Indoor TV aerials

[yello]

I need an indoor TV aerial. There's a great range of prices and I'd like to know what I should be looking for, what factors etc.

Signal strength here seems pretty good as I can pick up 4 or 5 of the maybe 20 odd digital terrestrial stations using just a length of aerial cable (but not aerial). Do you reckon a cheap one will function just as well as a more expensive one?

 

[ColinJ]

I am using a cheap indoor aerial and am getting very good results - maybe two or three short signal dropouts a day when large vehicles pass by. The aerial is located on a high bookshelf pointing out of a window and the local transmitter is almost line-of-sight about 750 metres away on a hillside.

I perfected the allignment of the aerial when we still had analogue TV here. I found that best results were obtained with it pointing slightly off the direct line to the mast - that reduced the strength of ghost images. Obviously, digital does not suffer from ghosting but reduction of stray signals helps reduce reception problems.

If I were you, I would try a cheap aerial and point it at the transmitter from a high position in or near a window. Experiment with exact positioning and allignment for best results.

NB TV signals are polarised so you may need to rotate the aerial through 90 degrees for it to work properly. The stand should permit that.

 

[yello]

Thanks Colin.

I know I'm going to have to experiment with positioning, just wondered if there was any point in getting the more expensive type. Tbh, I don't know what a more expensive one can do that a cheapo one doesn't!

 

[marinyork]

log periodic.

Obviously height is associated with gain and so on.

 

[ColinJ]

The reason that I am using an indoor aerial is that my chimney-mounted one packed up after storms last year. I suspect that the cable has failed or maybe the terminals are corroded or loose. Given how close I am to the transmitter and the fact that the digital switchover was about to happen (fewer reception problems likely), I thought it was worth trying a cheap indoor aerial before splashing out £100+ on a new rooftop one. That saved me over £90 but obviously people with a poor signal would not get away with an indoor aerial.

 

[MrJamie]

It depends so much on the signal in your area and the line of sight from your house, Milton Keynes for example has quite poor coverage being halfway between two transmitters (and relying on its silly cable solution) and prior to the switchover we had poor analogue signal and almost no digital signal, since the switchover they boosted the transmitter strengths but its still quite poor. Those internal aerials very rarely work here, tried a few of them and they just about worked outside last time i tried, pointed directly at the compass bearing of the transmitter but not inside even a window/wall reduced the signal too much.

This website is awesome for telling you what signal strength you should get and what bearing the transmitters are on if you enter your postcode although its a little on the pesimistic side http://www.wolfbane.com/cgi-bin/tvd.exe?DX=D&HT=10&OS= You can see if you look at the columns under each "ERP W" that the commercial multiplexes tend to transmit at a lower signal strength so if youre borderline you can sometimes get some groups of channels not others. A list of which channels are on each http://www.ukfree.tv/allchannelsmuxes.php

Im no expert btw, I just ended up geeking it a bit to try and get a signal pre-switchover

 

[marinyork]

Wolfbane is great, unfortunately they still haven't got round to finishing off the post switch-over predictor.