Decoding a digital TV signal.......

[Manonabike]

Digital TV is here now and we have lost all terrestrial channels on two TV sets.

We live in a large house and the TV signals are sent through the house in a way that the Sky signal and terrestrial TV signal are all sent together through the house so that any room in the house can access Sky through the aerial point. We can still watch sky in all rooms but we lost all terrestrial channels on two old TVs. The TV's that are still working have freeview built in so they just needed a re-tune. I was thinking that I could decode the terrestrial signal before sending it around the house with a freeview decoder but my wife doesn't want any more boxes on the TV table so I just found a device that could work with the individual TV - Does anybody use this device or can anybody recommend a small freeview decoder?

Thanks in advance

 

[Rohloff_Brompton_Rider]

asda do em for less than £20 and they're small enough to hide behind the tv itself. i have few.

 

[Vapin' Joe]

Not all decoders are equal in my experience. How good the cheap ones are depends on the strength of your signal, we get ours via a relay rather than direct from the transmitter and budget decoders just don't do it.

 

[Night Train]

My folks have a decoder given free as they are pensioners.
The good thing is that the remote was programmable to work the tv too but the bad thing is that there is no way of seeing a tv guide to browse. Each channel has to be scrolled through, or selected by number, to see what is on that channel.
I guess that is why they were able to give them away to pensioners.

Most weeks my folks ask me what the channel numbers are and then write them in the tv guide that comes with the weekend papers.

 

[fossyant]

We found years ago that our terrestrial signal went crap as soon as digital was available. We bought a box when it came out, then got a freeview tv and never used terrestrial, only occasionally using the video as we had a HArd drive recorder.

We are in Granada and have direct sight of winter hill. The signal is too strong here as we also get welsh channels, and can be an arse tuning in sometimes.

 

[fossyant]

The scart adapters should be fine, but I've found the cheaper set top boxes not as good as the more expensive ones when you have the tv off a portable arial. Should be fine off a proper one.

 

[Manonabike]

Thanks for all the info. I will try with one scart adaptor firs and take it from there. Bes place to get them for?

 

[Manonabike]

asda do em for less than £20 and they're small enough to hide behind the tv itself. i have few.

The Goodmans freewiew for £19.99 from Asda looks good and it has very good reviews so I'll get one to check it one and if OK I'll get another one

Thanks for the tip.

 

[marinyork]

I was thinking that I could decode the terrestrial signal before sending it around the house with a freeview decoder but my wife doesn't want any more boxes on the TV table so I just found a device that could work with the individual TV - Does anybody use this device or can anybody recommend a small freeview decoder?

Thanks in advance

How do you propose to 'send it around the house' as you put it after it has been decoded?

 

[Manonabike]

Oh, well basically the TV signal is a loop that goes around the house. I have looked into this deeper and it would not work to my satisfaction - everybody would have to watch the same channel...... so I'm scrapping that idea. As for the Sky is another matter..... our house has quite a few rooms so it would be too expensive to pay sky multi room so we are more than happy with the arrangement we have at the moment..... one channel can be viewed at anytime around the house but at zero cost. I suppose you can achieve the same with video senders.

 

[Rezillo]

It's fairly straightforward with a Sky box but not so for Freeview.

One way is to take the aerial uhf output from the box up to your roofspace, or wherever, and combine it with the uhf aerial lead. This can then feed a distribution amp that in turn feeds a number of rooms. It's quite primitive, has no stereo sound, adequate but not great picture quality and only distributes the satellite channel being watched on the box at the time. However, if a distribution amp is already being used, it is very cheap and easy to do.

You have to use the sky box with no aerial lead connected to its uhf input, otherwise the uhf box output has not only the sky box output but also all the terrestrial frequencies that are fed into the box's uhf input from the terrestrial aerial. These are then effectively combined with themselves when combining the sky box uhf output and the uhf aerial lead to go into the distribution amp.

For a number of reasons, this is not a good idea. You might end up with some earth loop effects, even with the above arrangement. It is also a situation that is impossible to avoid with a Freeview box, which needs a uhf input to work. There are ways round it but Freeview boxes are so cheap that it's not worth the bother.

John

n.b there are much more effective means of distributing satellite signals around a house but they are a lot pricier.