Most jobs same or next day.