Anyone know about tv masthead amplifiers?

[swee'pea99]

The same on mine, though that entry is greyed out - probably because I don't have an aerial plugged in?

I found it, but mine is greyed out too. Click on it and I get 'This function isn't available'. But like I say, I did check the signal using the humax digibox, and got 100% for quality (which I believe is the important one). The strange thing is that I have upstairs and downstairs both running off the same signal, divided at the first floor using a little junction box thing, and the telly in the (ground floor) living room seems perfectly happy with the signal, but the PVR/telly in the bedroom upstairs can't seem to get enough juice to work properly. Like I say, it starts up, the picture and sound come on, then the picture just freezes.

 

[Fnaar]

Put your aerial on top of a very long stick, say, for example, 10-20 bamboo canes, sellotaped together (possibly Pritt stick).

 

[swee'pea99]

Put your aerial on top of a very long stick, say, for example, 10-20 bamboo canes, sellotaped together (possibly Pritt stick).

My daughter has a pack of blu-tack - would that do it?

 

[Fnaar]

My daughter has a pack of blu-tack - would that do it?

I reckon so... worth a try

 

[swee'pea99]

Sorted! And without blu-tack!

Ok, so I retested the signal strength upstairs and it looked like nothing (even tho' the 'power' light on the meter was bright). So I changed the battery in the meter and, hmmm, strong signal. So, why isn't it working? Tried the signal coming *out* of the PVR (with the aerial connected to the 'in'). Nothing. Hmmm. Tried an old PVR I had hanging around in the attic. Signal fine. So, all is now well, and I didn't even have to get out on the roof. It was never the masthead amp - that was fine throughout. It was the PVR. (Compounded by the meter battery.)

The moral of the story? The usual (with me): don't be a friggin' imbecile.

Thanks for all suggestions. Over & out.

 

[mjr]

Glad you got it working again!

As I hinted at though, it depends what side of the trough you are on! There are households round here that are very tight in against steep hillsides which block off the satellite signal. Some of them probably don't have line of sight to the local TV masts either!

It also depends where in the country you are. I lived on the north face of a steep hillside but could still get satellite signal if the dish was above 4m or so up because the target elevation in the south-west of England was still something like 25° above the horizon. The further north or west you go, the lower it drops: in Yorkshire, it's nearer 24°, but when you get up into northern Scotland, it's around 18°. www.dishpointer.com - also has a basic obstruction measurer.

 

[the_mikey]

Thanks for that. I tick most of those boxes - I even got a field strength meter when I was setting the thing up. I'll follow your advice and see how it goes with the 13, trying the 27 only if that doesn't work out. I had read about this overloading you can get with an over-meaty amp, but didn't actually manage to find out what this 'overloading' might look like. How would I know if I was overloading?

EDIT: This reply is redundant now the OP has found the cause of his problem, however I will leave this here as it could be useful:


In general overloading would occur if there's a strong signal appearing in the passband of the amplifier, at best the amplifier would reduce it's gain to accept the stronger signal or at worse it would just overdrive the amplifier and produce distorted signals, and the apparent effect would be a loss of TV service until the strong signal is removed from the input of the amplifier.

There are numerous possible causes, but one highly probable source of strong signals is a mobile phone or mobile phone mast now that some of the spectrum that used to be used for TV is now allocated to mobile telephones.