Any regular readers will know we always start with a short section on Rainbow Satellites lives and then go on to TV News. I have been racking my brain for some new/relevant TV news (and only have a small amount!) so this first section is going to be a little longer with a couple of personal things that have happened this month.
Firstly, for a few months I have had severe right knee pain – I can use the knee and it seems to function as it should. I walk 5km (uphill and down) every morning with the dogs (who for regular readers are all fine), climb ladders, walk over roofs and the knee works well. It is just this constant nagging pain that could keep me awake at night. As the knee worked well, I did not want to go down the replacement route and neither did I want to dose up on pain killers. Doing lots of research, acupuncture kept raising its head – I suppose I had no real opinion, but was probably a sceptic, but thought no harm could be done. I am now on a two week ‘rest’ break after 4 one hour treatments and I am pretty much pain free. I get the odd ‘twinge’ that I would have expected from a 73 year old knee, but not that constant nagging severe pain. Will it last? What will my acupuncturist say on Thursday? – Watch this space.
Secondly our electric contract came up for renewal – what a minefield as you all know. Our existing supplier had rewritten the contract half way through the term and substantially increased prices that were variable: what is the point of a contract we ask, though we expect had they not increased the prices they would then be one of the many failed power supply companies. Their new contract was really not acceptable – they could vary the unit prices at will depending on wholesale market prices. How can anyone plan? Eventually I found a lady working for herself as a ‘power broker’ who explained the situation in Spain and offered us several options. We were on the three period daily option and have plumped for a company offering a single rate for the three periods – 19.9c per KWH fixed for a year. This rate is less than our existing suppliers ‘cheap’ rate and we don’t have to think of time of day or day of the week – dishwasher full – start it up. We can plan our fuel expense.
We just hope having reeled us in that they don’t change the contract midterm! Each individual household will have different requirements, but the advice given is tailored to the individual situation.
TV NEWS – (well a little!)
The majority of phone calls coming in are about lost channels on satellite systems. This happens every year as the satellite signals go into their summer strengths which are vastly reduced. There is, simply, no magic answer – it’s the signals reduced, not the dish or satellite moved as many seem to think! We can check that an individual dish is doing all it can, but those of you on the smaller dishes are going to lose some channels and even the bigger dishes may struggle on some of the weaker signals such as ITV1 regional channels and HD are some of the worst. However, most boxes will give a choice of ITV1 – thumb around you may find one that works and ITV1+1 is a stronger signal. The alternative is internet TV in its various forms.
Rainbow only get involved with purpose-made professional IPTV which does carry a subscription. We are certainly not the cheapest, but several factors make us amongst the best. Recently there was a server problem that closed down the majority of our main channels, but we have a ‘back-up’ system that uses different providers and servers – so when many systems were effectively shut down we kept a good selection of the main popular channels running. We have staff available weekends and holidays. We are certainly not perfect, but we are fixing any problem as soon as it happens. So often we hear of a system going down on a Friday afternoon and not fixed until Monday, with telephones ringing unanswered. For IPTV Rainbow are open 9am-9pm seven days per week. Call us for a free no-obligation demonstration and a free loan box for a week.
That’s it for July – another edition in August.
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